A Midsummer Night's Dream

The physical setting of the play also has strong sexual implications. The play begins in Athens, a city where societal barriers and codes regulate the behaviour of the characters. The play soon moves from this stoic setting into one that is more mysterious - the woods. This is the place where the fairies and mythical creatures live. It is the domain of fantasy and illusion. With the change of setting

In the first part of the play Egeus has asked the Duke of Athens, Theseus, to rule in

The story of A Midsummer Night's Dream was mainly about love and its abnormal dealings. In the play, Shakespeare tried to show that love is unpredictable, unreasonable, and at times is blind. The theme of love was constantly used during the play and basically everything that was said and done was related to the concept of love and its unpredictable ness. Shakespeare made all of the characters interact their lives to be based on each other’s. At first, everything was very confusing, and the characters were faced with many different problems. In the end, however, they were still able to persevere and win their true love, the love they were searching for in the first place.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare is the story of a group of workmen preparing a play for the Duke, fairies in the forest and four Athenian lovers. This different groups of characters’ lives become entwined from the magic of the fairies. Shakespeare succeeds to show the strengths and flaws of human behavior through Nick Bottom, Helena and Lysander. The characters show the flaws of cockiness, selfishness, continuous complaint, disloyalty and aggression. On the other hand, the characters are also shown to have the human strengths of problem solving, persistence, loyalty and comforting others. Shakespeare noticeably makes characters who emphasise the flaws and strengths of human behavior

The quotation, pre-reading questions, and vocabulary in the anticipation guide for A Midsummer Night’s Dream paint a certain picture in my mind as to what this play is going to be about. Looking at the vocabulary, most of the words relate to love, authority and formal ceremonies, which may depict that this play is a love story. The quote stated says “The course of love never did run smooth”, this is also evidence that the play might relate to love, but it also states that there might be a conflict between the two romantically influenced characters. One of the pre-reading questions states “A person can be vain and loveable at the same time.” This may point to the main character(s) feelings about another character. They don’t necessarily like

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is set in ancient Athens and a magical forest populated by devious fairies. This comedy is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. The four interconnecting plots, driven by a series of comical mistakes, are full of rich, memorable characters. You’re in for a truly captivating story about love, magic, dreams and the fine line between fantasy and reality.

A dream is a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occuring in a person’s mind during sleep. Love is a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. Love and dreams go hand in hand and in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love takes on many of the characteristics of dreams and the two are almost indiscernible. Some characteristics of dreams are nightmarish, possibly peaceful, short-lived, exaggerated, able to foretell the future, supernatural, uncontrollable, and that they have no chronological time. Mainly though, dreams are a way for people to picture fantasies and play out uncontrollable actions without fear of consequences. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love is a key recurring topic that can be either good or bad.

The biggest obstacle in this play occurs when the power of love is challenged by authority. The play starts with Theseus, duke of Athens, being eager to marry Hippolyta, who he wooed with his sword in combat. Although Theseus promises Hippolyta that he will wed her “with pomp, with triumph, with reveling,” true love between them is questionable. By starting the play with Theseus and Hippolyta, Shakespeare hints the audience of the authority involved in their marriage and leaves the audience wonder if they actually love each other. The focus is then shifted to the four lovers: Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena - by establishing the story of Hermia being forced by her father, Egeus, to marry Demetrius, when the person she actually wants to marry is Lysander. However, Egeus

In William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” two worlds are distinctly contrasted throughout the play. These worlds serve to be the extremes both in thought and action. One world is the Athenian state; which is governed by order, law and reason; whereas, the forest or fairy world lies within the domain of imagination, where anything is possible. While both worlds are paralleled in the play, they have complex interactions in which the characters succumb to influences to influences from both of them. The ruler’s of these two worlds, Theseus in Athens and Oberon in the Fairy world, play critical roles in the events of the story in which their actions and decisions transform the lives of the young lovers. Theseus’ initial rulings for

In a Midsummer Night’s Dream written by William Shakespeare, the entire play portrays love in several different ways. I do agree with the quote from Lysander, “the course of true love never did run smooth.” (Shakespeare, 1935.) True love has always been something that is cherished more than life itself. However, some people do not want to put in the effort in the relationship because they think things are just supposed to work. This is not the case. True love takes patience, loyalty, commitment, and effort to work. There are several struggles that go in amongst the characters and their struggle to get to where they want to be and with who they want to accomplish things with. In this play, several different kinds of love were portrayed. The three most important kinds, in my opinion, are forced love, romantic love, and family love.

Considered to be one of William Shakespeare's greatest plays, A Midsummer Nights Dream is a ingenious as well as an imaginative tale; but most importantly, its poetic lines and the relationships between various characters contain a message of love. All of the pairs of lovers who get matched eventually become mismatched and rematched in the play which causes conflict between these characters throughout the play. Love is portrayed as the central idea in much of William Shakespeare's writing and undoubtedly plays an essential role in A Midsummer Night's Dream, by Shakespeare. Three themes of love that are found throughout the play are unrequited love, jealous love, and love that’s deemed as forbidden.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that utilises comedy to convey complex ideas that are seen throughout the play, concepts like the jealousy Helena has towards Hermia, Egeus’s strong hostility towards Hermia and Lysander’s relationship and unrequited love. He uses comical tools like unconscious irony and hyperbole to turn rather difficult topics into humorous representations of them. Events like how Puck thinks Titania had fallen in love with him, not knowing he was bearing the head of an ass, are portrayed in a humorous way so the viewer understands the meaning, but sees it as a light- hearted narrative. Shakespeare carefully uses comedy that does not overpower the meaning of the play, but puts a completely different perspective on some of the themes.

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream shows four young lovers navigating their tumultuous romances, the duke preparing for his wedding, a set of fairies intervening with the young lovers, and a play, "The most lamentable / comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus / and Thisbe" (lines 11-13). The duke's wedding, the relationships of the four lovers, the fairies, and the play that is produced are subplots in A Midsummer Night's Dream which provide depth to the play through the parallels and contrasts created. And throughout the play, the theme of appearances not always being reality is stressed through the dream-like atmosphere that is created when characters are found sleeping and magic is used.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play about four Athenian lovers. Theseus listens to both Hermia and her father’s request and he tells her to bend to her father’s will or die due to the old Athenian law. Hermia and Lysander flee Athens, into the domain of the fairy kingdom. At this time, Oberon is in a fight with Titania. This fight is over a human child of Titania’s friend. Oberon tells Puck, one of his loyal servants, to get a flower hit by Cupid’s arrow, and drop the oil into Demetrius’s and Titania’s eyes. However, Puck drops the oil into Lysander’s eyes due to Oberon’s vague description, making him fall in love with Helena and despise Hermia. Titania falls in love Bottom, who has the head of an ass, after Oberon places the oil

A Midsummer Night 's Dream is a play about love. All of its action—from the escapades of Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena in the forest, to the argument between Oberon and Titania, to the play about two lovelorn youths that Bottom and his friends perform at Duke Theseus 's marriage to Hippolyta—are motivated by love. But A Midsummer Night 's Dream is not a romance, in which the audience gets caught up in a passionate love affair between two characters. It 's a comedy, and because it 's clear from the outset that it 's a comedy and that all will turn out happily, rather than try to overcome the audience with the exquisite and overwhelming passion of love, A Midsummer Night 's Dream invites the audience to laugh at the way the passion of love can make people blind, foolish, inconstant, and desperate. At various times, the power and passion of love threatens to destroy friendships, turn men against men and women against women, and through