A Midsummer Night's Dream

Hermia and Lysander’s relationship is difficult due to Athenian law and Egeus. The Athenian law states that a father has the power to decide who his daughter marries. Egeus states to the Duke of Athens,

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has several themes but there is one that stands out to me. There are many conflicts throughout the play but a majority of them are caused by one character. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare brilliantly displays how love is never clear cut by his use of Puck’s character (who is always muddling everything up).

Demetrius’ character is best emphasized, directly and indirectly, through the dialogue and actions of himself and those around him. In Act One, Scene One, after Egeus explains to King Theseus that he wants his daughter, Hermia, to marry Demetrius instead of Lysander, Demetrius demands that Lysander relinquish his love and “control” over Hermia because marrying her is his “certain right”. After the demand, King Theseus is reminded that Demetrius “made love to…Helena and won her soul” and that Helena still “devoutly dotes” over him. In this scene,

Exposition: The story is set in Athens, Greece. Theseus and Hippolyta are both noble and wealthy and they were planning their wedding in 4 days. Hermia and Lysander were in love, but another guy named Demetrius was also in love with Hermia. Helena loves Demetrius but is all alone, because he does not love her. Egeus who is Hermia’s father is not happy about her relationship with Lysander, he wants her to marry Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander plan to run away to another city to be married. Helena tell Demetrius the plan hoping that he will forget Hermia and fall in love with her.

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,

Have you ever heard a quote that really stood out to you. And then you went and told you friends that quote and they liked it. And they told people who told other people and then everyone liked. Eventually, you know with all the social media programs these days, its going to end up on facebook or instagram and even more people are going to find out about it. Thats one way a quote can become famous but another way is if it is in a popular movie or book. In this case it is from one of Shakespeare's finest and most known, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the quote “the course of true love never did run smoothly” applies to the different people in the book: the first couple is Hermia and Lysander, Second Demetrius and Helena, and finally Pyramus and Thisbe.

Another crucial aspect of love and the disorder that often follows in its wake is the idea of irrationality. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses the motif of dreams to show how irrationality and love are connected. By Act 5, Scene 1, all of the play’s romantic conflicts have finally been resolved. As Theseus and Hippolyta reflect on the tumultuous relationships of Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena, it becomes clear that they each have a different opinion on the subject. Although the young Athenians claimed to have awoken from a strange dream to find their conflicts resolved, Theseus and Hippolyta are not so sure whether to believe their story. Theseus, the more cynical of the two, believes that the four lovers were simply driven to insanity by love, and that the fairy world was probably just a figment of their imaginations. Hippolyta, on the other hand, believes that there is more than meets the eye to this story, and that it could be the truth. Both give interesting reasons for their viewpoints.

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

Everyone in this play is in love but not all of them have it go their way. Lysander is one of the lovers who loves Hermia but can not marry her because of Hermias father Egues. Egues does not agree to the marriage of Lysander and Hermia and wants her daughter to marry Demetrius. Later on Theseus the king of Athens finds out that hermia is not obeying her father and tells her to obey her father or become a nun. Hermia then plans with Lysander in the woods to run away from Athens to Lysanders aunts house outside Athens. As they meet in the woods they start to run away from Athens, as they are running away from Athens they lose their way so they decide to spend the night in the woods. When Demetrius is looking in the for Hermia and Lysander,

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the audience was able to clearly see numerous incongruities between four primary characters: Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena. These individuals are representative of the human race; they are irresolute, disobedient, yet ultimately endearing and relatable. The befuddled lovers are the laughing stock of not only

The hilarious play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, tells the twisted love story of four Athenians who are caught between love and lust. The main characters: Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius are in a ‘love square’. Hermia and Lysander are true love enthusiasts, and love each other greatly. Demetrius is in love with Hermia, and Helena, Hermia’s best friend, is deeply and madly in love with Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander try to elope in the woods because Egeus, Hermia’s father, disapproves of Lysander. Helena, hearing about their plans, tells Demetrius, and all four of them end up in the woods where Lysander’s quotation, “The course of true love never did run smooth”(28), becomes extremely evident due to several

Characters within the play also demonstrate compassion towards love. After seeing Helena scorned by Demetrius, Oberon feels sympathetic towards her. As a result of this he says to Puck, “A sweet Athenian lady is in love /With a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes.”

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, 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.

Theseus says things that are nice or complementive. He says, “Fair lovers, you are fortunately met: Of this discourse we more will hear anon. Egeus, I will overbear your will.”(4.1.l180-182) He is telling them that they have met at a convenient time and that they will hear more of what happened shortly. The nice thing about what he said is that he won’t have to kill anyone on that day and that the two pairs of lovers will be wed together. Also, after each part in the play, he compliments each actor for their performance. Oberon says things that are mean or on his mind. He says, “Tarry, rash wanton: am I not thy lord?” (2.1.63) First, he calls her a tar like presumptuous woman that displays a lack of consideration of the possible consequences of an action. Next, he implies that he is above her by calling himself her lord. This is just a mean thing to say to anyone and the fact that he said it to his wife just amplifies that what he says to others is awful. Oberon also says, “This is thy negligence: still thou mistakest, Or else committ'st thy knaveries wilfully.”(3.2.345-346) He is scorning Puck at this point because of the mistake he had made in the description of Demetrius. He assumes that Puck did this on purpose to cause the couples harm. He doesn’t even suspect that his vague description was the problem. What a person says to others can reveal a lot that might otherwise not be