The fascinating background of Hamlet. Its enormous influence on 19th and early 20th century writers and critics due to its themes of alienation, isolated consciousness, and the ambiguity of reality. The origin of the basic plot in Danish legendary history. The vogue for the “revenge play” in Shakespeare’s time. The uniquely complex textual background of the play, which means that any modern edition you read may differ from other editions.

The plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is over by the end of Act 4. Is Act 5 a mere crowd-pleaser? Or, rather, does it widen the play’s thematic perspective? Theseus’s skeptical speech about the imagination is clearly not the whole story. Among the many opposites reconciled by the play are reality and imagination, but Shakespeare leaves the transforming power as a mystery, something we cannot understand, something language cannot even speak of. In the words of Bottom’s speech, it is a bottomless dream.

The action of the play is over by the end of Act 4, culminating in two speeches. One is the renowned speech of Theseus on the imagination—of which he is completely skeptical. The other is Bottom’s soliloquy about having had a “bottomless dream,” which echoes I Corinthians 2:9. The sense of a mysterious power that has shaped the ends of all the characters, including the fairies, a power that works by recreating conflicting opposites into a two-in-one.

The riotous farce in the middle of the play, courtesy of Puck and the “love juice.” Titania infatuated with Bottom, who has the head of an ass. The male lovers keep changing who they are in love with, resulting in complete confusion. Yet behind all this there is a strange order reflected in imagery of opposites that are yet identified with each other and interchanging.

In the “green world” comedies of Shakespeare, the action moves from ordinary society out into a wood in which all sorts of transformations happen. The uncertain dating of the play’s action, though “midsummer” is the summer solstice (June 21). Women’s friendship, a theme that Shakespeare is exceptional in regarding as important. The theme of metamorphosis and influence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Male-female power struggles occur in all four of the play’s sub-plots, even in the comic relief of the “rude mechanicals,” who are preparing a dramatic version of the story of the star-crossed lovers Pyramis and Thisbe out of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The lunar imagery of conflicting opposites: love versus irrational social law; madness versus reason; feminine versus masculine; stable identity versus metamorphosis. The fairies: originally the Faery, out of Celtic mythology, itself emerging out of the feminine imagery of the “Goddess cultures.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a “festive comedy,” i.e. associated with seasonal festivals, from Shakespeare’s “lyrical period.” Three interlinked plays all dating from around 1595: Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The contrapuntal plotting of the comedies. Here, four interlinked sub-plots, three of which represent social class distinctions: the ruling class (Theseus and Hippolyta), the well-born elite (the lovers), the working class (the “rude mechanicals,” and the fairies.

What we know for sure about Shakespeare, contrasted with the numerous speculations and conspiracy theories. The four genres of Shakespearean drama: comedies, tragedies, history plays, romances. The theory of comedy, and comedy’s poor reputation in the critical tradition.

Comic relief: Samson has mysteriously recovered his high spirits and his martial vigor, and challenges the giant Harapha to single combat. The cowardly Harapha refuses. What has changed Samson? He has resisted temptation and cast off an inward passivity. As a result, obeying another inward “motion,” Samson agrees to go perform for the Philistines, and brings the arena down upon the Philistines, killing himself along with them in the process. Two versions of Christianity, both valid. In one, God is transcendent, in the other, immanent, an inward “motion,” an Inner Light. Milton inclines to the latter, and in doing so is the forefather of the Romantic theory of the imagination.

Dalila comes to visit Samson in an attempt at reconciliation. Samson furiously rejects her attempt, abetted by a misogynistic Chorus whose Ode should not be identified as Milton’s own opinion of women. Dalila’s betrayal cannot be justified, but is it possible to view her in part sympathetically, as a woman caught in a power game, trapped in a no-win situation?