The minor characters:  Show how the adversity of the family brings out the heroic element lying unobserved in Brother Anthony of the “dry hand,” and kindles his philosophy into something martial.

The merry maids, Ursula and Margaret and their light-hearted parts in the plot.

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Beatrice “is a tarter,—­and, if a natural woman, is not a pleasing representative of her sex.”  She “will provoke her Benedicke to give her much and just conjugal castigation,” says Campbell.  Is he right, and will Benedicke feel so?—­or is Swinburne right, who says she is “a decidedly more perfect woman than could properly or permissibly have trod the stage of Congreve or Moliere” and who speaks of her “light true heart”?

Is the superficial Claudio worthy of Hero?

Are the faults in the plot of the Play, such as are necessitated by the design of using the characters themselves and their “noting” of one another as the source of events, and, therefore, in the last analysis not faults, a study of their relation to the design leading us, as Hartley Coleridge puts it, never to censure Shakespeare without finding reason to eat our words?

A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME

Having read “A Midsommer Nights Dreame” as a whole, if it be not already fresh in the mind, or, if possible, having seen it acted, then consider more carefully the characteristics of its dramatic structure, studying the plot and progress of the story as it is unfolded act by act, also the sources, the characters, and so forth, as suggested in the following study.

ACT I

THE CROSSED LOVERS

Sum up the incidents and characters introduced in the first Act and ascertain which are most important in influencing the rest of the story.

It may be noticed that Theseus and Hippolyta and their marriage festivities are personages and events which make up a decorative external sort of frame for the whole play, but that the centre of the action takes its start, primarily, from the conflict of Hermia’s love for Lysander with her father’s choice of Demetrius, and, secondarily, from the clash of Helena’s love for Demetrius with his suit for Hermia.  Show how the brisk bit of dialogue between Hermia and Lysander (I. i. 141-166) implies the forthcoming plot.  For example, it may be shown that ‘to be enthrall’d to love’ (the first folio reading is love instead of low, which was an emendation of Theobald’s,) [Footnote:  See foot note in First Folio edition.] and to have ‘sympathy in choice’ made as ’momentary as a sound, swift as a shadow, short as any dream,’ is to be the fate of all the lovers in the play, except Theseus and Hippolyta, and to constitute the substance of the action.