First performed around 1596, Shakespeare’s comic fantasy of four lovers who find themselves bewitched by fairies is a sly reckoning with love, jealousy and marriage. For centuries it’s been one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays. Check out sample lesson plans for A Midsummer Night's Dream below.
Students will use this worksheet to examine the text in terms of order and chaos and summarize how the plot’s key action falls into these two categories.
Students will use this worksheet to analyze how the theme of dreams relates to other major themes in the play, including love, marriage, gender, and friendship.
Students will use this worksheet to locate and examine important quotes from the play in which characters discuss dreams.
Students will use this worksheet to briefly review the dramatic conventions of comedy and tragedy as outlined in Aristotle's Poetics and to examine A Midsummer Night’s Dream for examples of each convention.
Students will use this worksheet to analyze doubling in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by comparing and contrasting humans and fairies and Athens and the fairy world.
