Midsummer: Themes KS4/5

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In these lessons, students will engage with the themes and ideas at the heart of the text, including disorder, the supernatural and metamorphosis. Tasks include: finding examples of Shakespeare's blurring of illusion with reality in the play; exploring Bottom's metamorphosis and other examples from Shakespeare and his sources; and a list of practice exam questions with an emphasis on themes and motifs.

In order to benefit fully from these lesson plans, we recommend you use them in the following order:

If you would like to teach the play in greater detail, use these advanced KS4/5 Lesson Plans. If students are new to the play, we suggest you start with the introductory KS3 Lesson Plans

These lesson plans are available in the Downloads section at the bottom of this page. To download resources, you must be logged in. Sign up for free to access this and other exclusive featuresActivities mentioned in these resources are available in a separate downloadable 'Student Booklet', also at the bottom of this page. The 'Teachers' Guide' download explains how best to use Teach Shakespeare and also contains a bibliography and appendices referencing the resources used throughout.

Key Questions for Students:

Can I identify why the themes of marriage, order and society are important, and pick out examples from throughout the text?

Can I explain the importance of these examples by placing them in the context of the play as a whole?

Key words: arranged marriage, betrothal, dowry, elopement, love, marriage, order, society, theme

 

Prologue: Opening Discussion

Show students ‘romantic’ images from different productions of the play, using the Romance PowerPoint (available in the Downloads section at the bottom of this page). As a fun activity, students should look for a suitably romantic quotation from the play that would make a good caption for at least one of the images. Take feedback and encourage students to think about the different ideas to which marriage is linked. This is not only (and not always) love, but also money and property, the social order, male power, succession and inheritance. 

 

 

Enter the Players: Group Tasks

1) Hippolyta’s perspective

Show students the following information, or assign students a research task to discover this information for themselves:

Hippolyta is described in the dramatis personae as ‘Queen of the Amazons, betrothed to Theseus’. In William Painter’s ‘Novel of the Amazons’ (1575), which we know Shakespeare used as a source, he says that the Amazons ‘were most excellent warriors’, but that they murdered certain of their husbands’. There is more than one version of the story of Theseus and Hippolyta. But most Elizabethans knew that Theseus had lured Hippolyta to his ship, kidnapped her, and carried her away to Athens. Some versions of the story say Theseus raped her and forced her to marry him. The kidnapping of Hippolyta is said to have sparked the great battle between the Amazons and the Athenians, the ultimate battle between the sexes. As the queen of a country ruled by women, Hippolyta may be surprised at the lack of power and status women have in Athens.

Perhaps using a role play activity (e.g. hotseating, to help generate ideas for this task), students could write one or more diary entries. They should be from Hippolyta’s perspective about Athenian attitudes to love/marriage, and her thoughts and feelings about her own nuptials.

2) Over to you: Act 1 Scene 1

Assign to groups the task of reading and preparing a performance of Act 1 Scene 1. As students rehearse and watch the scene, they should discuss the following questions and make detailed notes in the Student Booklet:

  1. What do we learn about the relationship between Hermia and Lysander, and the forthcoming marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta in this scene?
  2. Can you find any valid reasons for Egeus insisting that Hermia marries Demetrius? Do you think Theseus should have granted Hermia’s request? Does he have any choice in his judgement when he is there to uphold the law?
  3. To what extent are different attitudes towards love and marriage represented in this scene?
  4. How do you think a Shakespearean audience might react to this scene compared to a modern audience and, in particular, to the following moments:
    • Egeus deciding who his daughter’s husband should be?
    • Hermia disobeying her father?
    • Theseus’ response?

 

Students might like to use the Shakespeare’s World contextual information in the Student Booklet to support them with these questions, in particular question 3:

Egeus had decided Demetrius would be Hermia’s husband. This means Lysander wooed Hermia without her father’s consent, and most of the original audience would think he behaved badly. They would understand Egeus’ complaint that Hermia must marry the man he chooses for her. This was the normal custom. Most of the audience would think Hermia was wrong for disobeying her father by wanting to marry Lysander. Theseus agrees that Hermia must obey her father. However, by Elizabethan standards, Egeus’ behaviour is rash and cruel towards his daughter. And Theseus’ threat against her life if she disobeys her father goes beyond what would have seemed reasonable in Shakespeare’s day.

 

3) Tracking the theme

Students could be divided into five groups. Each group should take one Act from the play to read through carefully looking for evidence of this theme, before reporting back. Students could also prepare a sheet of evidence on the relevant page of the Student Booklet. Students should aim to keep quotations short (under 10 words), and write a brief commentary about how their quotation links to the overall theme. 

