I thought it was very interesting that Shakespeare chose to end the play not with the weddings of the characters, but with a comically awful play within the play. While I was reading I thought that the play would end after Act IV when all the love stories were happily resolved, but instead it kept going into Act V. According to the article on A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, the Pyramus and Thisbe story was originally written by Ovid, although this version was significantly changed to more closely resemble Romeo and Juliet. So it appears that Shakespeare was purposefully poking fun at one of his own plays, or perhaps commenting on how plays should and should not be performed. It's also interesting to see the characters who have just had such funny and complicated problems with their own love lives react to a love story played out in front of them. The parallels between Pyramus and Thisbe's ridiculous exclamations of love and Lysander and Demetrius's passionate flattery of Helena makes the latter seem all the more comical and insincere.Sunday, September 13, 2015
The Play Within the Play
I thought it was very interesting that Shakespeare chose to end the play not with the weddings of the characters, but with a comically awful play within the play. While I was reading I thought that the play would end after Act IV when all the love stories were happily resolved, but instead it kept going into Act V. According to the article on A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, the Pyramus and Thisbe story was originally written by Ovid, although this version was significantly changed to more closely resemble Romeo and Juliet. So it appears that Shakespeare was purposefully poking fun at one of his own plays, or perhaps commenting on how plays should and should not be performed. It's also interesting to see the characters who have just had such funny and complicated problems with their own love lives react to a love story played out in front of them. The parallels between Pyramus and Thisbe's ridiculous exclamations of love and Lysander and Demetrius's passionate flattery of Helena makes the latter seem all the more comical and insincere.
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I always thought Romeo and Juliet were based off of Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe so when Shakespeare decided to put the play within his play I thought is he was acknowledging that Romeo and Juliet didn't come out of thin air but was drawing from the ancient cultures of the Greeks and Romans like other aspects of that time period.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting theory. If that's true though, it seems like Shakespeare might have been mocking the original Pyramus and Thisbe more than just giving Ovid credit.
DeleteI like that you talked about Shakespeare’s intent behind putting a play within a play. I wondered that too, as I read it. I think both of the reasons that you cited could be correct. I think the biggest result for me was just the humor that developed as a result of the last act. I think that if Act 5 had been first, it would not have been funny, because it was too ridiculous, but when it was the last thing you read, I felt like I was "warmed up" enough that I just thought it was absolutely hilarious.
ReplyDeleteI like that you talked about Shakespeare’s intent behind putting a play within a play. I wondered that too, as I read it. I think both of the reasons that you cited could be correct. I think the biggest result for me was just the humor that developed as a result of the last act. I think that if Act 5 had been first, it would not have been funny, because it was too ridiculous, but when it was the last thing you read, I felt like I was "warmed up" enough that I just thought it was absolutely hilarious.
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