Question

Write a Transforming Sources Essay Assignment Write a compare-and-contrast essay comparing Ovid’s myth “Pyramus and Thisbe” with the play “Pyramus and Thisbe” enacted in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1. Examine and discuss the similarities and differences between the two versions. Your goal is to explain how Shakespeare transformed the original source. Remember:

● Include an introduction with a thesis statement, a body with supporting evidence, and a conclusion.
● Use textual evidence from both texts to support your points.
● Use transitions to link sections, paragraphs, sentences, ideas, and details.
● Use formal language and an objective tone.
● Choose either block structure or point-by-point structure and use it consistently.
● Proofread your essay for standard grammar, usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. Review Review your work using the online checklist. Submit Your Assignment Follow the instructions in the Graded Assignment to complete your essay and submit it to your teacher for grading

Answer 1

Transforming Ovid Into Shakespeare Shakespeare’s classic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream tells the story of four young lovers,

an upcoming wedding between Theseus and Hippolyta, a group of six men called the mechanicals, and magical fairies experiencing a conflict of their own, all of whom endure most of their journey throughout the play in the forest of Athens. The story consists of numerous parallel plots that all work together to create a story of comedy and serve to demonstrate the complications that love can bring. One of the most comedic and memorable of these parallel plots is the one consisting of the group of blue-collar workers, whose main goal is to put on the tragic play “Pyramus and Thisbe” for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. The mechanicals are a group of amateur actors from around Athens, looking to gain recognition by having their production chosen among several acts for the royal wedding party of Theseus and Hippolyta. Shakespeare based the words, characters, plot, and action of A Midsummer

Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1, in which the mechanicals perform “Pyramus and Thisbe” for Theseus,

Hippolyta, and their wedding guests, on another well-known work: Ovid’s myth of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” whose story forms part of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Both Shakespeare and Ovid tell the tragic story of the demise of the young lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, whose story is one of two young lovers who long to marry against their parents’ wishes and who come to a tragic end in the attempt to do so. However, Shakespeare adapts this story for A Midsummer Night’s Dream play-within-a-play in order to create his own unique literary work. Therefore, while there are many similarities between Shakespeare’s play-with-a-play and its source material, such as the general plot and the characters’

basic situation, Shakespeare transformed the language and tone of Ovid’s myth “Pyramus and Thisbe”

in order to create his own unique literary work in the form of the play “Pyramus and Thisbe” enacted in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and to tell his own version of Pyramus and Thisbe’s tragic love story.