Questions on
Shakespeare’s Comedies
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53.)
ACT 1
1. Act 1, Scene 1 begins with a conversation between Theseus, Duke of Athens and Hippolyta the Amazon Queen, a famous couple from Greek mythology. What is the back story about them and their eventful union? What perspective do Theseus and Hippolyta separately take on the waiting period before their wedding? What insights about them and their relationship might we draw from this difference of attitude?
2. In Act 1, Scene 1, Hermia’s father Egeus enters as a typical New Comedy-style senex iratus (angry old man). What specific demands does he make when he bursts onto the scene? What penalties does he threaten? How seriously does Theseus take his angry subject’s demands, and what seems is his reasoning on the matter? How should we, the audience, take Egeus’s threats and, more generally, how should we understand the symbolic authority he represents?
3. In Act 1, Scene 1, how does Lysander defend his relationship with Hermia against Egeus’s accusations, and what observations about love does he offer Hermia to try to comfort her in the wake of her father’s furious rejection of her marriage preference? What is his plan to escape from the old man’s clutches and carry on with the match?
4. In Act 1, Scene 1, what dilemma does Helena (Hermia’s childhood friend) confront? What does she decide to do about it? Does her plan seem like a wise thing to do? Why or why not? How does she construe the nature and power of love, and how does her analysis relate to her own situation?
5. In Act 1, Scene 2, Peter Quince and his working-class actors make plans to rehearse their play. Who is calling for this play, and why? What sort of play will it be? What are the actors’ concerns when they are told which roles they will play? In particular, why does the role of the “lion” cause so much worry? What do the troupe’s concerns along with Peter Quince’s instructions tell us about the craft of acting and about audience reception in Shakespeare’s day?
6. In Act 1, Scene 2, how does Bottom the Weaver distinguish himself (for better or worse) from the other actors who are to take roles in Pyramus and Thisbe? What is to be his role, and why, in your view, does he want to play other roles as well? How does Peter Quince handle this troublesome member of the troupe?
ACT 2
7. In Act 2, Scene 1, the Faery King and Queen, Oberon and Titania, first appear. What kind of place is their fairy realm? What special powers do this couple have? To what extent are they like, and to what extent unlike, a human couple? What is the subject of their current discord, and what apparently motivates them to take the differing positions they do regarding this subject?
8. In Act 2, Scene 1, we meet Puck or Robin Goodfellow before the entrance of his master, King Oberon, with the Fairy Queen Titania. What does the Fairy coax out of Robin by way of an explanation of who he is and what he does here in the Fairy Realm? What powers does he possess?
9. In Act 2, Scene 1, what happens between Demetrius and Helena? How does she try to explain to him her predicament as regards her love for him? What view of the couple’s interaction does Oberon take? What task does he then command Puck to perform, and to what end?
10. In Act 2, Scene 2, around the time that Titania lies down to rest and is bewitched by Oberon, Lysander and Hermia are ready to take their rest as well. What does Lysander suggest regarding the sleeping arrangements, and what reason does Hermia give for rejecting his idea?
11. In Act 2, Scene 2, what error does Puck make in discharging his responsibility as set forth by Oberon in the previous scene? Why does he make this mistake—how is it set up by the friendly argument that Hermia and Lysander have just had about where each of them should lie down to sleep? How does Puck’s mistake change the course of events?
12. In Act 2, Scene 2, how, specifically, does Oberon bewitch Queen Titania? Do some research on the lore of the flower he uses to cast a spell over her—why is that flower particularly appropriate to the task, and how might its symbolism be connected to the play’s broader concern with the transformations that art makes possible?
13. In Act 2, Scene 2, what happens when Lysander awakes from his sleep? How does he now view and speak to Helena, and what does he now think of Hermia? How does Helena react to this strange new situation—why is it so upsetting to her?
ACT 3
14. In Act 3, Scene 1, during rehearsal, what two representational and audience-related concerns do Bottom and Snout raise regarding their play Pyramus and Thisbe? What is the basis of those concerns—why do these characters worry about the things they specify, and what plans do they come up with to deal with them?
15. In Act 3, Scene 1, during rehearsal, what two specific concerns does director Peter Quince introduce regarding Pyramus and Thisbe? Again, what is the basis of his concerns—what is he worried about, and how does he propose to solve the two problems he has raised?
16. In Act 3, Scene 1, as mentioned above, Bottom betrays some anxiety about how certain things will be represented in Pyramus and Thisbe and how the audience will take such representations. Theatrical realism is an issue that Shakespeare explores in other plays, too. Choose one such instance and discuss briefly how the issue is talked about and dealt with, and how it compares with the consideration of the issue here in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (The prologue of Henry V is one possibility; so is Hamlet’s advice in 3.2 to the actors in the troupe that visits Elsinore; or Feste the Clown’s song concluding Twelfth Night.)
