27.05.2009

Shakespeare is developing himself.As far as his tragedies are concerned, he starts with tragedy of faith which is Romeo and Juliet. Everything is coming from the outside. The characters are not so much responsible for what is happening to them. If you put that in the context we have been discusting all semester long, that shift, that paradigm shift which is from an authority related towards an experience related which is more individual centered world picture. We can say the following: Shakespeare starts in a way with the old style; responsibility being taken from the individual and things come from the outside. The God, faith or fortuna we name it. And later on in his plays, the more individual is being foregrounded. In Kyd's Spainish Tragedy the more the individual becomes the author and actor of his own tragedy. This is something new, this is also the characteristic of Shakespeare's development. The individual becomes more and more responsible for what happens to him. If we look at Romeo and Juliet, the individual is not responsible for what happens to him, but if we look at Shakespeare's later tragedies they are like Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, namely the individual is responsible for what happens to him. Also it is pointed out with regard to Spanish Tragedy, human emotion became more and more powerful. Human emotions such as greed , envy, sexual love, love for power became absolute and became the motor of drama. If you look at the morality play it was impossible.The individual is now the agent of what happens. There is no God who is responsible  like in the morality play, mystery play. It is the individual who is responsible for his own fate. This can also be seen in the context of the shift from an authority related world picture towards an experience related world picture from God as the absolute subject towards the individual as author of his own fate. In the case of Romeo and Juliet it is fortuna responsible for what happens. It is an anonymous fate sent from the outside, certainly not God who was willing to destroy the people. But fortuna like God is an author exterior, author responsible for what happens in the play. In the classical Greek tragedy you have Fortuna the godess of fate as the absolute author or agent. In the christian morality plays, mystery plays you have God as the absolute agent. And in Shakespeare's plays, in the time of the Renassaince individual become author and actor in his own play. And this can be seen in the context of the shift from an authority related towards an experience related world picture.

Renassaince - time of humanism- tried to sort of embed the idea of the ancient Godess Fortuna into a christian world picture. The wheel of Fortune is an image which is still popular in Shakespeare`s time and it stands for faith as such. Those people who are on the rim of that wheel

 they are the ones who are underlying the influence of time most. You know, to save oneself, one has to throw an anchor in the heart, the unmoved heart. And this is where the christian middle ages put the God as the Unmoved Mover. They put him into the heart of Fortunes Wheel. The whole thing is a process of blending. Ancient myths and knowledge, the Greek antiquity and the new christian ideas in the middle ages. And the whole thing travels.This is still popular or valid in the age of Shakespeare. Shakespeare also talks about fortune. He is using fortune as a metaphor for fate. But this kind of fate is not the christian God. Because this kind of fate is hostile to human beings, this kind of fate is influencing lives of human beings but we cannot say that God sent it. That is not the case. And in the case of Romeo and Juliet you have two young people suffering this fate, both have to die. You cannot make God responsible for this. God is not the agent. IN ROMEO AND JULIET THE AGENT IS AN ANONYMOUS HOSTILE FATE COMING FROM THE OUTSIDE, NOT SO MUCH THEIR PERSONAL GUILTS.

But this changes in the course of the great tragedy. In Hamlet, Hamlet's disposition as a melancholic man or as somebody who cannot act, who has too many doubts. In Macbeth, you have the greed for power. Macbeth is being stimulated by his wife, and his wife is even worse than himself as far as this greed for power concerned. In King Lear, you have the blindness and flattery. You know his daughters flatter him and he is blind when he gives up his kingdom, and he is blind to the fact that the youngest daughter Cordelia is the best. Blindness, short-sidedness is his tragic flow. So you have different variations of tragic flows in the course of the tragedy that Shakespeare wrote. What they all have in common is the fact that the individual becomes responsible and human emotions. Greed, love, envy and so on. They become the motor of the dramatic events.

From the online reader page 64:

-> S.’s Lancaster plays: do certainly not campaign on behalf of Tudor myth of history,
but draw a complex/critical picture of royal authority: concept of divine power undermined,
exposed as ideology
Julius Caesar (c 1599), Antony and Cleopatra (c 1606), Coriolanus (c 1607) –
powerful individuals studied in terms of their public conflicts
(staging Roman history: another way of commenting on Elizabethan problems)
-> in Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, growing emphasis on characters’ involvement in their fates:
subjective autonomy interwoven with control by higher forces -> dramatic tension

Development of the tragic in Shakespear e
Early tragedy Romeo and Juliet (159496):
no real tragic flaw (character defect/inner guilt)
-> changes radically in Hamlet (15991601)
– prince being incapable of action:
until his return from England, by turns rational, tinged by madness, determined, paralysed;
in the fifth act, a different Hamlet is convinced that “readiness is all”
King Lear (about 1605): bleak world with no matrimonial or sexual fulfilment (unlike Othello);
Macbeth (160607):
crime centred in the marital relationship – Lady Macbeth’s ambition exercised
on behalf also of her husband
-> S.’s great tragedies: world clearly out of joint, rotten to the core –
tragic heroes violate divine/cosmic order as invoked by Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida
(still: restoration of order in the end, even if protagonists have to pay with their lives):

In 1899 Sarah Bernhardt who was a female actress acted Hamlet. There was this feminist movement towards the end of 19th century. Oskar Werner is an Austrian Viennese Hamlet player.

As you can see the Hamlet play has been popular thorughout the ages.

Hamlet comes home from the university. It is the University of Wittenberg. Hamlet comes home from the University of Wittenberg in Germany. And what he finds is his father is dead. We later on find out he was killed by his brother Claudius. His uncles has the power in the state although Hamlet is the eldest son and should have succeeded his father. But Claudius enthroned himself. We do not know how this has happened but he has been manuplating the power in the background obviously all the time. An act or motif of usurpation by the way. The motif of usurpation connects or relates Hamlet to Richard II where you also have a king who is deposed. And Hamlet's mother is married to his uncle Claudius. In the eyes of Elizabethans this was incest. Incest, if the uncle marries the widow of his brother. So this is why Hamlet is so upset. Hamlet in the so called Closet Sceene gets very upset about his mother Gertrude and he abrades her. He abrades her and also calls her a whore, because she is sharing the bed with his uncle Claudius. She has left Hamlet Senior who is dead in the meantime and married Claudius. This was incest in the eyes of Elizabethans. If an uncle marries the widow of his deceased brother, it was incest in the eyes of Elizabethans.

Hamlet from the first shows his inability to act. And this is his tragic flow. This is why there is discourse of tragic events in the course of the play. He is a philospher rather than an acting hero.

There have been a lot of speculations about Hamlet's so-called melancholy. Melancholy which was the decease according to Elizabethan understanding. And this melancholy is also something which prevents him from acting. But he is delaying the action, he is delaying the revenge. He is motivated by quite a number of reasons. His character is one of these reasons. So once again you have the character of an individual as the source of fate at the source of the play's action or outcome. This is in accordance with what I said about paradigm shift, from an authority related to experience related modal of the world. But there is another reason, or more than just one reason. Not only just character traits but the ghost with which the play begins. The soldiers have seen the ghost and then Hamlet sees the ghost and the ghost is that of his father. But is it a good ghost or is it a bad ghost? Hamlet cannot be sure about this. You have to remember the symbolism of the Elizabethan Stage or of Shakespearean Stage. The ghost comes from below. The stage means the world. The stage symbolises the world. Underneath the stage is hell and the ghost comes from the underneath of the stage. Above the stage is heaven. So this is heaven, earth and hell. That was the symbolism. The ghost comes from below. Shakespeare is not catholic he is an Anglican. We have a protestant time already, but the earth belief is still there.There is hell and forehell and the ghost of Hamlet's father is in forehell, because he was murdered. According to the ancient belief he has to be kept in an intermediate sort of state to decide whether he will be sent to hell finally or to heaven. So he is in an intermediate sort of  state. Hamlet doesn't know this. It could be an evil spirit for him and this evil spirit is demanding a revenge. This evil spirit also tells him I was murdered by your uncle Claudius who is the king now. And this also motivates the delay of the revenge because Hamlet has to find out whether the ghost right or wrong. Whether the ghost is just instigating him to do something unlawful or not. Hamlet is uncertain about the guilt of his uncle. All he knows is the message from the ghost. The next point is that of course, we are dealing with an aristocratic coarse of behaviour. If somebody of your family is killed this demands immediate revenge. You have to kill the killer. You have to take revenge on him. This is the old structure of Senecan Revenge Tragedy which comes from antiquity.As fas as the course of behaviours concerned, the aristocrats took over many of the samples of antiquity.For example, somebody has to be a very courageous man. This is an old heroic antique value. Also this course of behaviour that is if somebody kills from your family, you have to kill the killer that also comes down from antiquity. In a christian world however, it becomes problematic. Because the lord says: "The revenge is mine." So you have this antique modal, revenge structure and you have  christian surroundings. The antique structure does not fit without problems into these christian surroundings. The aristocratic values to take revenge on somebody who kills from your family becomes problematic in a christian context. So there is a conflict between the aristocratic and christian values in the play. Forgiveness would be the opposite. Don't take revenge forgive the murderer. But this play is of course out of the christian values. The revenge plot Shakespeare uses

