Athena

According to Titania, her fight with Oberon is messing with the natural world.  Here, Titania describes how heavy mists have been pulling water from the sea and then dumping them in the rivers, causing them to overflow.

RALPH 

As she describes that process, she refers to the rivers as starting out as little, insignificant rivers that become proud and arrogant ones.

ATHENA

If you think about it, it’s a little strange to call a river proud, as we don’t tend to think of rivers as having human feelings like pride.  Attributing human qualities to non-human things is a literary device called ‘personification.’

RALPH

Shakespeare uses the device of personification in all of his plays, but it seems particularly common in Midsummer -- which makes sense, as a lot of the magical quality of the woods is precisely because it seems to be animated by lots of human-like things.

ATHENA

Actually, Ralph -- this might be a good time to explain the difference between the literary device of personification, and the literary device of anthropomorphism, which can be a little confusing.

RALPH

Good idea, Athena. Both literary devices involve attributing human characteristics to non-human things -- and you can see that in the names of the devices themselves: in the word anthropomorphism, ‘anthro’ means ‘human’.

ATHENA

And in the word personification, well, you can see the word ‘person.’

RALPH

To help me remember the difference between the two devices, I like to focus on the ‘morphism’ part of ‘anthropomorphism’.  One meaning of ‘morph’ is ‘shape’ of ‘form’ -- so anthropomorphism means having a human shape.

ATHENA

Titania’s fairies, for example, tend to be things found in nature that have taken on the form or shape of a human being -- like Peaseblossom, for example.  Peaseblossom is the blossom from a pea plant, but in the form of a human being … or fairy.

RALPH

“Personification” doesn’t involve such a big transformation.  Personification just gives human qualities to non-human things, and not the shape or form of being human -- as in calling a swollen river ‘proud’ or ‘arrogant’, which is what Titania does here.

RALPH

You know what I was thinking, Athena…

ATHENA

Uh oh.

RALPH

I was thinking that the river had grown too big for its beaches [PAUSE]

Get it?  Too big for its beaches. [PAUSE]  Britches… beaches.

ATHENA

And that, students, is what we call a play on words, or a pun.  And there are both good puns and bad puns.

RALPH

Pretty funny, if you ask me!

ATHENA

I think we should leave the puns to Shakespeare from here on out.

RALPH

Oh… okay -- but sometimes they’re hard to resist, like, you know… when you get in the flow…  ha ha…