How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare Read Online Free Page B

love,Lysander and Demetrius. In this plot, the lovers keep changing partners, creating one love triangle after another.

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, with Tam Williams as Lysander, Ben Mansfield as Demetrius, Annabel Scholey as Hermia, and Rachael Stirling as Helena (photo credit 6.1)
    The story begins when Hermia’s father forbids her to marry the man she loves. To make matters worse, under Athenian law, if she doesn’t obey her father, she can be put to death or be confined to a convent for the rest of her life. One of my favorite passages in the play is where the Duke of Athens urges Hermia to reconsider her decision.
    DUKE THESEUS
What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid .
To you, your father should be as a god ,
    Whenever I read this passage to my children, I stop and repeat the phrase To you, your father should be as a god . Needless to say, they roll their eyes and say “Oh, sure, Dad.”
    DUKE THESEUS
What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid .
To you, your father should be as a god,…
    HERMIA
I do entreat your Grace to pardon me .
I know not by what power I am made bold,…
But I beseech [beg] your Grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me [happen to me] in this case
If I refuse to wed Demetrius .
    DUKE THESEUS
Either to die the death, or to abjure [give up]
Forever the society of men .
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires ,
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,…
For aye to be in shady cloister mew’d ,
[Forever to be caged up in a nunnery,]
To live a barren sister all your life ,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon.…
    HERMIA
So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord ,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up…
[Before I will give up my virginity].
    Two things I find especially moving about this passage are that the Duke is so clearly on Hermia’s side, and that Hermia simply cannot yield because she is so deeply in love.
    When the Duke leaves Hermia alone to reconsider her decision, what does Hermia do? She does what every headstrong teenager in the world dreams of doing: She elopes. That night she and Lysander flee into the woods outside Athens. Then, to make matters more interesting, Demetrius runs after them—and Helena runs after Demetrius.
     
The Woods

Hermia

Demetrius

Helena
Near

loves

wants

wants
Athens

Lysander

Hermia

Demetrius
    And when these four hormonal, mismatched, articulate teenagers arrive in the famous Wood near Athens, what do they find?
    Magic!
    Point out to your children that the whole story sounds a bit like a Harry Potter novel: Ordinary teenagers encounter a magical world, and it changes their lives forever. (That Shakespeare fellow knew what he was doing.) It is at this point that Shakespeare decides to mix together the Lovers’ Plot and the Fairies’ Plot, and he does it in a fiendishly clever way. He has Oberon tell Puck to use the magic flower on Demetrius to try to straighten out Helena’s love life. But Puck puts the juice of the flower in the eyes of the wrong lover (Lysander) by mistake, at which point everything goes wrong.

Bonus Passage
    When Oberon first realizes Puck’s mistake, he orders him to hurry as fast as he can and go find Helena. To which Puck replies:
I go, I go, look how I go ,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow .
    In our family, this is one of our favorite speeches, and we use it whenever we’re in a hurry.
I go, I go, look how I go ,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow .
    See if your children can learn these two lines right now, on the spot. Note: A Tartar is an ancient Oriental fighter with a strong bow.
I go, I go, look how I go ,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow .
    Make a point of using this speech with your children the next time you’re in a hurry. Chances are, they’ll repeat it back to you.

CHAPTER 7
    Digging Deeper into A Midsummer Night’s Dream
    H ermia. Helena. Lysander. Demetrius. Is it hard to keep these lovers straight when we read