comes from Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy. It is actually the plot of Senecan Revenge Tragedy. And it also has these stages which are characteristic. You have aghost who demands revenge. You have a revenge delayed. That is also the case in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. Revenge does not take place immediately, which is a means of creating suspense. Then you have the play within the play also in Hamlet. The play within the play is called the Murder of Gonzago. The function of the play within the play is to find out the turth. Who is the murderer or is the one whom I suspect guilty or not?

Has Claudius really murdered Hamlet Senior or not? In the contect of the Shakespearean Theatre this is also a metadramatic device. Metadramatic in the sense of a reflection on what drama can be or should be. And it points towards the artificiality of what is put on the stage. It points out that the play is a play. And at the end of the revenge plot you have the punishment of the guilty characters. But not only of the guilty and this is the same in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy as in Shakespeare's Hamlet. You also have the destruction of the innocent characters such as Ophelia, the female character. Also the death of Hamlet of course who si not guilty. But he is also guilty.

He becomes guilty in the course of te play. He murders Polonius. He thinks that his uncles is behind the arras and so he strikes out and takes his sword and mjurderes the one behind the arras. There is someone hiding behind the arras and Hamlet thinks that he is Claudius and he is ready to act at that moment and he murders him. And he finds that he has murdered Polonius  who is the father of Ophelia who is his beloved one. Ophelia becomes crazy as a consequence of this and also as a consequence of fact that Hamlet turns hic back on her.

The metadramatic device is everything that reflects on the artificiality of the reality represented.

It is the opposite of Guckkastenbühne. Below there are the examples of it. And if you click on this link, you will be informed with pictures in detail.

Guckkasten means what happens on the stage is meant to be identical with reality. A metadramatic device draws your attention to the fact that what happens on the stage is not identical with reality but it is a play. The Murder of Gonzago. The play of the play is staged within the play of Hamlet and this in a way points the attention of the audience to the fact that we are watching a play. That the reality represented on the stage is an artificial reality. Because we can repeat that within the play itself. It is like metafictional comedy, for example, in a novel. Metafictional comedy in a novel means that the novel points out attention to the fact that he is inventing reality. The reality created is a fictional reality. And the play within the play is such a metadramatic device is foregrounding the imaginary characters of the events. Like this opening prologue in Henry V. You know there is  a character coming on the stage and pointing out you have to use your imagination, because we cannot put the armies now of the battle between England and France on the stage. So we are just a few people you know. And maybe you don`t see real horses. All this is foregrounding the fictionality of what is put on the stage. This is also the case in "A Midsummer Night's Dream "we also have a play within the play.Pyramus and Thisbe which is sort of mirroring in a grotesque way, what is going on on the level of the reality represented. This is also a play within the play and this is a foregrounding technique. By this technique, Shakespeare is pointing out to the fact that it is after all just a play.

Okay. Punishment of the guilty characters. This is the scheme of revenge tragedy and this is also the scheme of Hamlet. And in the course of this punishment, quite a number of characters are drawn into the whole thing and they are also killed. This applies to Kyd's Spanish Tragedy and it applies to Shakespeare`s Hamlet.

