lecture notes: Each lecturer in this course has his or
her own style of presenting the material. The pdf slides linked to
the syllabus are designed for display during lecture. The files can be very
large, and are not designed to be printed or downloaded during lecture (though
you are welcome to refer to them for study purposes!). Please print out this
Word document and take additional notes on it during lecture. -- JRL
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 and by appointment (email recommended))
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
Suzanne Bolding, smboldin@uci.edu,
Program Manager
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
Thesis: Shakespeare
the Maker
In A
Midsummer Night’s Dream,
Shakespeare weaves together several forms and traditions, including the art of
rhetoric, holiday and festival, and popular romance. In the romance plot,
Shakespeare explores the power of love, in league with the imagination, to
make, unmake, and remake relationships. In the fairy plot, Shakespeare taps the
ability of holiday and festival to make connections between the ordinary and
the extraordinary. In the scenes involving the play-within-a-play, Shakespeare
both compares and contrasts his own theatrical making with the arts and crafts
of the working men of
3 Meanings of Making in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Ø Craft: the “made” or crafted character of Shakespeare’s drama as a collaborative art form
Ø Imagination: the “made” or fictional character of the world he represents
Ø Self-fashioning: the ways we all “make” our own lives in response to the images and traditions that surround us, including love stories and the scripts provided by holiday and festival.
III. Shakespeare’s Theatre
The play was first performed for a court audience, in connection with an aristocratic wedding, in 1595. As part of a wedding celebration, the play not only represents stories of courtship and marriage, but also participates in the making of an actual wedding (just as the play-within-a-play at the end of MSND contributes the festivities surrounding the play’s triple marriage).
Once this event was over, the play 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.
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; Setting the Stage
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)
Go,
Philostrate,
Stir
up the Athenian youth to merriments.
Awake
the pert and nimble spirit of mirth,
Turn melancholy forth to funerals ...
“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)
our nuptial hour: Their wedding will occur at the end of the play.
i wooed thee with my
sword: Theseus conquered
Hippolyta in battle.
pomp, triumph, reveling: He wants to cheer
her up with festivities and performances before he marries her.
b. The young lovers
Hermia and
Lysander are in love. Hermia’s father Egeus wants her to marry Demetrius.
Demetrius used to love
Passage for
analysis:
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 from drama, movies, or tv shows? Which scenario best fits theirs?
tale or history: stories of love;
fictions that have become part of the popular imagination; stories we tell
ourselves as we enter into new relationships.
different in blood: lovers from rival
families (Romeo
and Juliet)
or different ethnic groups (Othello) or different clubs/
social groups (High School Music)
or even species (Titania and Bottom)
misgraffed in respect
to years
= mismatched. Age difference. (Compare Knocked Up; also, Will Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.)
stood upon the choice of friends: arranged marriage (Hermia
and Demetrius, Pyramus and Thisbe).
V.
Shakespeare’s Festive Fairies: Weaving Local Traditions and Orders of
Experience
English folklore and
holidays
> May Day:
villages celebrated spring and fertility with dancing, a Maypole, and the crowning
of a May Queen on May 1.
> “maying”: Girls would gather flowers in the early
morning, often with young men, in preparation for the day’s festivities.
“Maying” could also just mean springtime courtship in general.
> Midsummer
Night: June 23, the eve of
> Midsummer
madness: “a state of mind marked by a heightened readiness to believe in
the delusions of the imagination.” (Introduction, p. lxiv)
More on maying: http://www.capjewels.com/mgp/Maying.html
Fairies:
> Fairies are spirits of nature. They are part of
rustic (rural) English paganism, an ancient folk tradition that preceded
Christianity, merged with Catholicism, and was under some attack by the
Reformation.
Britanica On-Line
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9033595/fairy
FAIRIES <--à
Holiday and festival: social scripts that connect
the human world to the natural and supernatural world (linking everyday life to
the extraordinary).
> Holidays are social rituals
that provide a script allowing young people to meet and mingle.
> Holidays are religious rituals that link the human world to the natural cycles of seasonal
fertility.
> As a play performed for a wedding, MSND itself has a ritual dimension; it helps “make” the occasion.