 

Exeunt: Closing Questions for Students

Why are marriage, order and society important themes in the play?

How would I describe the development of these themes throughout the play?

How do these themes link to the other major themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I have studied?

 

Suggested plenary activity…

Everyone in the class picks out three key moments that are particularly crucial when thinking about the themes of marriage, order and society. Compare findings.

 

Asides: Further Resources

  • In Elizabethan England, fathers normally chose their daughter’s husband. Age and social status were the main reasons for their choice. The bride’s father and the groom would discuss the terms of a marriage. Usually, a father paid a dowry to the groom to help support his daughter’s living costs. In the play, these families are rich and powerful, and the right marriage would help both families. 

 

  • Students could write an entry in Egeus’s diary explaining why he thinks he is in the right to choose his daughter’s husband. Alternatively, they could write Theseus’s notes on the meeting, explaining why he told Hermia she must obey her father or suffer the consequences.

 

  • Usually, before people got married in Shakespeare’s time they were betrothed to one another first. This happened after any courtship and marital negotiations between the groom and the bride’s father were finished. It was far more serious than an engagement is today. A betrothal was a way to show the community that a couple would marry. While not every couple had a betrothal ceremony, it was an important occasion. People were encouraged to have one. The man and woman would swear before God, their family and friends that they would marry. Many people had a formal ceremony in a church with a priest, much like a wedding. Some couples even used a lawyer to draw up an actual contract. 

 

Epilogue: Teacher's Note

Additional materials about the theme of love can be found within the Key Stage 3 resources.

Key Questions for Students:

Can I identify why the themes of illusion and reality are important and pick out examples from throughout the text?

Can I explain the importance of these examples by placing them in the context of the play as a whole?

Key words: appearance, artifice, deception, dream, enchantment, illusion, magic, reality, supernatural, theatre, theme

 

Prologue: Opening Discussion

Students should come up with three examples of when someone in the play ‘wakes up’ from sleep or enchantment. Take feedback and build a mindmap on the board that students could copy into the Student Booklet. A homework task could be to add textual references.

 

Enter the Players: Group Tasks

1) ‘A most rare vision’

Students should analyse and annotate the extracts in the Student Booklet that show characters ‘coming round’. This could be an awakening of some sort, whether from an enchantment or from sleep and dreams (another kind of unreality). Students should look for and make notes about the kind of language the characters use in these circumstances, and about what Shakespeare seems to be saying about the world of illusion and the world of reality.

 

 

2) Interpreting and staging key scenes

Assign to groups the task of choosing and then staging a scene where they feel these themes are crucially important, such as the scene involving Bottom and Titania or the Mechanicals’ rehearsals. Afterwards, reflect as a group and as a whole class on how well the various performances explored the themes of illusion and reality, and how this was achieved.

 

3) Tracking the theme

Students could be divided into five groups. Each group should take one Act from the play to read through carefully looking for evidence of this theme, before reporting back. Students could also prepare a sheet of evidence on the relevant page of the Student Booklet. Students should aim to keep quotations short (under 10 words), and write a brief commentary about how their quotation links to the overall theme. 

 

Exeunt: Closing Questions for Students

Why are illusion and reality important themes in the play?

How would I describe the development of these themes throughout the play?

How do these themes link to the other major themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, e.g. love?

 

Suggested plenary activity…

Everyone in the class picks out three key moments that they think are particularly important to bear in mind when thinking about the themes of illusion and reality. Compare findings.

 

Aside: Further Resource

  • Students could reflect on how Shakespeare’s depiction of the world of magic and the supernatural in this play compares with other plays, e.g. Macbeth, The Tempest?

 

Epilogue: Teacher's Note

Additional ideas about exploring the concepts of illusion and reality - including some rehearsal room approaches to try out - can be found within the Key Stage 3 resources.

Key Questions for Students:

Can I identify why the themes of sense and madness are important, and pick out examples from throughout the text?

Can I explain the importance of these examples by placing them in the context of the play as a whole?

Key words: clown, folly, foolery, imagination, love, madness, sense, theme, vision

 

Prologue: Opening Discussion

Display the following quotations/images connected with the themes of sense and madness (they are also featured in the Student Booklet).

What is the connection?

  • “what fools these mortals be” quotation (Puck)
  • picture of Bottom wearing ass’s head
  • image of the full moon
  • “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet/Are of imagination all compact” quotation (Theseus)
  • an image of the quarrelling lovers

Draw out from students’ feedback some of the themes and ideas to help them connect the clues. 

 

 

Enter the Players: Group Tasks

1) Lovefools?