The whole play is set first in Elsinore. Later on we also have sceenes set at sea and Hamlet on the ship to England. But there are pirates who capture the ship and Hamlet goes back to Elsinore. The whole thing takes place in Denmark. There is a castle called Elsinore which can still be visited today. You can go there and have a look. The material for the play comes from old Northern Literature, from Danish Literature. We have senses in Hamlet like there is something rotten in the state of Denmark or Time out of joint. The time is out of joint in the state of Denmark which somehow indicates the disturbance of social order. There is a disturbance of social order at the beginning of the play. The disturbance of the social order is of course Claudius murders Hamlet Senior, that he has married Hamlet's mother, that he has taken over the power and the throne in the state. There are somethings rotten in the state of Denmark. All these events point to the rottenness of what happens. Times out of joint is also a sense which you read very often. It referes to the idea that the cosmic order is a harmonious one. You know we have all the saphires and they are in harmony with each other from the top of the pyramid where there is God down to the lowest things in life. There is a harmony within the saphires and if one element is disturbed, all the other elements are also disturbed. This is also the idea which you read very often in Shakespeare. By the way,this pattern, order disturbed at the beginning in the course of the events, and restores the order at the end is also characteristic of Shakespeare`s comedies. You cannot only apply it to the tragedies but also to the comedies. And in a way I think you can also apply it to the history plays. Times out of joint in Richard II, a rebellion against the king by divine right. Chaos, the murder of Richard II and restoration of order. The King Henry IV takes on power and brings order to the commonwealth. And then at the beginning of Henry IV part I, there is rebellion again, disturbance of order, chaos and you have Henry V becoming a great king at the end. So this rhythm of order disturbed, chaos and order restored is the characteristic of all of Shakespeare`s plays. It is something like an archetype which is repeated again and again in the histories, in the tragedies and also in the comedies. Times out of joint, Hamlet comes back from the University of Wittenberg and finds out that Claudius is the king. Like Richard II is deposed and Henry IV is the king. And Claudies marries Hamlet`s mother Gertrude. Within two months after the death of Hamlet Senior, Gertrude married Claudius. And a widows should have at least one year of mourning. This is convention. It is inappropriate what she does. Hamlet has a lot of reasons to be angry about Gertrude, his mother, who marries rashly, sharing the bed with uncle wchich is incest anyhow. But in the fames closet sceene where Hamlet is abrading his mother for all the things, we also get the feeling that there is a Freudian overtone. Freudian meaning that son is sort of secretly

craving for his mother. And the son is having feelings of rivalry for Claudius who enjoys the bed of Gertrude. So Shakespeare shows in the play psyhchology long before the psychology invented or Freud wrote about it.

Hamlet kills Polonius, because Polonius is hiding behind the arras. As a consequence of this event, Claudius writes a letter to the king of England to kill Hamlet immediately, as soon as he arrives England. But he is freed by pirates from the ship. He returns to court, to Elsinore that is Denmark.Ophelia became mad before she drowned in the river, because her father has been killed by her lover. And also Hamlet has turned a cold shoulder to her, turned his back on her. She becomes mad while he is on his journey, when he is back, she is already dead. Claudius is a machiavellian king. He is the new type that was already illustrated with Henry Bolingbroke. A man who knows how to keep power and avoid suspicion. Claudius has killed Hamlet Senior secretly with poison. Claudius also sends him to England and asks the king of England to execute him as soon as he comes. Hamlet`s friends from the university of Wittenberg -Rosencrantz and Guildenstern- are executed by the king of England, because Hamlet seizes the letters, he excanges the letters in such a way that he asks the king of England to kill the bearers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are his companions. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem have a Jewish ancestry and a German background. Instead of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carried these two letters to England and they killed themselves. Hamlet feels that he is betrayed by them. They are his companions from the university, but he feels betrayed by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Because Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do words for Claudius and they are ordered to find out what ails Hamlet. They are tools in the hands of Claudius and Hamlet knows this. Hamlet becomes a murderer. First he kills Polonius and then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In a way he is also guilty with regard to the death of Ophelia, because he turns his back on her. It seems clear that Hamlet and Ophelia have a love affair going on backwards. This love affair started before Hamlet left for Wittenberg. It has been interrupted by his stay, his studies in Wittenberg. The love affair obviously began before he went to Wittenberg. Now this love affair is problematic for Ophelia. Because she is of lower rank. Princes married princesses at that time. They married the princesses that were elected by their fathers. So this love affair between Hamlet and Ophelia is problematic. Ophelia in a way becomes a fallen woman, and then she is regarded as a bitch by Hamlet in the course of the play. In his madness which is just a roleplay actually, he does not become a real mad. Of course he is mad at his uncle, but this is different. He puts an antique disposition on. Antique in this context means mad. The role of a fool. And in this mad role he insults Ophelia, he ditches her, he rejects her. He says in one of his sentences :"Get thee to a nunnery." In Elizabethan slang, nunnery also meant whorehouse, brothel. So what he actually says is, go into a brothel, which is a big insult of course. A nunnery means convent as the first meaning of level, but the slang meaning is a brothel.

