Midsummer Nights Dream
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Submitted by ChubbyL on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
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Midsummer Nights Dream
This is one of several illustrations by Fuseli on scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream, a natural source for an artist so often drawn to the subject of dreams and nightmares. The central figure Titania calls on her fairies to wait on the seated Bottom. In Bottom's hand stands Mustardseed, ready to help Peaseblossom, who scratches Bottom's right ear. Cobweb is at the left of the painting, spear poised to kill a bee and to bring the honey-bag to Bottom. At the right is a girl holding the bowl of "dried pease" Bottom has requested. The woman standing behind the girl, looking wantonly from the picture at the viewer, leads a dwarfish old man on a leash. She represents the triumph of youth over age, of the senses over reason--and, in terms of the imagery established by the play itself, the victory of night over day, the forest of Oberon over the court of Theseus, the world of love and dreams over the rational, workaday world of Athens. In this one allegorical image Fuseli captures the polarity of much of the imagery of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Possible sets of images to use include: dream; death/dead/die; live/life/living/alive; love/loves/lovers; day/night/sun/moon; sleep/rest/bed; eyes/see/look; spirit/fairy/fairies; or play/plays. More challenging image sets include: fair/foul or mentions of different animals: dog/cat/lion/mouse/creature/beast/bird/ass.
3. Have the students use the online concordance to examine their sets of images. At each stage, make them attempt to draw conclusions: what does this information tell them about what Shakespeare is trying to say with his imagery? First, have them find and examine the uses of their word(s) in the play. As a conclusion, they may note the relative frequency of words in the play: they may note the word "night" appears much more often than the word "day", giving the imagery of the play a decidedly dark feel.
4. Second, have them examine each use of the word in the context in the play in...
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