A Midsummer Night 's Dream By William Shakespeare

The play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare, demonstrates the difficulties of human love. Throughout the course of this play, all the lovers were confused, whether it be from the love potion provided by Oberon, the fairy king, or whether it be through natural terms, (those not affected by the potion). In this essay, we will be looking at how Lysander had agreed with this implication of human love being difficult, the scene where all the lovers are confused, and lastly, the time when Helena was furiously jealous of Hermia.

Relationships are a lot like hills, they tend to be traveled up and down. This is shown in William Shakespeare’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Theseus and Hippolyta, who were once enemies are now getting married. Oberon and Titania mutually rule the fairy kingdom and cannot see eye to eye. The intricacy of the love hate relationships helps to form the plot of the entire play and the fine line between the two drives the story to the end.

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”(I.i.240-241) In this quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love is referred to as being blind. In this popular comedy by Shakespeare, Lysander loves Hermia and Hermia loves him back. Helena, whom is Hermia’s best friend, is in love with Demetrius who used to love her,but now loves Hermia. Egeus is Hermia’s father and strongly prefers Hermia to marry Demetrius, although she does not approve. Egeus seeks the help of the Duke of Athens in order to force his daughter into marriage with Demetrius. Love causes the characters of this play to shut out anything and everything besides what they want. The four lovers in this play, Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander find themselves trapped into situations due to their love preferences. In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, the main theme of the story is that love is blind and can take you on a journey of many unexpected turns.

Love has always played a major key role in the lives of everyday people. However, that doesn’t mean that love is easy and goes the way you expect it to. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the author, William Shakespeare, portrays numerous examples of the theme the course of true love does not run smooth. In the play, an Athenian couple love each other, but the father of the girl does not approve the marriage. He wants the girl to marry another man, but that man is loved by the girl’s bestfriend.

The play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, involves several different couples; Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, Helena and Demetrius, Titania and Bottom, and Titania and Oberon. What aspects of love are explored in each of these relationships and what point is Shakespeare trying to make about love. Shakespeare shows love in multiple ways, whether its mature, forbidden, married, spell-bound, or unrequited. By doing this Shakespeare is trying to suggest that love really is an obstacle course that turns us all into madmen.

Finding a metaphor in Shakespeare’s plays is like searching for a book in a bookstore. It is easy to find one, but requires time to fully understand its rich content and significance. In the expository scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , it first seems that Theseus, the Duke of Athens, emphasizes only his authority and Hermia’s inferior, unexperienced status by telling her to “Know of your youth, examine well your blood” (1.1.68). If Hermia would literally inspect the red fluid flowing in her arteries and veins on stage, she would have mistaken the phrase. The blood is rather a complex metaphor which is crucial for the understanding of the comedy. This paper sketches the thesis that the blood-metaphor in AMND represents hierarchies in family and society given by birth as well as the theory of the four humors. In the Early Modern Period, humorism was an approved medical explanation for personal temperaments based on four distinct bodily fluids, of which blood is one. In some Shakespearean tragedies and histories, the blood symbolizes death and guilt following combats and murders. In the comedy AMND however, the conflicts surrounding order and desire do not necessarily result in bloodsheds, but lead to little combats about blood-lines inside the Athenian clans.

Love is an untamed force and a temporary madness. It erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. When one tries to control it, it destroys them. When one tries to imprison it, it enslaves them. The play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a tale involving the control of affection and the way love works itself out between various sets of individuals.

The relationships in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are patriarchal. Even though the lovers try to go against the societal norm by running away to the forest, their inherited characteristics keep them trapped in the patriarchal way. The four lovers, Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrious, present a love that shows how the women remain loyal to their men through testing trials. Titania and Bottom have an unconventional relationship that is caused by love juice which provides the fulfillment of woman to man. Shakespeare uses the relationship between Titania and Bottom to emphasize the man’s status over a woman in a patriarchal society. To do this, he illustrates how a woman should dote upon her man by fulfilling his fantasies and

In Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, love is portrayed as a strange and powerful emotion that causes the characters to act abnormally, strangely and bizarrely, which is shown through their actions. The character’s fall in love, blindly, either at first sight or over time. However, love is complicated and it is something that can transform through time. John Lennon's quote “All you need is love” shows that no matter how you fall in love, it always consumes you and becomes the most important thing to you even if it causes you to act unusually. These actions are demonstrated by the situation of complicated love, forced love, and love at first sight.

