Objectives:   To introduce A Midsummer Night's Dream to students. To experience the text. To identify key characters in the play. To have fun and play.

Materials:  Objects to identify the characters (ie: scarves, caps), index cards, markers, and handout with quotations.

Activities:

Four groups of students will present four scenes from Midsummer that illustrate the relationships between the four lovers (Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia). Students will deliver lines from the play at four different points and mini-sculpt the relationship between the four lovers. Once the students have read their lines, another student will have the opportunity to sculpt the tableau of the lover's relationship. After all groups have gone (the mini-sculptures will remain in front of the class the entire time), the class will begin to tell the story of the lovers' plight in their own words.

• Group 1~
  Lysander: (to Demetrius) "You have her father's love, Demetrius; let me have Hermia's."
  Demetrius: (to Hermia) "Relent, sweet Hermia -- and, Lysander, yield thy crazed title to my certain right to marry Hermia."
  Hermia: (to Theseus, the King) "But I beseech your grace that I may know the worst that may befall me in this case if I refuse to wed Demetrius."
  Helena: (to Hermia) "Demetrius loves your fair: O Happy fair! O teach me how you look and with what art you sway the motion of Demetrius' heart."
  
• Group 2~
  Lysander: (to Hermia) "Fair love, you faint with wandr'ing in the wood; we'll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good, and tarry for the comfort of the day."
  Demetrius: (to Helena) "I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more."
  Helena: (to Demetrius) "I am sick when I look not on you."
  Hermia: (to Lysander) "Good night, sweet friend: Thy love ne'er alter till thy sweet life ends!"
  
• Group 3~
  Lysander: (to Demetrius) "Demetrius be not so -- For you love Hermia. In Hermia's love I yield you up my part: And yours of Helena to me bequeath, whom I do love, and will do till my death."
  Demetrius: (to Helena) "O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?"
  Helena: (to Demetrius) "O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent to set against me for your merriment. If you were civil and knew courtesy, you would not do me thus much injury."
  Hermia: (to Helena) "O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love! What, have you come by night and stol'n my love's heart, Lysander's heart, from me?"
  
• Group 4~
  Lysander: (to Hermia) "And, which is more than all these boasts can be, I am beloved of beauteous Hermia."
  Demetrius: (to Helena) "And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, the object and the pleasure of mine eye, is only Helena."
  Helena: (to Demetrius) "And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, mine own."
  Hermia: (to Lysander) "Lysander has planted the blossom of love in my eye once again."