8-3Pyramus&Thisbe

What is the History of A //Midsummer Night’s Dream// and “Pyramus and Thisbe”?
//Answer prepared by Meredith J// //A Midsummer Night’s Dream // was inspired mostly by Shakespeare’s own imagination with some help from Chaucer and Ovid’s works. This play was written in 1594-96 according to the Royal Shakespeare Company. Supposedly, the play was written for a wealthy family’s wedding, but no one is exactly sure whose wedding this was. Saint John the Baptist was celebrated on Midsummer Day. It is said that fairies and witches came out and celebrated this event on Midsummer night. The dream of a Midsummer’s night is a dream about fairies and unusual things. In //A Midsummer Night’s Dream//, the people who get enchanted believe they had dreamed all of the weird things that had happened to them.

Some ideas and characters for //A Midsummer Night’s Dream// were from old myths and other authors’ books. The character Bottom originated from the play //The Golden Ass//. This story was about a man who wanted love very much and enjoyed using magic and spells. He initially tried to turn himself into a bird, but instead he turned into a donkey. He was mocked and punished and then was turned back into a human. Much like this man, Bottom thinks that he can play all of the parts in the play, Pyramus and Thisbe. He was turned into a donkey as well. From Shakespeare online, Amanda Mabillard tells us that we first see the characters Theseus and Hippolyta in Geoffrey Chaucer’s work, //The Canterbury Tales.// In Chaucer’s //The Knights Tale,// we meet Theseus, Duke of Athens and Ypolita, the Queen of the Amazons. They reappear in the story of //A Midsummer Night’s Dream//. Pyramus and Thisbe is the play that the rude mechanicals perform for the King and Queen at their wedding. This plot originated from Ovid. Ovid was a Roman poet who often wrote about love. Unlike the silly performance that the Rude Mechanicals portray Pyramus and Thisbe to be, Ovid’s Poem is very serious and not funny at all. Shakespeare has taken this poem and turned the seriousness of it funny for the enjoyment of the play. A similar play to Pyramus and Thisbe is Romeo and Juliet. In the tragic end of Pyramus and Thisbe, Pyramus concludes that Thisbe has been killed; therefore he cannot live without her and kills himself. When Thisbe sees her loved one dead, she kills herself as well much like the story of Romeo and Juliet. Although Shakespeare had many sources for these stories, many of them were from his own imagination. Mabillard, Amanda. “Sources: A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Shakespeare Online. 2000.  [|http://www.shakespeare-online.com]  (17/April/2009)
 * Works Cited **

White, Anne. //Will Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre//. New York: Random House Inc., 1955. Print. media type="youtube" key="3i8unA3hBdU" height="344" width="425" Cartoon version of Puck's last lines of the play