A Midsummer Night's Dream

“Beware of your stereotypes and prejudices, they can trap you in a box and make you miss what life has to offer you”─Med Yones. One has to see past the stereotypes in life, just as one should do for A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. This literature masterpiece entails a quarrel of a pair of lovers caught entangled in a treacherous web of tainted love and magic. This comedy, viewed through the archetypal literary criticism lens─which focuses on the stereotypical aspects─, makes the audience wonder and push beyond the boundaries of the stereotypes with the tale. Combined with its other elements, A Midsummer Night's Dream is more entertaining and meaningful when viewed through the archetypal literary criticism lens; such as in Act 1: scene 1; Act 3: scene 2; and Act 5: scene 1 in both the printed text and the 1999 film versions.

Hermia’s speech in Act 2, Scene 2, of Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, contains an abundance of dream imagery. She has awoken from a terrible dream after falling asleep in the forest with Lysander. They were lost and tired so they decided to rest. Lysander wanted to sleep beside her but, she refused since they are not yet married and while they slept Puck applied a love potion on Lysander’s eyes thinking he was Demetrius. Lysander wakes and is repulsed by the sight of Hermia and never wants to see her again because he is now in love with Helena. Hermia awakes from her terrible dream and retells it thinking that Lysander is nearby listening. Then she realizes that he is not there and she does not see him anywhere. Hermia expresses the sentiment that she will find Lysander or she will surely die. She stated,

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterful piece of literature that both directly and indirectly comments on the reality of control and power in Western cultures. Shakespeare’s ability to depict human nature gives us insight into how English society functioned in his lifetime, but more importantly allows us to analyze our own perspective of ourselves and the world around us. One way Shakespeare articulates his ideas is through well constructed metaphors and similies, resulting in more powerful writing. One very significant metaphor is spoken by Theseus early on in Act 1, scene 1. Egeus has brought his daughter, Hermia, to the royal court to for Theseus’s opinion on Hermia’s marriage. Egeus has arranged for Hermia to marry Demetrius, a very worthy suitor, but Hermia is truly in love with another man, Lysander. This dilemna is explained to Theseus and he states, “To you your father should be as a god;/ One that composed your beauties, yea, and one/ To whom you are but as a form in wax/ By him imprinted and within his power/ To leave the figure or disfigure it” (I.i.51-55). In summary, Theseus is defending Egeus by saying Hermia was created by Egeus and his will determines her fate. Behind this metaphor is a simple idea that proves how a desire to control can have many unintended consequences as well as negative effects. In order to understand this concept more effectively, it is crucial to analyze how influence is structured socially. The quote demonstrates

In the A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare wrote about different aspects of love. Love is viewed as an arranged marriage in this story because Theseus and Hippolyta and Oberon and Titania had the girls parents decision on whom they must marry, however, their reactions to the marriage were much different. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare explores the mature and stable love between Theseus and Hippolyta in contrast with the relationship of Oberon and Titania, that has a negative impact on the world around them. The story contradicts a healthy relationship to an unhealthy relationship by having one couple be so strong whereas the other relationship is so

William Shakespeare masters this art throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, building through his characters’ actions the façade of love as pure and noble, but at the same time dashing this façade by exposing weaknesses and flaws in these characters’ perceptions of love. Shakespeare does not show this irony in individual lines, but painstakingly develops it over entire scenes and acts. Eastman dubs this development “large-scale irony”: an author can create subtle irony throughout his work as a “sustained strategy of indirect attack” (Eastman 126). Throughout his play, Shakespeare uses this long-term, indirectly critical irony to sharpen his assertion that love is not benevolent, but willfully destructive.

“Audiences can gain a better understanding of ways to behave in a specific relationship through comparing past and present representations of them in texts.”