Ask students to consider the following idiomatic phrases about love:

  • falling in love
  • crazy about or mad about
  • head over heels

Can they think of any more examples? Ask students to discuss in pairs or threes what these phrases suggest about the feeling of being in love (i.e. strong feelings, perhaps obsessive, irrational). Ask students to choose five quotations for the Student Booklet that show us that characters have passionate feelings of attraction and love. They should rate them for strength of feeling (1= in love, 2 = madly in love, 3 = dangerously in love), and write a short explanation to justify their claim.

Demonstrate to students that they should adopt a more formal tone in their critical writing about the quotations. Emphasise that they should think of less colloquialisms and more formal ways of describing characters’ feelings and the intensity, i.e. suitable words include ‘passionate’, ‘obsessive’, ‘intense’, ‘amorous’, ‘romantic’. Encourage students to use adjectives to intensify the power of their choices of nouns, and adverbs to intensify the power of their choices of verbs, e.g. ‘passionate attachment’,  ‘helplessly attracted’.

 

2) Tracking the theme

Students could be divided into five groups. Each group should take one Act from the play to read through carefully looking for evidence of this theme, before reporting back. Students could also prepare a sheet of evidence on the relevant page of the Student Booklet. Students should aim to keep quotations short (under 10 words), and write a brief commentary about how their quotation links to the overall theme. 

 

Exeunt: Closing Questions for Students

Why are sense and madness important themes in the play? How would I describe the development of these themes throughout the play?

How do these themes link to the other major themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, e.g. love, illusion etc.?

 

Suggested plenary activity…

Everyone in the class picks out three key moments that they think are particularly important to bear in mind when thinking about the themes of sense and madness. Compare findings.

 

Aside: Further Resource

  • Students could reflect on the themes of sense and madness in this play compared with other plays, e.g. Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, Hamlet, the idea of the lovefool in Romeo and Juliet.

 

Epilogue: Teacher's Note

For more on this theme, look for activities in the sections about Characters and Key Stage 3 Themes.

Key Questions for Students:

Can I identify why the themes of identity and change are important and pick out examples from throughout the text?

Can I explain the importance of these examples by placing them in the context of the play as a whole?

Key words: change, character, conflict, development, identity, metamorphosis, resolution, stable/unstable, theme, transformation

 

Prologue: Opening Discussion

Divide students up into four groups: older members of the court; younger members of the court; fairies; Mechanicals. Students should list - using simple flow diagrams - the different kinds of change that happen to the characters in the group they have been assigned. Include supernatural changes and also other kinds of change, e.g. change of heart, change of fortune, change of status, etc.

 

Enter the Players: Group Tasks

1) Metamorphosis

The class could create a word web around this word. You should aim to ensure the following areas are covered:

  • the word’s meaning
  • etymological roots and other related words
  • metamorphosis as a natural phenomenon
  • more magical/supernatural kinds of metamorphosis
  • Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’
  • other literary/cultural connections they know

Then ask students to think aloud about some different ways in which this idea could be connected to the play in question, and keep a record of these ideas.

 

 

2) Interpreting and staging key scenes

Assign to groups the task of choosing and then staging one scene where they feel the themes of identity and change are crucially important, e.g. scenes where Puck or Oberon perform magic. Afterwards, reflect as a group and as a whole class on how well the various performances explored these themes, and how this was achieved.

 

3) Tracking the theme

Students could be divided into five groups. Each group should take one Act from the play to read through carefully looking for evidence of this theme, before reporting back. Students could also prepare a sheet of evidence on the relevant page of the Student Booklet. Students should aim to keep quotations short (under 10 words), and write a brief commentary about how their quotation links to the overall theme. 

 

Exeunt: Closing Questions for Students

Why are identity and transformation important themes in the play?

How would I describe the development of these themes throughout the play?

How do these themes link to the other major themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, e.g. love, magic?

 

Suggested plenary activity…

Students write down their ideas in response to some quickfire prompts, e.g. a change for the better, a change for the worse, a change that is reversed, a change that is not reversed, a supernatural change. Take some feedback to get a sense of the breadth of ideas generated in relation to this play.

 

Aside: Further Resource

  • In one of the tales from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ (which is an important source for this play), the god Apollo gives King Midas a pair of ass’s ears for angering him. Students could find out more of the details of this particular myth, and research examples of artworks in which this and other metamorphoses are depicted.

 

Epilogue: Teacher's Note

There is more information about the classical idea of metamorphosis in the Historical and Social Context Key Stage 4.

Key Questions for Students:

Can I write about the themes of the play in a connected and coherent way?

