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Learning Framework
Concept
Audience imperatives, characterisation, collaboration, context, genre, setting, style and theme.
Content
Student understands that conventions shape the nature of communication in different genres.
Skills
- Communication
Resource Key
When accessing content use the numbers below to guide you:
LEVEL 1:
brief, basic information laid out in an easy-to-read format. May use informal language. (Includes most news articles)
LEVEL 2:
provides additional background information and further reading. Introduces some subject-specific language.
LEVEL 3:
lengthy, detailed information. Frequently uses technical/subject-specific language. (Includes most analytical articles)
History of A Midsummer Night's Dream
Unlike many of his other plays it does not include any historical figures. The feast of John the Baptist was celebrated as an English festival on June 24 (Midsummer Day) It was believed that on Midsummer Night that the fairies and witches held their festival. To dream about Midsummer Night was to conjure up images of fairies and witches and other similar creatures and supernatural events.
(A Midsummer Night's Dream the play by William Shakespeare, http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-a-midsummer-nights-dream.htm, downloaded 4 August 2016.)
Famous Quotes
The quotes from the play are amongst Shakespeare's most famous including:
"The course of true love never did run smooth". (Act I, Scene I).
"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact." (Act V, Scene I).
(A Midsummer Night's Dream the play by William Shakespeare, http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-a-midsummer-nights-dream.htm, downloaded 4 August 2016.)
Information on A Midsummer Night's Dream
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
A comedy in five acts, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written about 1595–96 and first published in 1600. A revised version was published in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s written works in 1623. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is considered one of Shakespeare’s most popular works. - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Written in the mid-1590s, probably shortly before Shakespeare turned to Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of his strangest and most delightful creations, and it marks a departure from his earlier works and from others of the English Renaissance. The play demonstrates both the extent of Shakespeare’s learning and the expansiveness of his imagination. - A Midsummer Night's DreamIn A Midsummer Night's Dream, residents of Athens mix with fairies from a local forest, with comic results. In the city, Theseus, Duke of Athens, is to marry Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. Bottom the weaver and his friends rehearse in the woods a play they hope to stage for the wedding celebrations.
Key terms
- ContextThe circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood:
'the proposals need to be considered in the context of new European directives' - GenreA style or category of art, music, or literature:
'the spy thriller is a very masculine genre'
'the science fiction genre' - InnuendoAn allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one:
'she’s always making sly innuendoes' - IronyThe expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect:
‘Don’t go overboard with the gratitude,’ he rejoined with heavy irony' - MetaphorA figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable:
'when we speak of gene maps and gene mapping, we use a cartographic metaphor'
'her poetry depends on suggestion and metaphor' - ParodyAn imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect:
'the film is a parody of the horror genre'
'his provocative use of parody'