A Midsummer Night's Dream: Conflict Resolution and Happy Endings

The especially fun part of this lesson derives from encouraging students to invent and predict how various situations might develop and go forward in the play from any particular moment. Their predictions may often be outrageous and ridiculous—and sometimes eerily spot-on. In discussion, you can tease out parallels between students' hopes that a band of government agents or extraterrestrial beings might descend and what Shakespeare, often quite similarly, executes instead. To help students have a sense of the world from which Shakespeare was writing—and why, for example, a father's prohibition against his daughter's marriage really mattered—some historical context is important. Students can get an easily accessible overview of the culture of the Renaissance through an interactive project at Learner.org. Much more detail about the period—including what people ate, what they wore, what they did for fun—delivered in a non-academic, affable tone, can be found at the following site available via the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library: Life in Elizabethan England: A Compendium of Common Knowledge. The entries on love and marriage, on masters and servants, and on virtue and vice might be especially relevant and entertaining.

An online complete text of A Midsummer Night's Dream can be found at MIT's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. For addtional resources on Teaching A Midsummer Night's Dream visit the Folger Shakespeare Library's online resources for teachers. The Folger has prepared a new companion A Midsummer Night's Dream Curriculum Guide that includes lesson plans, prompts for teachers, podcast and video links, and other mulitmedia resources for teaching the play.  A new fresh approach to the play can be found in the Folger Digital Texts version of A Midsummer Night's Dream that can be downloaded at no cost for noncommercial purposes, including specialized studies and mobile apps.

• Review the lesson plan and the websites used throughout. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and websites. Download and print out documents and Worksheets you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.

Activity 1. Tracking Character and Plot

What informs characters' desires and decisions needs to be accounted for. You might assign a few students to each main character or, depending on how much time you want to allow for this project, have each student keep track of each main character.

At the end of particularly informative and relevant scenes, use Worksheet 1 to update information by offering a few character-defining attributes and aspects of behavior. Initial tracking of Hermia, for example, would include the information that she is Egeus' daughter; and that, as Egeus informs the king, though he has given her permission to marry Demetrius, she is in love with Lysander and has refused. She seems careful and demure (as she says to Theseus, "I do entreat your Grace to pardon me. / I know not by what power I am made bold" [I.i.58-59]), though also wise and brave; threatened with a life as "a barren sister," she embraces it rather than "yield my virgin patent up / Unto his lordship whose unwished yoke / My soul consents not to give sovereignty" (I.i.80-82). She is a close friend to Helena, but Helena loves Demetrius and is, therefore, jealous of Hermia. Hermia's character chart can be updated after reading III.ii to note her fierce devotion to Lysander ("If thou hast slain Lysander," she insists to Demetrius, "plunge in the deep, / And kill me too" [III.ii.48-49]); her humiliation (she asks after a barrage of insults from Helena, "Are you grown so high in his esteem / Because I am so dwarfish and so low?" [III.ii.294-95]); and so on. (Note that her conflict with Helena becomes acute in the middle of the play; it can be as fruitful to follow as her conflicts with the men.)

A filled-in Worksheet 1 on Hermia might look something like this: Basic biographical information: Hermia is Egeus' daughter, Lysander's lover, and Helena's friend.

Plot situationUpdated plotAttributes / BehaviorUpdated Attributes / Behavior

Egeus wants her to marry Demetrius. she wants to marry Lysander, who wants to marry her too. Her best friend Helena loves Demetrius and is jealous.Thanks to Puck, Lysander shifts his attentions to Helena. Hermia is ridiculed by all of her friends and abandoned briefly in the woods. (Etc.)Initially demure, though also very brave. See passages I.i.58-59 and I.i.80-82 for textual support. Fiercely devoted to Lysander; profoundly upset by her humiliation. See passages III.ii.48-49 and III.ii.294-95 for textual support.

Activity 2. Predicting and Inventing Happy Endings

Once you have enough initial information about plot and character in place, students can suggest happy outcomes, even before they suggest possible routes to those ends (using Worksheet 2 to keep track). To pursue Hermia as an example, her happy ending would apparently be in marriage with Lysander. Students might conjecture that Demetrius, therefore, will need to withdraw or be withdrawn; and/or Egeus will need to change or have his mind changed; and/or the king, Theseus, will have to side with Hermia and against her father. (Her happy ending might also come from renewed friendship with Helena and a return to peaceful relations with her father.)