Hamlet is angray about Ophelia, because he thinks that Ophelia is being used as a tool. He thinks she plays active part in this sort of intrigue which is sort of surrounding him. He sees corruption everywhere. If you look at the play closely, you see that people hide behind arrases, people hide behind mirrors. Hamlet is standing in front of the mirros and talking to the mirros and there is somebody hiding behind the mirror. Mirros reflecting the identity who am I? Hamlet is a guy who is feeling unsecure at first and later on he sort of finds himself. And then he can act, he can kill.

Ophelia is used by her father and by the king Claudius. These two - Claudius and Polonius-cooperate. They know that Hamlt has a relationship with Ophelia and they sue her to find out what ails Hamlet. What are his intentions, what will he do the next moment. And Claudius is interested in this, because he is trying to secure his power. He has won the throne by unjust means  but he wants to stay in power. And he uses all the people arround him and he uses also Ophelia. And Ophelia obeys, because she is a daughter to her father and father is cooperating with Claudius. This is how she gets drwan into this. She is innocent in a way. But Hamlet sees her as a tool. Polonius is playing teh role of a patriarch. A father who puts her hands on her daughter. He uses Ophelia as a playing card in the power game. This is a power game. People are used as objects as playing cards. Ophelia is suffering from this patriarchic world. She has an overprotective sort of father Polonius who is using her. And she has an overprotective brother Laertes as well who is giving her a good piece of advice but he leaves for France. Ophelia is a female in a male world. She cannot do anything. She is sort of caught, she becomes a tool. Also Gertrude seems to be a play thing for Claudius.

Hamlet`s maddness is just a roleplay. It is protection like a shelter you know against the corruption. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark. There is spying and intrigue. In the second part of the play we see readiness of Hamlet when he has finished with his dounbts. And he starts to act in a rash way by killing Polonius. And later on taking on Claudius and installing him ina play within the play. Finding out that Claudius did the murder, he was responsible for the murder of Hamlet Senior. So his character develops throughout the play. And he becomes in this way psychologically complex. There are flat characters and rounded characters. A character that develops is a rounded character, because he becomes more and more complex in the course of the play. And this is what happens to Hamlet and this is how Shakespeare develops him. At the end you have the ordinary ending. You have the punishing of the guilty one. There is a heap of corpses on the stage. But there is also the death of the innocent ones. You have the death of innocent Ophelia. The innocents are dragged into the maelstrom of evil. Maelstrom is a nice image. The sucking water behind the ship. The tragic hero in Hamlet dies as a consequence of his action, of what he wants, of his own demand. Author and actor in his own tragedy. There is no God that is responsible for this. It is Hamlet who wants to do it that way. But again the tragedy ends with the restoration of order at the end. You can see Ophelia as the subject od many paintings. Victorians, Romantic writers and painters like to write about her and paint her. An innocent young girl. This is how she is being  represented. An innocent girl who kills herself by going into a river. This is something that became a model for some writers as well. Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the Ouse River. Lady drowning herself in the river is a motif which comes from Hamlet. Virginia Woolf drowned herself in 1944. She filled her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse.

