Week Thirteen

A Midsummer's Night Dream: Blog One

There are four different plot lines in A Midsummer Night's Dream and 20+ characters. Who do you think is the protagonist of the play? Make your choice and then explain, offering support from the text.

Hermia. She is able to stick to what she wants in such an era that is deliberate with woman not having say in any aspect of running life. Hermia is in love with Lysander, who goes under a spell, by Titania who gives Puck a flower embedded with a spelll, to be in love with Helena. In the end Hermia and Lysander solve the spell and remember the love that binds them as two. 

"So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,/Ere I will yield my virgin patent up/Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke/My soul consents not to give sovereignty" (Hermia, p. 1311).

"If then true lovers have been ever cross'd/Then let us each our trial patience/Because it is a customary cross/As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs/Wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers" (Hermia, 1313).

"My good Lysander!/I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow/By his best arrow with the golden head/By the simplicity of Venus' doves/By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves/And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen/When the false Troyan uner sail was see/By all the vows that ever men have broke/In number more than ever woman spoke/In that same place hou hast appointed me/Tomorrow truly will I meet with thee" (Hermia, 1313-1314).

"So the boy Love is perjur'd everywhere/For ere demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne/He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine/And when this hail some heart from Hermia felt/So he dissolv'd, and show'rs of oaths did melt/I will go tell him of fiar Hermia's flight/Then to the wood will he tomorrow night/Pursue her; and for this intelligence/If I have thans, it is a dear expense/But herein mena I to enrich my pain/To have his sight thither and back again" (Helena, 1315).

"Do not say so, Lysander, say not so/What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what though?/Yet Hermia still loves you. Then be content" (Helena, 1328).

"I am amazed at your passionate words/I scorn you not. It seems that you scorn me" (Hermia, 1339).

"you, mistress, all this coil is 'long of you/Nay, go not back" (Hermia, 1342).