Oedipus Rex-Midsummer Night's Dream Exam Review

Your quarterly exam over Oedipus Rex-Midsummer Night's Dream is scheduled for Tuesday, October 14. We will have review time in class on Thursday, October 9. I will talk through the format of the exam and the kind of answers I will be looking for next week in class (in particular I will explain my expectations for the quotation identification section). If you would like to get a jump start on reviewing for the exam, here is your review sheet. The terms, vocabulary, passages, and essay questions on the review sheet are all fair game. Only some of them will appear on the exam and in the quotation identification section you will have some choice of which questions you answer.

From Oedipus Rex:

Vocabulary:
carrion, parry, incarnate, foreboding, affront, bane

Terms:
-Tragedy
-Tragic flaw (or “fatal” flaw)
-Dramatic irony
-Greek chorus


Passages/Quotations:
• Page 8 – “Then once more must I bring what is dark to light … I act for the murdered king in my own interest”
• Page 12 – “Listen to me. You mock my blindness … Will bring you to yourself among your children”
• Page 16 – “Set your mind at rest … His son, born of his flesh and mine!”
• Page 20 – “Why should anyone in this world be afraid … No reasonable man is troubled by such things”
• Page 21 – “Let it come! … How could I not be glad to know my birth?”

Poetry:
Be able to identify and briefly discuss the following poems:

-Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
-Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
-Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
-Herrick, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”

Vocabulary: transpire, wanton

Terms: carpe diem poetry, pastoral

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream


Vocabulary:
extenuate feigning
yoke filch
dote flout
inconstant dissemble
beguile enmity
progeny surfeit
fawn (v.) enamored

Terms:
Blank Verse
Stock characters
Subtext
Malapropism

Passages/Quotations:
1.1.61-66: “I know not by what power I am made bold… The worst that may befall me in this
case,/ If I refuse to wed Demetrius.”
1.2.68-71: “Let me play the lion too…. Let him roar again’”
2.1.66-75: “Then I must be thy lady. But I know/ When thou hast stolen away… and you come
to bring their bed joy and prosperity.”
2.1.125-42: “Set your heart at rest./ The fairyland buys not the child of me…. And for her sake
I will not part with him.”
2.1.165-74: “A certain aim he took…. And maidens call it ‘love-in-idleness.’”
2.2.62-66: “But, gentle friend, for love and modesty… and good night, sweet friend.”
2.2.122-23: “The will of man is by his reason swayed,/ And reason says you are the worthier
maid.”
2.2.144-49: “For as a surfeit of the sweetest things/ The deepest loathing… So thou, my surfeit
and my heresy,/ Of all be hated, but the most of me!”
3.1.145-48: “…to say the truth, reason and love keep little company nowadays. The more the
pity that some honest neighbors will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon
occasion.”
3.2.241-45: “Ay, do … This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled.”
3.2.490-93: “Jack shall have Jill… all will be well.”
4.1.171-75: “…I wot not by what power--/ But some power it is… an idle gaud/ Which in my
childhood I did dote upon.”
4.1.220-26: “the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen… what my dream
was… It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream,’ because it hath no bottom.”
5.1.7-11: “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet … sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.”
5.1.155-56: “Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,/ He bravely broached his boiling
bloody breast.”
5.1.224-25: “The best in this kind are but shadows, and/ the worst are no worse, if imagination
amend them.”

Essay questions:

1. Evaluate the happy ending of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Puck reassures us that “Jack shall have Jill;/ Naught shall go ill” (3.2.490-491). Is this indeed the case? Do you find the triple-wedding resolution of the farcical events of this play believable? Consider especially the role that the forest plays in the transformation of characters and the role of the magical herbs in making the various loves requited. What does this play seem to say about love, and/or about perception and its relation to reality? Is this reassuring or troubling?

2. Examine Shakespeare’s portrayal of different social classes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Do you think the “rude mechanicals” end up looking worse than the play’s more socially lofty characters? If so, how and in what way? If not, why not? Compare the different groups of characters using whatever set of criteria you think makes sense, but be specific about the particular qualities you’re comparing.