TEN LITERARY DEVICES AND CONCEPTS

IN SHAKESPEARE’S A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

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1. Verse/Prose Usage: Shakespeare wrote his plays using two different kinds of language: verse and prose.  You can tell if a passage is written in verse if

a.) the words do not go all the way across the page;

b.) the first word on each line is capitalized, regardless of the sentence break;

c.) there is usually a regular rhythm of unstressed and stressed syllables;

d.)        there are usually 10 or 11 syllables in each line.

Example: “For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up--
Which by no means we may extenuate--
To death, or to a vow of single life.” DREAM, I, 1, line 117

You can tell if a passage is written in prose if

a.) the words go all the way across the page;

b.) the first word of each line does not begin with a capital unless it is the first word of a sentence;

c.) the words do not share a consistent rhythmic pattern.

Example: “That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some measure.”  DREAM, I, 2, line 26

As a general rule (applicable in about 95% of the cases) you can assume that

a.) upper class characters speak verse; lower class characters speak prose.

Examples: Theseus in verse (most of the time) and Bottom in prose

b.) serious material will be in verse; comic material will be in prose;   

Examples: Egeus condemning Hermia in Act I, scene 1 in verse

Bottom describing acting in Act I, scene 2 in prose

c.) noble characters will speak verse; villains will speak prose;

d.) romantic passages will be in verse; non-romantic passages in prose.

Examples: Lysander declaring his love to Hermia in verse in Act I, scene 1

Bottom speaking prose throughout the play, except as Pyramus.

Watch for places where a character changes from one form to another in the same scene, such as when Theseus in Act V, scene 1 changes from verse to prose when    he moves from speaking philosophically about love to heckling the amateur actors.         Or watch when a character switches from one form which he has consistently used to another, as Bottom does when he begins to act a role.

2. Use of Rhyme: Much of Shakespeare’s verse is called blank verse, meaning there are 10 or 11 syllables in each line, in iambic pentameter (five units or feet in an unstressed/stressed pattern) and the lines are unrhymed.  Sometimes Shakespeare will use verse which is rhymed with similar sounds at the end of the lines.  Such rhymed passages are done to make the contents more formal (Hermia’s solemn vow to Lysander at lines 171--178  Act I, scene 1) or to emphasize the emotional content (Helena’s rhymed speech at the end of Act I, scene 1). 

Rhyme and unusual rhythm can be used to evoke magical charms as in Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. See Oberon’s incantation when he puts the magic potion on Titania’s eyes at line 27 in Act II, Scene 2.  The lines here have seven syllables, in trochaic tetrameter (four units or feet in a stressed/unstressed pattern) and the lines are rhymed couplets.  They are meant to suggest a magic chant.

There was no way of physically separating the scenes in a Shakespearean play by means of curtains or lights, so in many plays Shakespeare used a single rhyming couplet at the end of a scene to signal to the audience that the action or location was changing.

3. Unusual Metaphors: One of the dominant qualities of Shakespeare’s language, regardless of the form, is the incidence of unusual comparisons, often expressed in metaphors where the comparison is implied.  Lysander in Act I, scene 1, at line 150 describes the transitory nature of love:

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

Here Shakespeare uses a variety of metaphors: Love is over as quickly as the lightning flash; the blackness of the night is compared to that of a “colliery” or coal mine; the speed of the flash is compared to the rash actions of a man controlled by his “spleen,” the organ associated with rashness; the night is compared to a hungry beast that “devours” love. 

Sometime a metaphorical comparison can be very elaborate with a number of different parallels drawn between the two things being compared.  In Act I, scene 1, at lines 235 -- 241 Helena compares different aspects of love to the traits associated with the figure of Cupid.  In Shakespeare’s terms such a complex comparison was called a conceit, and the device was highly prized by Shakespeare’s audiences.

4. Puns: A pun is a play on words, usually for comic effect.  In Act V, scene 1 at line 167 Demetrius is making fun of an amateur actor who is playing a wall and has just finished a speech.  He says, “This is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse.” The wall is a physical “partition,” but part of a speech was also called a “partition.”  Shakespeare’s audience valued such puns more than modern audiences do and found nothing strange in characters using puns, even in serious situations for serious dramatic purposes.

5. Malaprops: These are words which have been misused for comic effect.  Often uneducated characters are shown misusing words, usually if they have two or more syllables, especially when they are trying to impress others.  For example, the uneducated actor Peter Quince, at Act IV, Scene 2, line 12, says of fellow actor Nick Bottom, “he is a very paramour for a sweet voice.”  He doesn’t mean “a lover” but rather “a paragon” or ideal. 

6. Taboo Words: Shakespeare has his characters use obscenities when he wishes to emphasize strong emotions.  These obscenities, however, do not refer to sex or bodily waste; they are sacrilegious terms, which treat God’s name in an irreverent fashion, the strongest taboo in Shakespeare’s day.  The two most frequent taboos are “Zounds” for “God’s wounds” and “’Sblood” for “God’s blood.”

7. Bawdy: “Bawdy” is what Shakespeare called sexual references.  Bawdy can be explicit, as when Titania in Act III., scene 1 at line 172 says of her new boyfriend, ”To have my love to bed and to arise,”  meaning she wants him to get an erection. References to “arise,” “stand” or “naked weapon” in the comedies almost always carry the connotation of a male erection.  Bawdy can be implicit, as when in Act V, scene 1, line 190, Thisby says she kisses the “stones” of the wall, not realizing that “stones” can refer to a man’s testicles.

8. Cuckoldry: A man whose wife was unfaithful was called a “cuckold.”  This fear of betrayal was an obsession for Shakespeare’s male characters.  The cuckold was associated with the cuckoo bird, which supposedly laid its eggs in other birds’ nests, much as a man might get a cuckold’s wife pregnant.  Accordingly to folklore a cuckold grew horns out of his forehead, invisible to him but plainly seen by everyone else as a badge of his public humiliation.  For example, in Act V, Scene 1, line 240, when an amateur actor appears as the Moon with a pair of horns, Demetrius heckles, “He should have worn the horns on his head,” that is, he is such a fool he must be a cuckold.

9. Venereal References: In Shakespeare’s day Europe faced a major public health crisis in the rampant spread of syphilis.  Much like the spread of AIDS today, this sexually transmitted disease, often called the “pox,” had no known cure and was usually fatal.  Furthermore, people were quick to attribute the disease to other countries, so that the English called it the “French disease,” just as the French blamed the Italians, and the Italians blamed the Spanish.  In its final stages the most notable symptom of syphilis is the loss of hair.  Shakespeare’s plays contain many references to this condition, almost all of them humorous.  For example, in Act I, scene 2 Bottom describes a phony beard he wants to wear as being “French crown colored,” that is, the golden yellow of a kind of coin called a French crown.  Peter Quince responds, “Many French crowns [heads] have no hair at all,” that is, suffer from advanced syphilis.

10. Oxymoron: An oxymoron is a self-contradictory phrase, something that cancels itself.  Such common phrases as “jumbo shrimp” or “freezer burn” really don’t belong together.  Shakespeare most often used oxymoronic phrases or concepts to talk about love and how it makes us feel “bittersweet” or “sweet sorrow.”  Oxymoronic phrases can also be used for comic effect. In Act V, Scene 1, Bottom, Peter Quince and the other amateur actors refer to their play as  “A tedious, brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisby; very tragical mirth.”  Noting the oxymoronic phrases, Theseus asks, “Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief?  That is, hot ice and very strange snow.”

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