Take-Home Written Response

Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Each response is worth FIVE (5) points for a total of 50 points.

1. Define Tragedy and Comedy by explaining the differences between the two (keeping in
mind that tragedy does not mean simply a play that is sad, and a comedy does not mean
simply a play that is funny)

2. In Act 2, scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet (the “balcony scene”), Romeo overhears Juliet’s
soliloquy below on the arbitrary nature of names. What is Juliet saying about the nature
of words and names? For instance, what does she mean when she claims, “a rose/By any
other word would smell as sweet?” and how does it relate to her love for Romeo?

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name,
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
…
’Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name
45 Belonging to a man.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
50 Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And, for thy name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself (2.2 41 – 53).

3. The Nurse and Mercutio are sort-of “supporting actors” in Romeo and Juliet. They both
exhibit outrageous personalities, and, thus, they have a propensity to steal scenes with
their perverse and pornographic minds. We want to like them—in fact, we laugh at their
behavior despite ourselves. But they are ultimately bad news. Choose one of the
characters (the Nurse or Mercutio) and explain how he or she ultimately betrays Romeo
or Juliet.

4. Act 3 scene 1 is the climax of Romeo and Juliet. Fresh from his marriage to Juliet,
Romeo tries to be a peacemaker in a ridiculous fight between Mercutio and Tybalt. As we
 discussed in class, Romeo is, in many ways, portraying the most important teachings of
Christ in the gospels – love thy enemy, and turn the other check. He is at his best in this
moment: he is faithful to Juliet’s love for him, the same faith she wants him to have in
himself. However, after Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo’s attitude shifts. Choose either a or
b below in response concerning Act 3, scene 1.

a. How do you feel about Romeo’s response when his failure to fight with Mercutio
leads to Mercutio being mortally wounded when he cries out:

My reputation stained
With Tybalt’s slander—Tybalt, that an hour
Hath been my cousin! O sweet Juliet,
Thy beauty hath made me effeminate
120 And in my temper softened valor’s steel (3.1. 117 – 120).

b. After he kills Mercutio, and everyone tells him he must flee Verona, Romeo cries out:

O, I am Fortune’s fool! (143).

What does Romeo mean by the exclamation? And do you agree with him? Is he
purely a victim of fate?
5. Romeo and Juliet opens with a Prologue that emphasizes fate (“star-crossed lovers”). The
whole play seems to emphasize that Romeo and Juliet are driven toward some inevitable
doom as if their lives are fixed by the stars, i.e., the notion that everyone is controlled by
a cosmic fate out of their hands. However, as we have discussed, Shakespeare never
exhibits a belief in some kind of cosmic fate or predestination. Dispense with the notion
of some kind of cosmic fate and explain in what ways Romeo and Juliet’s lives are very
much doomed by very human things.

6. When Romeo and Juliet ends, the Prince has the bodies of Romeo and Juliet laid out for
all members of the Montague and Capulet family to view in shame. The Friar explains
how both Romeo and Juliet came to their suicidal end. Suddenly, Lord Montague and
Lord Capulet proclaim peace and love between their families (as if centuries of irrational
hatred and animosity simply melt away). Further, they promise to erect a statue made of
gold in honor of Romeo and Juliet. Although many tragedies end with a sense of potential
hope rising from the ashes of absolute tragedy, how do you feel about this ending? How
do you think Shakespeare wants us to feel about this ending? Keep in mind what horribly
bloodthirsty and hideous people these parents were—and keep in mind the evident
connotations behind erecting statues made of gold.

7. Near the beginning of Act V of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hippolyta has told Duke
Theseus the wild story the four lovers (Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, Lysander)
experienced in the magic forest. Theseus dismisses the story by delivering a famous
 speech below in which he claims that lovers, poets, and lunatics are all the same: victims
of too much imagination. What do you think Thesus is saying about the imagination?
Keep in mind that Shakespeare is himself, of course, a “poet.” Do you think that
Shakespeare agrees with Thesus’s assessment that artists/poets are lunatics? Do you
agree? Also keep in mind that, after the speech below, Hippolyta defends the lovers’
stories—and Theseus relents and allows Hermia and Helena to marry whom they please,
despite Athenian law.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
5 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:
10 That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to
heaven,
15 And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination
20 That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy.
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

8. What do you think that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is saying about the relationship
between love and the imagination? or about the relationship between dreams and reality?

9. Bottom, the Weaver is one of Shakespeare’s greatest creations up until this point in his
career. (He is a forebear of the great comic characters of Falstaff, Rosalind, etc.).
Audiences to this day love the character, Bottom—and Shakespeare evidently intended
him to be greatly entertaining. In my own experience attending many performances of
plays in colleges and universities, I’ve never seen more laughter produced by anything
than when Bottom is performed. Provide a character sketch of Bottom, explaining why
you think he is such a fun and attractive character, despite his evident low (and lowbrow)
leanings. Perhaps consider his attitude throughout the play. Perhaps consider how, no
matter what crazy and fantastic things happen to him—his head turned into a donkey’s
head; the luscious Queen of the fairies falling madly in love with him and being doted as
royalty by all her fairy attendants, only to return to being simply Bottom, the Weaver—he
always continues being simply who he is, good old, bully Bottom, the Weaver.
10. In both Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare emphasizes
that what it means to be human is essentially performative. In other words, what we call a
“self,” an “identity,” and the things we call “love” and “hate,” are the products of
language and the ways in which we use language in imaginative ways to perform our
roles in life (and to “weave” our dreams). In other words, the dominant metaphor in
Shakespeare’s plays is: “life is a stage, and we are actors on it.” Or, sometimes, “life is
but a dream.” Do you agree, disagree, or a little bit of both? Why?