Shakespeare Colloquium: Shakespeare's Metadrama
Professor Richard Horwich
New York University
Fall 2007
Montrose- drive to a festive conclusion subjects women to male control
replace a corrupt society with a new one
marriage alternaives: Amazons, nuns, fairy camp, sisterhood
childhood friends, then boys got in the way
have to overcome fathers in the comedies
Puck mistaken? or on pupose?
marriage itself an obsstacle -> Theseus/Hippolyta
believed mothers did not contribute genetic material (body heat determined sex)
Lysander/Demetrius pretty close together
Hermia makes a case for rational behind love
Helena made into an animal by her dotage/desperation
love as OCD
I.ii: an actor playing an actor imitating another actor's portrayal of a character
play within a play: what is it doing there? undercuts the danger behind losing yourself, a mirror of what could have happened in the woods, forests/woods highly dangerous (both physically and morally), Hermia insists love is heroic and romantic but Pyramus and Thisbe go "but wait!", "this is th silliest stuff that ere I heard" remarks on the story of the lovers
the couples at the end: Hermia/Lysander (actually? in love), Demetrius/Helena (bewitched), Theseus/Hippolyta (tragic ending) = three degrees of potential happiness
"this green plot": pretending a bare stage is a green plot pretending to be a bare stage
allegorical elements: moon and wall
an apology for limited stage craft? or a challenge?
"no bottom to it": bottom is adapted to the comedic world
dislocations in the social relations in the real world, natural relations in the fairy world
almost everythign is "concord from discord"
comedies have scapegoats, tragedies have tragic heros
Theseus puts more stock in the play than the lovers and vice-versa
suspicion of eloquence throughout Shakespeare
Theseus transitions from governor o lover when he overthrows Egeus' wishes
"a good play needs no excuse," setting up thr epilogue as a wink or a joke
wakes us up, brings out the telescope one more time
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