These two loving couples reveal their special characters most vividly by means of their contrasting and supplementary relations to each other. Show how Benedicke and Beatrice do not throw Claudio and Hero too much in the shade by their superior brilliancy, because through the love of the minor couple their own love is enabled to ripen. Is their character heightened or lessened in wit and individual interest by love? The minor characters: Show how the adversity of the family brings out the heroic element lying unobserved in Brother Anthony of the "dry hand," and kindles his philosophy into something martial. The merry maids, Ursula and Margaret and their light-hearted parts in the plot. QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION Beatrice "is a tarter,--and, if a natural woman, is not a pleasing representative of her sex." She "will provoke her Benedicke to give her much and just conjugal castigation," says Campbell. Is he right, and will Benedicke feel so?--or is Swinburne right, who says she is "a decidedly more perfect woman than could properly or permissibly have trod the stage of Congreve or Molière" and who speaks of her "light true heart"? Is the superficial Claudio worthy of Hero? Are the faults in the plot of the Play, such as are necessitated by the design of using the characters themselves and their "noting" of one another as the source of events, and, therefore, in the last analysis not faults, a study of their relation to the design leading us, as Hartley Coleridge puts it, never to censure Shakespeare without finding reason to eat our words? A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS DREAME Having read "A Midsommer Nights Dreame" as a whole, if it be not already fresh in the mind, or, if possible, having seen it acted, then consider more carefully the characteristics of its dramatic structure, studying the plot and progress of the story as it is unfolded act by act, also the sources, the characters, and so forth, as suggested in the following study. ACT I THE CROSSED LOVERS Sum up the incidents and characters introduced in the first Act and ascertain which are most important in influencing the rest of the story.