Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mr. Burt, and welcome to our Drama lesson.

This is the last of three Drama lessons looking at A Midsummer Night's Dream.

And we've looked at a lot of different parts of the play so far.

In our first lesson, we looked at the Faerie Plot and how King Oberon wants to take revenge on Titania.

And we also looked at how Shakespeare used imagery and rhythm to help us as actors to perform it.

Then in our second lesson, we looked at the Lovers' Plot and how Puck got involved to create a huge amount of confusion between them all.

And we also looked at how Shakespeare used iambic pentameter to help us as actors to perform that monologue, as well.

Now both of those monologues were using poetry.

And today, we're going to look at another monologue.

But this is in prose.

And we'll talk about those key terms later on in the lesson.

But this monologue comes from a group of characters called The Mechanicals, who are trying to put on a play to help celebrate the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.

So let's make a start.

But before we do, let's look at what materials and equipment we need in order to complete the lesson.

So this is the equipment you're going to need in this lesson.

You're going to need the worksheet or a piece of paper, you're going to need a pen, and you'll need a highlighter.

So before we go on, make sure you've got those pieces of equipment.

And once you have, let's make a start.

So this is the rundown of the lesson.

We're going to start with a recap on the plot so far of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

And then from that, we're going to start looking at The Mechanicals' plot.

And within that, we're going to explore a monologue of a character called Bottom.

And the monologue is called Bottom's Dream.

We're going to think about how we can create that monologue and act it out using lots of different movement.

And then we're going to do a quick quiz at the end of the lesson.

So let's get started.

In order to be successful in the lesson today, we're going to need to know four keywords.

The first of those is status.

Now status is used to describe how important a character is.

So a character like a king, like King Oberon, for instance, has far greater status than a servant, who might be at the bottom.

The next word is prose.

Now prose is the way we speak to each other in everyday language.

It's just a posh version of saying the way we speak normally.

Now in our last lesson, I talked about poetry because characters who are really important in Shakespeare's plays spoke in poetry, characters like Kings and Queens and gentlewomen and gentlemen, whereas servants, other characters who are not so important, speak in prose, just speak in the way we do every day.

Our third keyword is monologue, and that's a speech that an actor says on their own.

And then finally, gesture.

Now a gesture is any physical movement made by any part of the body that communicates something to an audience.

So like a shrug of the shoulders is often communicates that you don't really understand something.

Or we might point.

That's also a gesture.

Or we might point with our head to say, "Let's go." These are all gestures, small, physical movements that communicate something to an audience.

Before we go on any further, let's just check our understanding of some of those keywords.

Let's start with status.

Tell me now what is status? That's right, status is used to describe how important a character is.

What about this question? Prose is the way we speak to each other in everyday language.

In Shakespeare's plays, what type of characters speak prose? Is it high status characters or low status characters? That's right, it's low status characters.

In Shakespeare's plays, high status characters such as Kings or Queens speak in poetry, whereas lower status characters, like servants, will speak in prose.

And that's just one way of knowing when you open up a Shakespeare play of knowing who the characters are and a little bit about their background.

Let's start by having a quick recap on the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is the play we've been looking at all the way through this unit of work.

Now A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play written by William Shakespeare in 1596.

And the play is set in Athens and consists of several plots, all of which interweave across each other.

And there are four main plots.

The first is the Faeries' Plot, which we looked at in our first lesson.

The second is the Lovers' Plot, and that we looked at in our second lesson.

And today, we're going to be looking at the Mechanicals Plot and we're going to look a little bit at the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta.

Now in this lesson, we're going to look at the group of characters called The Mechanicals and a part of their plot within the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Now if you haven't guessed already, The Mechanicals are all tradesmen, servants, and workers from Athens.

And Athens is in a state of celebration at the moment because they are celebrating the forthcoming wedding between Theseus and Hippolyta.

And these Mechanicals, and there's six of them altogether, there's Quince, Snout, Flute, Starveling, Snug, and a character called Bottom, have all come together to rehearse a play, which they hope will form part of the celebrations of the wedding.

And this is their part of the plot.

And it starts with them rehearsing.

And The Mechanicals are rehearsing in the woods.

And if you remember back in our first lesson, where Oberon wanted to take revenge on Titania by putting some love potion in her eyes so that she would then have some hateful dreams, well this is part of that revenge.

And mischief occurs.

So Puck comes along and transforms one of The Mechanicals, the character of Bottom, head into that of a donkey.

Just his head.

The rest of him is a human.

His head is that of a donkey.

And then, the love potion.

So Puck takes revenge and gives Titania a love potion and makes sure that the first thing that she sees when she wakes up is Bottom.

And it's love at first sight.

Titania instantly falls in love with Bottom and instantly brings him in and makes him one of her servants and part of her faerie band, the Prince.

Titania is so in love with Bottom that she forgets everything else.

And she agrees to hand over the Prince to Oberon.

Remember the Prince was the character that Titania and Oberon were arguing about way back at the beginning of the play.

With the Prince with Oberon, we get some restoration.

And Oberon orders Puck to restore Titania and Bottom.

