Take a director's view of 2 key scenes in a Midsummer Night's Dream. Choose a character and 2 key scenes in which they appear.

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Shakespeare Essay

Option 2:

Take a director’s view of 2 key scenes in a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Choose a character and 2 key scenes in which they appear.

  • Describe the character and why their part is important within the play.
  • Focus on your first scene. Give instructions to your actor on how to perform their part.
  • Remember to make close reference to the text using quotations to demonstrate:
  1. Understanding of Shakespeare’s language
  2. The emotion or motivation of the character
  3. The feeling/response you want from the audience.

  • Repeat for other scene.

In this essay, I am going to focus on Helena in Act 1 Scene 1 and Act 3 Scene 2. I decided to answer this question based on Helena because I believe that her role in the play is very important as it completes a love circle, and can add humour to the play. I will also try to show how I would like Helena to play her part. It would still be in the Shakespearean language, but would appeal to a modern day audience. This way, all of the magic of the 1595 comedy would still be there, but the modern English of today will enjoy it as much as anybody back then.

To do this, I can use Shakespeare’s language to tell Helena’s actress how to use the language effectively, and using the language to show emotion and genuine feeling. But, most of all, I would like the audience to be entertained.

When Helena first appears in the middle of Act 1 Scene 1, she seems to be quite touchy, and you can immediately know that she loves Demetrius from this quote:

“Call you me fair? That fair again unsay!

Demetrius loves you fair. O happy fair!”

Here, Helena says that Hermia is pretty but that she is not, so in a way she is jealous of Hermia’s looks. She is also jealous of Demetrius loving Hermia, but not herself, so straightaway you have the sense of jealousy about Helena. In this case, I would like he to say her piece loudly, and to have a frowning facial expression, and use large hand movements, as if she is in despair. This should entertain the audience, and make them laugh a bit at her dizzy character image. Her appearance to add to the “dizziness” should be long curly but messy hair, dirty clothes, as if she doesn’t bother about her image. When Helena says: “O happy fair!” She should flick her hair back as if she is exasperated, to really finish off the sentence.  In this sentence, the word ‘fair’ is used a lot. I think this was put in by Shakespeare to make Helena seem more clumsy, and not have any other words to say, other than ‘fair’. She probably would have started to use this word, then have to keep using it to prove her point.

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Another key moment in Act 1 Scene 1 that Helena appears in is the same part as the previous quote. In this part, Helena is saying exactly why Demetrius loves Hermia, and not her and she says how she wants more than anything to be Hermia so that Demetrius would love her. For this part:

Your eyes are lode-stars, and your tongue’s sweet air more tuneable

than lark to shepherd’s ear, when wheat is green,

when hawthorn buds appear.”

At this point, I would like Helena to calm down a little, lower the pitch of her ...

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