Tuesday, March 22, 2016

We see word-play on the word "fair" in the short exchange between Hermia and Helena in Act I Scene I of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Try your hand at some word-play. You can just go at it on the page if you would like. Or, think of a scene, situation, or circumstance. Then, think of a few words you might associate with that scene, situation, or circumstance and see if you can’t situate some of the scene’s circumstances in a circumstance or situation that’s not been seen before.

As I understand this, you are being asked to create a pun on a word that can have two meanings, and then add a scene to A Midsummer Night's Dream, or perhaps create just any scene, using that punning word.
Three words jump to mind that might be applied to A Midsummer Night's Dream. The first would be to pun on see/sea since the play illustrates that love is blind. Titania and her entourage, including Bottom with his ass's head, could fly to the seashore. One of Titania's fairies could then have fun with the wordplay of Titania seeing the sea, but not seeing who she fallen in love with, i.e., Bottom. Perhaps Bottom could be swimming and the fairy could comment that in seeing the sea Titania sees not what is in the sea.
Another punning word that could apply to the play could be spectacles. Perhaps we could imagine Helena (or any character) donning spectacles, as in eyeglasses, but still not be able to perceive the spectacles, as in events, unfolding before her because she is blinded by love.
We could also think of glass as both a mirror (looking glass) that a character blinded by love could look into but not see through and the clear, see-through glass of a window. The could work well with the idea of love being narcissistic or reflecting back to people, like a looking glass, what they want to see, rather than being a clear pane through which they see reality.
I hope this helps in getting you started with thinking of words that have more than one meaning in which the meanings can be played off each other.

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