17. In Act 3, Scene 1, the rehearsal gets under way in earnest, but not smoothly. What problems does Peter Quince have to deal with when Bottom and Flute start speaking their lines and interacting with each other? How does Quince handle the issues that arise, at least before the “translated” Bottom shows up and scares everyone away?
18. In Act 3, Scene 1, Puck watches the rehearsal of Pyramus and Thisbe, and decides to play a special role all his own. What magic does he work upon Bottom the Weaver? Why might Bottom be the most appropriate target of such a trick? How does Bottom react to what one of his fellow actors calls his “translation” (i.e. his transformation into an ass)?
19. In Act 3, Scene 1, Titania wakes up in a bewitched state, and the first thing she sees is the strangely altered Bottom the Weaver. How does the Queen of the Fairies show her fondness for Bottom, and how does he react both to the attentions of the great Queen herself and to the ministrations of her fairy attendants?
20. In Act 3, Scene 2, Robin reports to the Fairy King Oberon on how his plot against Titania has turned out. How does he explain the decision he made to transform Bottom into an ass—why did he do it? It doesn’t seem to have been part of a deliberate plan to give Titania something to wake up to and fall in love with, so what was the point, and what does it suggest to us about the nature of Puck, or Robin Goodfellow?
21. In Act 3, Scene 2, what jealousies, anxieties, and hostilities beset Hermia and Helena as well as Demetrius and Lysander? Describe the tangle of confusion—the “vexation,” to us the word that Oberon will soon roll out to describe the whole affair—that afflicts the human couples in the forest. What key misunderstandings and misperceptions are causing all this trouble?
22. What is the difference between Oberon’s reaction to the mess he sees in the woods and Puck’s reaction to the same goings-on? When does Oberon discover the mistake that Puck has made in misidentifying which Athenian man to bewitch? Differences aside, how do Puck and Oberon, together, manage to help the squabbling humans who have entered their territory? What does Oberon declare to be his chief desire with regard to his quarrel with Titania, and how does he plan to achieve it?
ACT 4
23. In Act 4, Scene 1, Oberon, who has by now obtained his beloved Indian boy from Titania and mocked her roundly for her obstinacy, decides that it’s time to undo the magic that binds her to her “ass” Bottom. He tells Robin to undo Bottom’s bewitching so that he and the other human visitors will take away from their strange experiences in the forest no more than “the fierce vexation of a dream” (439, 4.1.67). What significance lies in that word—how is the action of the play as a whole (including the end) similar in its movement and significance to a dream?
24. In Act 4, Scene 1, Theseus and Hippolyta discuss hunting parties while they await their wedding ceremony. During the conversation, how does Hippolyta strive to maintain her autonomy (her relative independence) as they move towards this “institutional moment,” marriage? How does Theseus respond to this attempt?
25. In Act 4, Scene 1, how does Theseus handle Egeus’s newly repeated invocation of the law against Hermia—what new information frustrates the old father’s angry demands, and what further declarations does Theseus make to complete the happiness of all except Egeus?
26. In Act 4, Scene 1-2, Bottom the Weaver muses on his wondrous transformation and then returns to his fellow actors. At the end of Scene 1, how does he interpret what has happened to him? What use does he plan to make of the experience? In Scene 2, what does Bottom tell his fellows about the strange thing that happened to him? Finally, why might it be that he, alone of all the play’s human characters, has actually seen the fairies?
ACT 5
27. In Act 5, Scene 1, what does Theseus, apparently think of the forest adventure he has heard recounted by Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius? In speaking to Hippolyta before the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, what principles of literary or dramatic appreciation does Theseus set forth? In what sense might we say that his comments extend beyond the realm of art and into other areas of life? How does Hippolyta regard the lovers’ strange tale?
28. In Act 5, Scene 1, how do Theseus and the other noble characters respond to the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe put on by Peter Quince and his crew of artisans? It’s obvious that the play does not go smoothly—the actors’ rehearsal didn’t work wonders in their technique or basic abilities. Still, why does Theseus take so much pleasure in the performance in spite of its defects? What principle of reception underlies his generosity in speaking kindly of the silly play enacted for him, Hippolyta, and their guests?
29. In Act 5, Scene 1, how does Puck’s epilogue connect the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe and the noble audience’s reaction to it with the larger performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream? What privilege and responsibility does he grant Shakespeare’s actual audience? What seem to be the implications of this epilogue for the status of a play in relation to the world beyond art?
30. General question. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to be among his most beloved and successful plays. Is it among your favorites? Why or why not? Whatever your own feeling, what qualities in the play do you suppose might account for its continuing popularity among modern audiences?
Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93861-6.
Copyright © 2012, revised 2025 Alfred J. Drake