The court is where the king is. The castle Elsinore is the court. The court is the king and his followers. In Richard II`s case Bushy, Bagot and Green as the catterpillars of the commonwealth are King`s court. The court is where the king resides. The court can travel. The court can travel from castle to castle. The king and his followers are called the court. Sir John Bushy, Sir William Bagot, Sir Henry Green. They are part of Richard's court. They are metaphorically described as caterpillars in a garden - none of them is actually called caterpillar!

NOTE: There are two definitions of allegory: 1. an extended metaphor (where the actual thing and the image correspond in more than one point), 2. a personification of an abstract idea (e.g., Justice as a blindfolded woman).

There are five acts in Hamlet. In order to see how many sceenes are there in these acts please click here.

At the end of the play:Fortinbras-Norwegian Prince- marches into the room accompanied by the English ambassadors, who announce that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Horatio says that he will tell everyone assembled the story that led to the gruesome scene now on display. Fortinbras orders for Hamlet to be carried away like a soldier.

Ophelia's representations are below:

THE END OF HAMLET

I have already been talking about the other tragedies King Lear, Macbeth. Shakespeare features a very bleak world. Very bleak world in which order seems to have disappeared. And social stability seems to have disappeared. Shakespeare is using the antique Gods in order to express his opinion that world is out of joint, order is lacking, order has been destroyed. And this is the bleak world we meet in King Lear and in Macbeth. The great tragedies were written towards the end of Shakespeare`s career. His outlook on life seems to have become much bleaker in these tragedies. His view of the world is more critical.

In King Lear Edgar says: "The worst is not, / So long as we can say, This is the worst."

If you have a tongue to pronounce this sentence, to utter it you cannot say you have arrived at the worst. This is the meaning of this sentence. But you see the bleak implication.

King Lear: "When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools."

The world as a great stage of fools. This is how Shakespeare came to think about his world. Very pessimistic, very bleak all in all. But we are moving in the realm of the tragedies and we come now to Shakespeare's comedies. Above the comedies are listed.

He writes comedies from the eraly 1590s and he also writes comedies till the end of his career.

His bleakest comedy is called Winster's Tale (1610-11). The title already alludes to the bleakness of that play. But it is a comedy that comes very close to the tragedy. It does not have a tragic ending.

But he comes very close to it. The eraly comedies, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew

are not amongst his best. Shakespeare is known especially for his so-called festive comedies. And to the festive comedies belong especially A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night and As You Like It.

THE STRUCTURE:

In the eraly 90s Shakespeare picked up the plot structure of the classical new comedy. And this plot

structure usually involved love errors which is occurs in the lover's union and reconciliation between parents and children. You have this motif of disharmony between parents and children already in Romeo And Juliet in the eraly tragedy. But you also have this in the comedies like in A Midsummer Night`s Dream. There is this conflict between Hermia and her father. Her father demands that she marries Demetrius, but she lovey Lysander. Shakespeare also develops as a comedy writer. The more philosophical vision is already to be seen in A Midsummer Night's Dream from 1594-95. Here Shakespeare contrasts the urban civilisation Athens with unpredictable nature, the nature of forest which also stands for a dreamlike reality. In Shakespeare's festive comedies we have extensive wooing. Wooing means a guy is beging for the favour of a girl. He wants her hand in marriage. The concept of love that Shakespeare bases his comedies on is the petrarchan, the romantic concept. Which means the early phase of the relationship is being portrayed which the lover seeks the favour of his beloved one. That is the form which Shakespeare concentrates on. The foucus is not on sexuality. By the way we could also see a focus on sexuality. Because sexuality was the big theme of the Classical Greek Comedy. If you take Ralph Roister Doister, for example. You have still sense that sexuality is a form of love that is being concentrated on in this play. But here in Shakespeare we have petrarchan love we have the romantic concept of love.

A Midsumemr Night's Dream is one of his popular festive comedies. By the way the comedies are called festives. Because more often they begin and end with a feast.

