MSND: Lecture 1
I. Greetings and introductions
a) Cast of characters
Julia Lupton, jrlupton@uci.edu
Director of Core and Professor of English
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 1:00-3:00, Core Office
Robert Moeller, rgmoelle@uci.edu
Professor and Chair of History
Office Hours: 10:30-12:00 452 Krieger Hall
Liz Losh, lizlosh@uci.edu
Writing Director
Janice Gregory, jrgreg@uci.edu
Enrollment Specialist
b) Plagiarism review
> Acknowledge all sources, including
collaboration with other students and web sources.
> Never cut and paste sentences from the
Internet.
> Turn it in to … TurnItIn.com.
> Save all rough drafts in order to
document your writing process.
>Helping another student cheat is also a
form of academic dishonesty.
>Academic dishonesty can result in
failure for the paper, failure for the course, a letter in your record, or, in
cases of repeated plagiarism, suspension or expulsion.
*** Coming soon: An information literacy quiz that will let you exercise your academic netiquette!
c) Making: The Big Picture
> What do we make?
> Why do we make things?
> Who gets to make what?
> Can a maker ever not be a doer?
> Can a maker ever not be a thinker?
> How do people use hammers?
II. Shakespeare the Maker
Drama places making between thinking and doing:
Drama is an act of making, of artistic production that works with stories, whether derived from history, mythology, folklore, or fiction. Drama also translates processes of thought (dream, fantasy, and imagination, for example, as well as ethos, logos, and pathos) into a made artifact that other people can view, experience, and interpret. The word drama comes from the Greek word dran, “to do, act, perform.” Drama represents human action by having actors physically perform the story. It thus translates human doing into a form of art or making. And drama can have social consequences – it can affect how people understand their world, and perhaps change their ways of acting in it.
Thesis: Shakespeare
the Maker
Shakespeare
created A Midsummer
Night’s Dream by
weaving together several media, traditions, and plots into an imaginary world
of his own making, where he could explore how people develop, negotiate, and
resolve love relationships. To do this, they must learn how to make their ways
through a landscape shaped by rules, stories, traditions, and images.
> several media
(language
and dialogue; gesture, music, dance; physical settings and props)
>traditions and plots
(classical
mythology; English folklore; plots involving aristocrats, fairies, and working
men)
>an imaginary world
of his own making
(fairies, magical flowers, bodily transformations)
>a landscape shaped
by rules, stories, and images
(the laws of fathers and kings; romances and love stories; images produced by imagination and fantasy)
Making will play a role in our discussions in three basic ways:
Ø the “made” or crafted character of Shakespeare’s drama as a collaborative art form
Ø the “made” or fictional character of the world he represents
Ø the ways we all “make” our own lives in response to the images and traditions that surround us
III. Shakespeare’s Theatre
The play was first performed for a court audience, in connection with an aristocratic wedding, in 1595. Once this event was complete, it became part of the repertory of Shakespeare’s theatre company, which performed before the general public in a large theatre. The most famous of these was the Globe Theatre, built in 1599. The play had to “work” for both audiences: a highly refined aristocratic audience, gathered to celebrate a particular occasion; and a broader, more mixed public audience unconcerned with a particular event.
In the public theatres, the seating accommodated a socially mixed audience, with lower-class “groundlings” purchasing standing room in the pit, and wealthier guests seated in the balconies. Both men and women attended the theatre. The theater was open air, and in the round. The stage itself was split into two levels, a flat platform and a gallery, where secondary action, dumb shows, observations, or commentary might take place.
Paper Tips: As you read the play, ask yourself when and how the balcony might have been used in the original stagings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Would your own staging of Act One, Scene Two (**paper topic #4!!**) include the balcony in any way?
You can read more about the Globe Theatre at:
http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xGlobe.html#Globe
http://www.bardweb.net/globe.html
IV. Act One, Scene One
a. Theseus and Hippolyta
Setting:
Ancient
Our hosts and conveners: Theseus and
Hippolyta. They are not “characters” exactly, but royal hosts for the drama to
come. They would have created a visual parallel to the hosts of the wedding
party for which the play was first performed. Their parts are sometimes doubled
with Titania and Oberon to emphasize the parallels between the two worlds of
the play (city and forest).
Theseus:
mythic founder and king of ancient
Hippolyta:
queen of the Amazons, a mythic kingdom ruled by women.
Ø
Negative associations (women
shouldn’t be in control of their own nations?)
Ø
Positive associations
(Queen Elizabeth I, an unmarried monarch who may have been in the first
audience, used Amazonian imagery to glorify her own reign).
“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. (I.i.i, p. 3)
“Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp,
with triumph, and with reveling.” (I.i.16-19, p. 4)
Theseus
conquered Hippolyta in battle (“wooed her with his sword”), and now he is
marrying her. There appear to be some residual hard feelings on her side, since
he is eager to make the mood happier and more festive before they marry. An unexpected
act of adjudication – deciding the fate of the young lovers Lysander and
Questions for directors and readers: Hippolyta has relatively few
lines. How does she react to events on stage? Does she participate in the
deliberative process? In Act One, Scene One? At the end of the play?
b. The young lovers
Hermia and
Lysander are in love. Hermia’s father Egeus wants her to marry Demetrius.
Demetrius used to love
Study hint: draw a diagram of the relationship
between the different characters.
IV.
Passage
analysis: “The course of true love never
did run smooth …”
LYSANDER Ay me! for aught that I
could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood, --
HERMIA O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low.
LYSANDER Or else misgraffed in respect of years, --
HERMIA O spite! too old to be engaged to young.
LYSANDER Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,
--
HERMIA O hell! to choose love by another's eyes.
(I.i.132-140; pp. 7-8)
>What
are the different love scenarios that they imagine in this scene? Can you think
of examples for drama, movies, or tv shows? Which scenario best fits theirs?
HERMIA: If then true lovers have been ever cross'd,
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross,
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor Fancy's followers. (I.i.141-155; p. 8)
Ø “Fancy” means love, desire, attraction,
attachment (as in “to fancy” a person); also, image, imagination, fantasy. Why
the connection between love and imagination? -à Because mental images arouse desire, while desire can inspire
the production of mental images. (More examples: Look at Egeus’ description of
Lysander’s courtship of Hermia, I.i.23-35, p. 4, or Theseus’ description of the
imagination, V.i.2-22, pp. 70-71).
Fancy’s followers
In what
sense does each of the following young characters fashion themselves as one of
“Fancy’s followers”? (Fancy = imagination, love, desire). How do the different
characters react to the current situation, shaped as it is by the love stories
they have absorbed from their culture?
Hermia preaches
patience. (She “follows Fancy” in the sense of recognizing and falling
into romantic patterns of frustrated passion inherited from popular love
stories.)
Lysander makes
a plan. (He “follows Fancy” in the sense of pursuing his desire; finding
openings in a blocked romantic situation. Such openings are also a part of
traditional love stories.)
Each character follows “fancy”: they love another person; they have active imaginations; their sense of romantic possibilities is shaped by popular literature and drama. As they “follow their fancies” into the forest, the play gets interesting ….
Summary of “The course of true love never did love
smooth” speech (or “Making love” in
Shakespeare):
> In this famous
speech, Shakespeare catalogues for us the different love stories available for
him to work with. (Compare to “Tagging,” “linking,” “branding.”)
> His characters
are also aware of and working with these different stories. In order to move
forward, they must figure out their relationship to them. Are popular romances
recipes for attitude? for action? for disaster?
> Both Shakespeare and his characters are making their own stories out of a database of available plots.