Can I demonstrate confidence in my handling of abstract ideas, but continue to show that my analysis is firmly grounded in the text?

Key words: abstract, analysis, coherent, issues, mood, symbolism, themes

 

Prologue: Opening Discussion

Students could be given an item and have a minute to prepare an explanation of how it relates to the play. The items can be chosen at random (e.g. a ball, pencil, a coat), as the idea of this activity is that it is a fun, thinking-skills warm up to the activity that follows.

 

Enter the Players: Group Tasks

1) Museum cabinet

Ask the class to imagine they have been asked to create a display about A Midsummer Night’s Dream for a new Shakespeare museum. They can only have five items for their display. Students should choose five items that they think convey the essence of the play, i.e. not just the plot but the play’s overall mood, ideas and issues evoked. Students could be given a list to choose from, e.g. donkey’s ears, fairy crowns and wings, juice from a magical flower, theatrical costumes. They are also welcome to add others. Their items do not even need to be mentioned in the play; students simply need to be able to justify their reasons convincingly. As an extension task, students could write captions for the museum with a word limit of 100 words per item.

 

 

2) Analysing themes in a passage

Choose an extract from the play (a very short scene or passage of under a hundred lines from a scene) and model:

  • rereading and refamiliarising
  • identifying the key ideas and themes that arise from close analysis
  • making connections between these ideas and themes (e.g. the relationship between the changeling, Titania and Oberon), and other ideas about change, love and conflict in the play (e.g. the dispute about who Hermia should marry)

 

Exeunt: Closing Questions for Students

What are the play’s key ideas, symbols and themes? Why?

How are these ideas connected in the text?

 

Suggested plenary activity…

As a revision exercise, students could open their play text at random and, after a few moments’ preparation, they should:

  • comment on what the scene is about
  • place it in context
  • draw out some of the themes and ideas that arise from it.

Listen to a few examples.

 

Aside: Further Resource

  • Students could use the idea of the ‘wall’ as a graphic organiser for some of their ideas in their Revision Folio. It could also be used as the inspiration for an ideas wall or character/status diagram about the play for a classroom display, with different ideas written on separate bricks. 

 

Epilogue: Teacher's Note

The following learning sequence also supports students in making connections across a substantial text - the skill of cross-referencing.

Key Questions for Students:

Can I make cross-references, moving backwards and forwards within the text in order to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the whole play?

Can I put this reading skill into practice in my own essay planning and drafting?

Key words: cross-references, essay, plan, success criteria, theme

 

Prologue: Opening Discussion

Encourage students to play a simple game that involves moving speedily around the text. Ask students (in pairs) to find:

  • The fifth word said by Puck in Act 3 Scene 2, or
  • Theseus’ first line in Act 4 Scene 1 , or
  • an animal mentioned in Act 2 Scene 2, or
  • an adjective in Act 1 Scene 2.

Give students a fixed amount of time (e.g. 3 minutes) to come up with as many search terms and to carry out as many successful searches as they can!

 

Enter the Players: Group Tasks

1) Making connections

You could now develop the activity from the starter into an activity about making connections across the text. Show students on the whiteboard and also in the Student Booklet Helena’s line from Act 1 Scene 1: ‘The more I love, the more he hateth me’. Then:

  • Show students and read with them a brief extract from Act 2 Scene 1 lines 199-212
  • Within this text, model for students finding a short quotation where Demetrius makes it clear to Helena that he does not love her
  • Then model a clear way to demonstrate the link between the two references

Now give students more references to find from different places in the play, e.g.

  • two or more places in the text where Titania and Oberon quarrel
  • two or more places in the text where Peter Quince talks to his actors about performing in front of the Duke
  • two or more places in the text where Puck performs magic

 

 

2) Task bank: themes and ideas

The following tasks can be used in the modelling of planning and drafting written tasks, as well as for students’ more independently produced work for assessment:

  1. ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that celebrates the power of the imagination.’ Discuss.
  2. What do you think Shakespeare is saying in A Midsummer Night’s Dream about conflicts and how to resolve them peacefully?
  3. Write about what the ‘wood’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents.

 

Exeunt: Closing Questions for Students

How do I annotate my text to show cross-references between different parts of the text?

Why is this an important skill when writing about a substantial text?

 

Suggested plenary activity…

Students could prepare a plan in timed conditions for one of the tasks in ‘Task bank: themes and ideas’.  

 

Aside: Further Resource

  • The tasks in the question banks can be used as the basis for devising further tasks to suit the needs of your own class, curriculum and syllabus.

 

Epilogue: Teacher's Note

As homework/revision, students could attempt one or more of the writing tasks from the task bank. 

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