In this play Theseus is preparing to marry Hyppolita,the queen of Amazons, whom he has won in battle. Put it that way, because that brings the idea of disharmony from the very start. If you have to win your wife in battle, can you be proud of this? She should surrender voluntarily. But he wins her in battle and she is the queen of Amazons. The Amazons are full of female warriors and he defeats her and wins her. This is an ancient myth, classical Greek myth which Shakespeare calls on. Two couples in this comedy have their wires crossed. Helena- Demetrius that is the first couple and Hermia- Lysander that is teh second couple. Egeus the father of Hermia wants her to marry Demetrius. For political reasons he has picked Demetrius for her. But Demetrius is already engaged to Hermia and Hermia loves Lysander. Above in the powerpoint it is written that Demetrius is engaged to Helena. It is wrong. Father Egeus engages Demetrius to Hermia in front of  Duke Theseus.This is the constellation of lovers, constellation of teh characters at the beginning. From the start you have this motif of disorder which disturbs cosmic harmony. That is the same if you compare this with tragedies. Something rotten in the state of Denmark. And here Theseus has won Hyppolita in battle. And in Burgtheatre production you have a very angry Hyppolita you know. You feel the tension between teh couples. But here also Hermia also not obeying the wishes of her father, rejecting Demetrius. There is disturbance of cosmis harmony at the beginning so the lovers decide to flee into the forest. Lysander and Hermia flee to the forest and Demetrius and Helena are following them. We have the change of civil society of Athens the court of Theseus to the forest. The green world, Shakespeare's green world. The green world stands for many things. It stands for chaos and disorder. Because the lovers get their wires even more crossed also by the manuplation of Puck. Puck is a fairy in the service of Oberon. The forest is the world of Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies. Oberon and Titania have a marriage row over a little Indian prince. Titanis has been given as a present a little Indian boy, a little Indian prince who serves her and Oberon gets jelous. There are some sexual overtones here and that is important. And the greenworld also stands forn imagination. For the imaginary what could happen, for magic. All in all it is a counter world to the civil world of society. Chaos and disorder also characterise the fairy world, which in this way mirros what happens in the human world and in civil society. Complications set in because Bottom and his friends use the forest for rehersing their play Pyramus and Thisbe which later on becomes a play within the play. Another play within the play but this time in the genre of comedy. So chaos and disorder also govern the fairy world. Puck creates even greater chaos by translating of Bottom. Bottom is teh main man of the craftsmen of the artisans who are rehersing Pyramus and Thisbe. He translates Bottom by transforming his head into an ass`s head. When one of his friends sees him he says: Bottom thou art translated.  Thous art translated in the sense of you are badly this figure transformed. Because Puck hassort of put his love potion into the eyes of Titania she falls in love with Bottom. Because she falls in love with the first guy when she opens her eyes. And the first guy she sees is the translated Bottom. You have the fairy Queen Titania stroking Bottom ass`s head and he is having a good time with her. By the way this is full of sexual allusions. Because donkeys, asses are supposed to be virile sort of animals. So Shakespeare is playing with the idea of the sexuality here. Sexual attraction is one of the attractions Titania falls victim to. In the forest, in the green world of Shakespeare, by the way the green world or green spots in literature is a standing motif which you not find only in drama or in Shakespeare, but also in the historical novel of Walter Scott.

There are green spots before the districst or boundaries of Edinburgh for example. And in these green spots you find gypsies and lovers go there for holding hand. The green spots are always related to lawlessness, disorder. They are a threat to the society. And they are also related to sexuality. And when you come to think about what happens in Midsummer Night's Dream, everybody is chasing everybody. They get their wires crossed and fall victim to their sexual desires. Rationality is excluded, and so on and so on. So green spots are related to in literature in general also in novel related to lowlessness, sexuality. We have the same also in American Literature. If you take Nathaniel  Hawthrone's The Scarlet Letter, the forest of young Goodman Brown, the forest, nature is always related to lawlessness, lack of order, lack of rationality and strong sexuality.

NOTE: In the Burgtheater representation of Midsummer Night's Dream, actors are naked and there are pebbles in the forest falling down on the stage. The actors can hardly move and pebbles represent the disorder, the broken harmony in the forest. There are 5 acts in Midsummer Night's Dream. In the fifth act there are two sceenes. you may clik here.

There are 5 acts in As You Like it and in the fifth act there are 4 sceenes. Clik here.

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