Question

 WILL GIVE BRAINEST FIRST PERSON!!!!! How does Shakespeare use LANGUAGE and WORD CHOICE to reflect the characterization and social status of the three groups of characters in the play (Athenians, Fairies, and Actors/Laborers).
Use the RACE method to construct your answer and be sure to include specific details and examples from the text. Also follow proper grammar and capitalization rules, as you will lose points if you do not.

Answer 1

You probably noticed that there's a major social divide in Athens, where people are divided into hierarchical groups: royalty (Theseus and Hippolyta), nobility (Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Egeus), and commoners (the "Mechanicals" or craftsmen who perform a play at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding). Obviously, those at the top have a lot more power than the characters at the bottom of the social ladder.

The upper-class characters are also a lot more educated, and the play suggests that this makes them better able to appreciate art and culture, unlike the "rude Mechanicals" who bumble their way through a performance of a classic story. At one point, Egeus says the craftsmen are "hard-handed men that work in Athens here. / Which never laboured in their minds til now" (5.1.76-77).

We also want to point out that the play's division of power isn't limited to Athens—even in the fairy world King Oberon and Queen Titania are elevated above regular old sprites (like Puck) and the fairies who live to serve them. To some extent, all of this is a reflection of the social hierarchy in Shakespeare's England, which also consisted of royals, nobles, and commoners.

Answer 2

When Shakespeare first arrived in London in the tardy 1570s or early 1580s, dramatists inditing for London's incipient commercial playhouses (such as The Curtain) were cumulating two different strands of dramatic tradition into an incipient and distinctively Elizabethan synthesis. Antecedently, the most mundane forms of popular English theatre were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, celebrating piety generally, use personified moral attributes to urge or injuctively authorize the protagonist to optate the virtuous life over Evil. The characters and plot situations are largely symbolic rather than authentic. As a child, Shakespeare would likely have optically discerned this type of play (along with, perhaps, mystery plays and miracle plays