Midsummer Night's Dream Study Guide

Provide a definition and a sentence for each word as it is used in the line specified. Your sentence must relate to the use of the word in the play. Put the name of the speaker of the line in parenthesis or use the speaker's name in your sentence. If you think there is a pun or play on words, make a note of it. You will have to look these words up in your copy of the play, or you may want to look them up in the e-text,  and you will have to use a dictionary. I have given you line numbers (act, scene, line).

Text used:  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Washington Square Press New Folger Edition, March 1993 (paperback).  Line numbers may vary with different editions.

Laptop classsrooms may want to convert this exercise into a web-based input form (results posted to a web page), discussion (each word could be a thread), or chat. This method would enable a student to profit from the research of all members of the class, while reducing individual work time.

  testy (III, 2, 375):  bad-tempered, ready to fight.  Lysander and Demetrius are the testy rivals because they have gone off to fight over Helena.  (Oberon)    OR  Oberon calls Lysander and Demetrius testy rivals because they have gone off to fight over Helena. (testy is also a pun on testicles so he is also mocking their manhood, as they have mocked each other, and commenting on their hormone levels).

1. to filch (I, 1, 37)

2. abjure (I, 1, 67)

3. to dote (I, 1, 110-111)

4. transpose (I, 1, 239)

5. lamentable (I, 2, 11)

6. beguile (II, 1, 47)

7. chide (II, 1, 150)

8. languish (II, 2, 35)

9. vile (II, 2, 40)

10. disdainful (II, 2, 137)

11. rebuke (III, 2, 45)

12. preposterously (III, 2, 123)

13. derision (III, 2, 125)

14. sojourned (III, 2, 174)

15. engilds (III, 2, 191)

16. scorn (III, 2, 226)

17. loathed (III, 2, 275)

18. dotage (IV, 1, 48 - there is a pun here)

19. vexation (IV, 1, 70)

20. discord (IV, 1, 122)

Least Tern

Elizabeth Sky-McIlvain