To address what could happen in order for the character to have a happy ending, ask the students to be as creative as possible. You are unlikely to have to prod students, but you can always offer an option or two if necessary. In Hermia's case, for example, you could suggest that Demetrius could be eaten by a pack of wolves, that thanks to a magic trick performed in Theseus' court, Egeus could be persuaded to allow Hermia to marry Lysander, that she and Lysander could move to another country, or that Egeus could get distracted by the young and lovely Helena and let Hermia do as she pleases.

A filled-in Worksheet 2 on Hermia might look something like this:

What would constitute a happy ending for Hermia?

1. Marriage to Lysander
2. Reconciliation with her father
3. Reconcilation with Helena
4. Other

What could make that possible? List your own and your classmates' ideas:

1. Demetrius' death by a pack of wolves
2. A magic trick …
3. Other

Activity 3. Analyzing Predictions and Inventions

Once students have offered some possibilities (a few outrageous ones will spur even more outrageous ones), all of which can be written on the board, you can then choose a few to discuss with some seriousness. Ask them to identify the roots of the conflict and to characterize their solutions, using Worksheet 3 to help structure their thoughts. Again in Hermia's case: Why can't she do as she pleases? Because her father has authority over her. To get what she wants, his authority will have to be undone, which either his death or his distraction would accomplish.

Activity 4. Analyzing the Play Itself

As you get further into the play, note what happens to characters to make them either happier or less happy. By II.ii, Hermia and Lysander have fled to the woods. They are, at first, happier; they are flirtatious and respectful of one another. However, by the end of the scene, Puck has applied his potion to Lysander's eyes, and Lysander has fallen in love with Helena.

Ask students: how are these plot shifts like or unlike the students' suggestions from Activity 1? All sorts of parallels will likely emerge. If someone has hoped that Hermia and Lysander would move to another planet, you can point out that they did in essence do so by leaving Theseus' court. Then look for significance in the act. Why is moving away important? Because it removes Hermia from both Egeus' and Theseus' immediate authority. Worksheet 3 should be used here as well.

A filled-in Worksheet 3 might look like this:

Root of conflictProposed plot twistWhy it would or would not work Actual plot twistWhy it does or does not work

Father has legal authority over his daughterA space ship takes them to another planetEgeus can't control her thereThey run away to the woodsThey escape Egeus' (and Theseus') authority, but get manipulated by Oberon's authority

Activity 5. The (Happy or Unhappy) End

By the end of the class' reading of the play, students should be prepared to address whether they think the play has ended happily or unhappily. How so, how not, and for whom? Have characters' conflicts been truly resolved or only repressed, forgotten, or ignored? In Hermia's case, for example, she gets permission to marry Lysander from Theseus, but has had to endure humiliation in order to reach that point. Her final words—"Me thinks I see these things with parted eye, / When everything else seems double" (IV.i.88-89)—suggest she is as much confused as anything else.

Her conflict with her father has only been resolved insofar as Theseus overrides Egeus' authority, so one could argue that that conflict has not been truly resolved. She only gets what she wants because Theseus' authority remains intact. Her conflict with Lysander (in the body of the play, when Lysander is under the effects of Puck's potion) is resolved only when Lysander is returned to his senses, but students might note that this dream could happen again with another whim of Oberon's. Hermia may now see how vulnerable they all are to "double" visions of the truth.

Students' worksheets can be collected as a portfolio and assessed for evidence of detail and commitment. The use of textual support and careful analytical thinking could be highlighted.

Students could also write a brief essay addressing the question or questions asked in Activity 5.

In small groups, students could script and perform their alternative plot suggestions. These performances could be done while you are reading the play together or once you have finished.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Folger Digital Texts
• Folger Shakespeare Library Online Resources for Teachers
• Learner.org: Interactives: Renaissance
• Internet Public Library
  • Life in Elizabethan England: A Compendium of Common Knowledge
  • On love and marriage
  • On masters and servants
  • On virtue and vice
• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream