ENGLISH 433
Essay: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Look closely at the exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta at the beginning of Act V (V.i. 1-27), where Theseus claims lovers and poets, like lunatics, are “of imagination all compact,” all “airy nothing,” and Hippolyta responds that, no matter how strange and fantastic the night’s events may seem, “all their minds transfigured so together” that, somehow, it all makes sense, it “grows to something of great constancy.”
For this essay, pick one or more of the play’s themes (for example, the nature of romantic love, the power of the imagination, the opposition of day/night, or civilization/nature, or conscious/unconscious, or male/female) and show how Shakespeare develops “great constancy” over the play’s many plots and locations (the lovers, the royal couple, the fairy king and queen, the “rude mechanicals,” Pyramus and Thisby, the town-woods-theater, etc.).
Essays should include research/citations based upon a minimum of three peer-reviewed secondary sources.
Due Date: Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Late papers penalized: -10%
5-7 pages