AO2: Structure, Form and Language

AO2: Structure, Form and Language

AO2: Structure1. The three-part plot

1. Events go wrong2. Ridiculous complications3. Events go right

This is a typical structure for most comedies.

Shakespeare builds a more elaborate structure on this typical foundation by telling three stories and developing them alongside each other.

• the misadventures of the four lovers• the conflict between Titania and Oberon• the mechanicals struggle to perform Pyramus and Thisbe• (the tension between Hippolyta and Theseus is a fourth, less prominent, plot element which helps to link the other three)

The plots are also linked by interactions between the groups of characters and by themes.

AO2: Structure1. The three-part plot

As the play progresses, the plots unfold at different speeds and our interest shifts between them. These shifts make the play less straightforward than it might first appear – is it a play about love, as it seems at the start? Or about imagination, as becomes more apparent towards the end?

AO2: Structure2. Setting

• Day and night• Athens and the wood

1. The conflict between the lovers starts in daytime Athens, then moves to the woods at night.

[Note: ‘wood’ can also mean ‘crazy’ in Elizabethan England. Why is this appropriate?]

2. The wood is also a place of transformation.The fairies eventually put everything right and the lovers return to daytime Athens to be married.

3. They then stay up until midnight for another encounter with the ridiculous (Pyramus and Thisbe) and the fairies’ blessing.

AO2: StructureAO3 / AO4

AO4. c17 and c18 productions took advantage of the three plotlines to prioritise the clowning of Bottom and the craftsmen, play down the fairies and cut out most of the lovers’ story. Even in the nineteenth century, their scenes were heavily cut. Significantly, it was only when the original interaction of the three plots was restored in c20 that the play gained recognition as one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces.

AO3. Enid Welsford comments, “the play is a pattern... rather than a series of events patterned by human character and passion, and this pattern, especially in the moonlit parts of the play, is a dance.” (The Court Masque, 1927)

How is this comparison to a dance an interesting one?

AO4: Form1. The Elizabethan Theatre

In Elizabethan theatre, the distinction between audience and actors was not as firm as it is now. Performances took place in the open air, and in daylight, so everyone was equally illuminated (cf. modern lighting rigs and audiences in darkness). The spectators were all around the stage (and wealthier spectators sometimes on it) and were dressed the same way as the actors, with the exception of the supernatural characters, who would have worn costumes inspired by folklore. In such a theatre, the spectators would be as aware of each other as of the actors – there was no chance that they could forget they were spectators at a performance, or believe what was on stage was ‘real’.

AO4: Form1. The Elizabethan Theatre

Most modern drama tries to persuade us that what we are watching is really happening. This is a kind of realism quite foreign to Shakespeare. If we read him in this way, we will be irritated by the improbability of his plot, by the lack of coherence in his chronology, and by the motivation of the action. He does not attempt realism.

AO4: Form1. The Elizabethan Theatre

Shakespeare’s audience would arrive late, be noisy, leave early, or even interrupt or join in. Plays were preceded by clowning or jigs (like the Bergomask dance at the end of Pyramus and Thisbe). It was more like a modern pantomime than modern theatre: we are aware, and are meant to be aware, that we are watching games being played with reality.

AO4: Form2. The Audience Acknowledged

Elizabethan plays acknowledge the presence of the audience. It is addressed by prologues, epilogues, choruses and soliloquies, e.g. when Helena explains her thoughts and feelings at the end of Act 1 Scene 1, it is not to an empty room, but to the audience, she speaks.

AO4: Form2. The Audience Acknowledged

Elizabethan plays are aware of themselves as dramas: they are self-reflexive, commenting upon themselves as dramatic pieces and prompting the audience to think about the theatrical experience. They do this through direct address to the audience and through the convention of the play-within-a-play which reminds the audience that the main play is a play too. They also use images from and make allusions to the theatre (e.g. Puck’s “I’ll be an auditor/ An actor too perhaps” III.I.62-63). They are fascinated by role playing, acting, appearance and reality.

AO4: Form3. Comic Conventions

Elizabethan comic conventions: • foolish characters• ridiculous situations• a happy ending• several characters, rather than a limited number as in tragedies• ‘discrepant awareness’ – a form of dramatic irony, where some characters have more knowledge than others, but where the audience know more than everyone

e.g. Puck is invisible to the mortals and we enjoy the tricks he plays, but we also enjoy his mistake when he puts the love juice on the wrong man’s eyes.

AO2: Language1. Rhyme

The characters mainly speak blank verse, with rhyming couplets used to mark an exit or the end of a scene. Many lines are end-stopped, so it is easy for both the Athenian nobles and the fairies to move from one rhyme scheme to another. Use of rhyme can:

• distance us from the lovers’ experiences• make the male lovers’ declarations seem stilted and pompous• point to the contrast between (for example) Titania and Bottom

(See notes on your scenes for specific observations re: these.)

AO2: Language2. Song and Music

The fairies make particular use of rhyme for spells and charms, or when carrying out supernatural actions. All of their short-lined passages are rhymed, giving them a song-like quality.

The fairies lullaby for Titania in Act II Scene 2 is an actual song and it is possible that some of the other passages were also meant to be sung, especially the spells. The fairies’ final blessing also entails singing and dancing.

AO2: Language2. Song and Music

Bernard Shaw (see AO3 critic pack) pointed out that the play is “operatic” in its nature, with ‘duets’ between characters, as they combine to create a mood and share ideas.

e.g. Theseus and Hippolyta’s debate about the moon (I.i.1-11); Puck and Oberon’s conversation about spirits and the dawn (III.ii.378-93).

There are ‘arias’ for individual characters, speeches where action seems to stand still for passages of beauty.

e.g. Titania’s ‘These are the forgeries of jealousy’ (III.i.81-117); Oberon’s ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows’ (II.i.249-56); Helena’s ‘We, Hermia, like two artificial gods’ (III.ii.203-19)

AO2: Language3. The Mechanicals

The mechanicals vary the tone and rhythm of the play by speaking in prose – although Bottom manages his own sort of ‘aria’ at the end of Act IV Scene 1 – except in their attempts to perform in rhyming verse, which parody the techniques Shakespeare uses brilliantly elsewhere.

Short, rhymed lines and alliteration fail in ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ because the formal patterning and the meaning are at odds with one another.

AO2: Language4. Word Patterns and Meaning

Lists:

• Help create the details of the worlds in our imagination• Egeus lists the love tokens bestowed on his daughter• Oberon lists the beasts with which Titania might fall in love• Hermia and Lysander list the obstacles to love• The fairies offer Bottom a list of gifts

AO2: Language4. Word Patterns and Meaning

“Therefore”:

• The characters try to rationalise what is happening to them by trying to create logical connections – some more persuasively than others• Theseus can see through “saucy and audacious eloquence”

“therefore” he appreciates what is genuine (V.i.103-4)• Oberon sees a fight is about the begin “therefore” sends Puck

to prevent it (III.ii.355)• Titania has quarrelled with Oberon “therefore” the winds and

moon have reacted angrily (II.i.103)• Snout feels that Snug dressed as a lion will terrify the audience

“therefore” there should be a prologue (III.i.27)

AO2: Language

“Overall, we may say that the language of the play is always forming beautiful patterns, but that their relation to the ‘real world’ is never clear, for the focus of the play is not so much on objective reality as on the characters’ changing perceptions of it.”

- Michael Sherborne

Do you agree?