Shakespeare’s usage of metaphor and simile in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is best understood as an attempt to provide some useful context for relationships and emotions, most often love and friendship, or the lack thereof. One example of such a usage is in Act 3, Scene 2 of the play. Here, the two Athenian couples wake up in the forest and fall under the effects of the flower, thus confusing the romantic relationships between them. Hermia comes to find her Lysander has fallen for Helena. Hermia suspects that the two have both conspired against her in some cruel joke, and begins lashing out against Helena. She says “We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, / Have with our needles created both one flower, / Both one sampler sitting on one cushion, / Both warbling of one song, both in one key; / As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, / Had been incorporate. So we grew together, / Like a double cherry, seeming parted; / But yet a union in partition / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem: / So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; / Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, / Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.” (Shakespeare 2.3.206-13). Shakespeare writes this list of vibrant metaphors to establish the prior relationship between these two characters and to make it evident how affected Helena is by this unexpected turn of events, as well as to add a greater range of emotion to the comedy, thereby lending it more literary and popular appeal.

In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare story about romantic desire. Theseus and Hippolyta, are about to be married; both of them are wonderful figures from classical mythology. (Greek Mythology) Theseus is a great warrior, a kinsman of Hercules; Hippolyta is an Amazon warrior-woman, defeated in battle by Theseus. (Theseus and Hippolyta) He was longing for the wedding day, and this is what opens the play and closing the play with their exit marriage bed. (Theseus and Hippolyta).

Shakespeare structures the plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, using techniques such as symbolism and a play within a play to help convey the conflict in the story. Although both plays are extremely different as one is a comedy and the other is a tragedy, the conflict in both stem from love. The solution to the conflict ends drastically different in both plays considering since A Midsummer Night’s Dream is comedy and traditionally ends in marriage and Hamlet is a tragedy which ends in death. Throughout both plays Shakespeare uses symbolism to help develop the conflict within the plays.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of William Shakespeare 's most well-known work, is a comedic play that has more than one plotlines. The play has many themes such as magic, dreams, and contrast. However, there is one theme that is reflected most throughout the play and that is love. In the play, Shakespeare shows us that love isn 't always what it seems to be; he shows us that love can be expressed in many different types. Throughout the play, we see three different types of love, blind love, inconstant love, and cruel love.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the supernatural helps to produce both negative and positive outcomes in the play. The supernatural in A Midsummer Night's Dream is represented through the activity of fairies, magic, and gods such as Cupid. The supernatural works to join the imperfect world of mortals while at the same time upholding the dreamlike state of the ideal world. The conflict begins when Oberon punishes his wife, Titania, for not obeying him and refusing to surrender the Indian boy to him.

A Midsummer Night 's Dream is one of William Shakespeare more popular plays regarding one of the world 's most popular past times - falling in love. It was written in the late 1500 's and "requires a great leap of imagination, back to a time when people believed that creatures they could not see interacted with human beings and helped to shape their lives" (Rahn, par. 8). It takes place, at night, in an enchanted forest

Throughout his works Shakespeare breaks social conventions and hierarchy. He wrote in a time where unmarried people (women especially) were expected to remain chaste. Yet in, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the focus of the play is largely on that of sexual desire. In the Athenian social structure men were the obvious power-holders, but Shakespeare illustrates how a woman’s sexuality can be a source of power over the men who desire them. In this historical context virginity is a desirable trait, losing it would strip noble women of status. Shakespeare is known to punish characters who give in to their desires with the pranks they endure during their pursuit of love. The moon is initially referenced in the play as a metaphor for chastity but, as the play progresses, the moon also becomes a metaphor for madness; particularly madness caused by desire. The concept duality of the moon emphasizes the power disparity between characters who remain chaste and oppose desire, and characters who are controlled by their desires.

In his critical analysis of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, G. K. Chesterton introduces the idea that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not only the greatest piece of literature produced by Shakespeare, but also the greatest psychological analysis. On the surface, A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to be an argument against the idea of eternal love and the societal standard of marriage; but under the surface,

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