The Dream: Order and disorder?

Hierarchies and challenges to them

1. The Medieval universe: a closed space, ordered and hierarchical.
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/spheres.html
   Where do you find hierarchies in A Midsummer Night's Dream?)


2. The elements and humours: a symmetrical four, again with its hierarchy.
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/sublunary.html
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/elements.html
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/humours.html
   Are there any characters in Dream or Shrew who fit the humours?


3. Ladders and chains of being.
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/chain.html
   How rigid is the social structure of Shakespeare's early comedies?


4. Social order: From Theseus to Bottom
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/socialorder.html
   Where do the fairies fit in?
   And what about Puck?
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/folklore.html


5. Order in the family and between the sexes?.
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/sexes.html
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/society/status.html
   Theseus and Hippolyta?
   The pairs of lovers


6. Microcosm and macrocosm: out there and in here.
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/macromicro.html
   Titania speaks of cosmic disorder
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/ideas/disorder.html
   Are there any other signs of cosmic disturbance in the play?


7. Happily ever after.
   http://web.UVic.CA/shakespeare/Library/SLT/society/ceremony.html
   How well matched are the pairs at the end?



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This page last updated on 28 August 2006. © Michael Best, 2002.