Male and female relationships differ a tremendous amount compared to now versus Shakespeare’s time. The obvious answer to many as to how it differs is the superiority of men over women. Of course, it may not be like that now, but way back then to when this play was written, much was different. Shakespeare demonstrates different types of relationships through the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like the couple of Lysander and Hermia, Shakespeare shows an extreme love between a man and woman and how the man guides her important life decisions, but with a stubborn father right by their side. Again through Oberon and Titania, Titania wants to seem powerful and “independent” you could say by disobeying Oberon’s wishes. Shakespeare sort of creates a little battle between two authoritative characters but throughout the play put the male, Oberon, on top. Finally, Shakespeare demonstrates what is called gender role reversal between Helena and Demetrius. Helena instead of being lady-like and reserved, pretty much begs for Demetrius’ attention. Shakespeare makes Helena seem desperate throughout the play exemplifying the male has the most say in what goes on. Through these various male and female relationships, Shakespeare illustrates the overall power of males occurring in his time.

Meeting your truelove sounds like a fantasy, right? It doesn’t seem possible or even attainable in the least this day in time, but Shakespeare’s work has still given us that hope that someday we will be loved the way that we love others themselves. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” it seems as if there is an endearing ending, but so much lies between Act 1 and Act 5 to have it end the way it does. In this play, there is a complicated romance and friendship between four couples that also illustrates sexual desires and a woman’s submission to a man. To further illustrate, we must first start with Act 1, Scene 1 for the first two “lovers” that are introduced.

Hermia is in love with Lysander but her father(Egeus) is telling her she has to marry Demetrius because he’s the one for her and Egeus knows what’s best for his daughter. However, she refuses to marry Demetrius because she hates him. So Egeus went to the Olympus to talk with Theseus about the problem with Hermia. Hermia told Theseus “I may know the worst that may befall me in this case, if I refuse to wed Demetrius” and then he said, “Either to die the death or to abjure forever the society of men”(Shakespeare 1.1.6).Hermia had 3 options to resolve her problem, get married with Demetrius, put to death, or live without a man her whole life...Even though there was this big problem with Hermia and her Father, at the end Hermia married the man she loves because that’s what they finally decided. Everything went pretty well, and they found a solution for what they were struggling

Love does not run smoothly for the lovers in the romantic comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” written between the years 1590–1596 by the prominent, English playwright; William Shakespeare. The play revolves around four lovers that each faces incessant complications for love. Demetrius, Hermia, and Lysander are trapped in a triangle of love in which Demetrius and Lysander both love Hermia, but Hermia’s heart only belongs to Lysander. Helena is not involved in the love triangle, but loves Demetrius, which—traditional to any love predicament—does not love her back. To Demetrius’ avail, Hermia’s father [Egeus] tries to coerce Hermia to marry his choice [Demetrius] or yield to the law of Athens and face the sanction of death or (suggested by

Millennials of today are growing up in a technologically adept time where replication of the latest trends is considered the key to success. Shakespeare, the playwright of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is infamous for his angst and lament, as well as his numerous depictions of love and romance. In his play, one of the most apparent perspectives of love is that genuine love is a force so powerful, that it can not be imitated, replicated or enforced. One of the most profound examples of forced love in the play is exhibited through the relationship between Hermia and Demetrius, two Athenians who are being forced to be married by Hermia’s father, Egeus. In their relationship, only one of the parties is consenting to this arranged marriage:

In A MidSummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, we are introduced to a character named Puck. The character depicted in Shakespeare play is based off of Elizabethan folklore. Puck was one of the most famous figures in English fairy tradition at the time. Puck was seen as a sly and crafty spirit, and is often referred to as Robin Goodfellow. Some sources believe that his roots go back as far as the Greek God Pan and to the Pagan deity, the Green Man. The name, Puck, derives from the Middle English 'pook ' or 'pouke ', another word for an elf or sprite. In early England, the name Puck seems to have been used in association with the Devil, probably through the encouragement of the Church. He was viewed back in that