Titania goes back, embarrassed and upset.

Well Bottom, he thinks he's had a dream.

And Bottom is reunited with his friends and believes that he has just had a dream.

When Bottom wakes up from his dream, when Bottom wakes up from his experiences, he believes what he's had was a dream.

And so before he goes back to see his friends, this is what he says.

"I had the most rare vision.

"I have had a dream past the wit of man "to say what dream it was.

"Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.

"The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man "hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, "his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report "what my dream was.

"I shall get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.

"It shall be called Bottom's Dream." And what this, he's saying in this short monologue is that he believes he's just had a dream.

But this dream is just huge, it's massive.

It's untouchable.

No person has ever come across a dream so fanciful, so wild, so amazing as this.

And so he will go to his friend, Peter Quince, who's one of The Mechanicals, to write a song of this dream.

And it shall be called Bottom's Dream.

Now, we're going to act this monologue out, just as we've done with all the others.

But before we do that, let's just think about some key terminology we might want to use, and in particular, the word gesture.

So tell me now what does the keyword gesture mean? That's right.

Gesture is a physical movement made by any part of the body that communicates something to the audience.

That might be a shrug of the shoulders, a turn of the head to say, "Let's go that way," anything that communicates something to the audience.

Now Shakespeare wrote all his plays without any stage directions.

Instead, he wrote secret stage directions in the words the character says.

So we need to read carefully into the words that Shakespeare wrote to find the kind of things that you should be doing as actors.

So for example, the eye of a man hath not heard, the ear of a man hath not seen.

In this example, you should add movement by gesturing towards or touching what is in bold.

So have a go with me.

The eye of a man hath not heard, the ear of a man hath not seen.

Now suddenly, that all becomes a little bit more interesting to watch and to hear, because you're emphasising the words eye, heard, ear, and seen in your way of speaking, but you're also emphasising them by pointing towards them, by gesturing towards them.

So let's have a go here.

Pause the video, and either using the copy on the worksheet or the copy on the screen now, find all the things that you should point to or gesture towards in the speech.

Pause the video now and press play when you've done that.

Here's some of the things that I found.

I have had the most rare vision.

Vision, thinking about something you can see.

I've had a dream, and we can create a movement for dream, something coming out of your brain.

Past the wit, wit being something about intelligence.

The wit of man, to say what dream it was.

Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.

The eye of a man hath not heard, the ear of a man hath not seen, the man's hand are not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was.

I will go, I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.

It shall be called Bottom's Dream.

Now this is what I've found.

You may have found some other different ones.

Now that's fine.

And if you're using your worksheet, you might want to pause the video now so that you can write down some of my suggestions on your worksheet.

Now, we're going to act out this monologue.

But before I ask you to do that, I'm going to demonstrate it for you.

Now as I act it out, I'm going to really emphasise what I'm saying with my physical gestures.

I think this helps the audience understand what's happening, even if they sometimes can't understand the language of Shakespeare.

Before I start, I'm going to give you one more tip.

Some of you might be working with a worksheet.

If you are, don't hold your worksheet down and keep looking down and looking up at it.

It breaks the flow of a performance.

Instead, hold the worksheet up so it's in your eye line, so that you can quickly look over to it and then back to our audience or the other character you're looking at.

And do this until you feel really familiar with it or you know the lines.

I'm not particularly familiar with this monologue, so I'm going to hold my script up like this.

So this is my interpretation of this monologue.

I have had the most rare vision.

I have had a dream past the wits of man to say what dream it was.

Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.

The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand unable to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was.

I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.

It shall be called Bottom's Dream.

So this brings us onto our main task, which is to perform the monologue.

And I want you to act out the monologue and create a gesture or a physical touch for each of the secret stage instructions we have identified so far.

So pause the video here, and either use the copy of the monologue on your worksheet or the copy of the monologue on your screen now, and act it out.

I suggest you spend about 10 or 15 minutes performing this.

Good luck.

How did that go? Did you enjoy that monologue? It's a really good fun monologue, 'cause you can do lots of different gestures.

And as you get used to it and you are able to get the piece of paper away or read it from the screen, you get both hands to be able to work with and you can get really nice and physical with it.

Before we go, let's just finish up by checking our understanding of some of the key terminology we've used in this lesson.

So complete these gaps.

What is the way we speak to each other in everyday language? It conveys what rather than being full of complex what features? In Shakespeare's plays characters of what to society speak in prose.

Using the suggested words on the right, fill in the gaps.

Let's go through some of the answers then, shall we? So prose is the way we speak to each other in everyday language.

It conveys information rather than being full of complex language features.

And in Shakespeare's plays, characters of low importance to society speak in prose, which is why in our example we just saw there, we had Bottom, who is a servant, speaking prose, where in the other two lessons, we've had Oberon and Puck, and they are both characters of high importance, so they speak in poetry.

Before we go today, I just want to say well done.

Performing can be really hard.

And you've done some really good work today, so you should be proud of yourselves.

Well.

Why not share your work with Oak National? If you'd like to share any of the work that you've done from this lesson or the previous two lessons in the unit of learning, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.