In our scene we decided to change some of Bottoms lines to reflect his personality. We made him forget the name Thisbe in the scene and Quince would say it for him. We thought this would be good because Bottom is always thinking about himself i.e Pyramus. This means he doesn't pay attention to the name Thisbe.

Learning our lines was made even more difficult then normal because Shakespearians did not speak like we did. One of the ways I dealt with this paraphrasing. Paraphrasing was writing out our lines in modern day English. This helped me learn my lines by learning their meanings. I felt that this really helped me learned my motivations and what my character was trying to achieve in each of his lines. Paraprhasing also made me feel more confident because even if I forget my lines, I knew what my character was trying to say.

In our scene we thought that using clothes and props and costumes would help us reflect out characters. We made bottom wear brown to reflect the fact that he would become a donkey. We made snug wear earthy yellow because he was going to turn into a lion. We made Puck wear black because he is dark and menacing. We did this because we thought that it suited Shakespeare's style of hinting things before they happened and it just made our scene more rich.

In rehearsal we decided to have Titania on stage before we came in. We had her go on and lie underneath a table that the mechanicals would keep their almanac on. We thought this would be good because it makes hear somewhat concealed as she would want to be when she was sleeping. Also as there was stuff going on above her, this would add to the effect of her being invisible. We felt this was right as when Titania wakes up she says' what angel wakes me from my flowery bed'. Firstly this could've been ironic but secondly we believed that flowers meant on the ground and because the fairies had such a deep connection to nature, they would sleep on the ground. Another reason we thought this would work is because we thought that it would give her low status, sleeping under a table and this correlated with the fact that Oberon was about to humiliate her so she would have low status while she was betrothed to a donkey.

My view of Bottom as a character changed greatly as we further studied the play. We watched several portrayals of him and even saw a real live play. This changed my view as I thought him just to be a dumb guy with high self esteem. The portrayal that changed my view the most was Kevin Kline's Bottom. This was because it showed me that Bottom was a much more complex character and he only had high self esteem because he was good at weaving and every told him so. After this I developed my own version of him which is not very self aware, but aware of others, respected by his friends, but not always taken seriously.

Originally I thought that the when Titania said 'thou art as wise as thou art beautiful' it meant something completely different to what it did. I thought that Bottom thought that she was calling him beautiful and wise. This changed when I thought about the way he responded with 'not so neither'. I figured out that he didn't know that Titania was in love with him. He thought she was calling him ugly and stupid. This gave me some insight and changed the way felt about Bottom because this suggests that he is used to people calling him ugly and stupid.

Studying this unit changed the way I felt about Shakespeare. Most portrayals is of his plays being boring and a waste of time but now I think the opposite and I will always be enthusiastic about one of the greatest writers of all time.