Love, Chaos and Reality: Exploring the connections between imagination, symbolism and love in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare is immersed in magic, symbolism and imagination. Magic is everywhere and everything is affected including fairies, humans and the environment. Hearts are destroyed and repaired during a within an evening. Love is disputed, courted, sought after and finally restored by magic. Representatively, the setting of the play and the changes the characters are presented with can affect the reader’s interpretation and fascination of the play. The symbolism of the setting and the connection the audience is given through the different ideas of love directly impacts the reader’s
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The setting in which Shakespeare placed A Midsummer Night’s Dream directly relates to local events, lore and doctrine. Popular lore at the time the play was written stated that on a midsummer night, people would dream about the person that they were destined to marry (Fischer 2). By using the idea of local lore about dreaming of one’s true love as the play’s plot center, Shakespeare was also nodding to his Neoplatonist audience. According to Jane K. Brown, Neoplatonist doctrine was concerned with the mystery of love and its path to higher knowledge (21). Since love was thought to be the pathway to higher knowledge, Shakespeare then used love to symbolize what the play views to be imagination. This use of love as a vague or “imagined” feeling would have caused debate between the Neoplatonist audiences. Neoplatonist theory states that there are two different types of love – one is sensual and one is spiritual (Brown 22). The theory also states that love is the force that mediates between the world and the divine and allows men to rise above the physical world they can touch and perceive the spiritual world (Brown 23). The pairs of mortals in the play represent the many varieties love can offer. They also represent the emotions and ideas of the Neoplatonist movement. Hermia and Lysander represent the idea of chaste love while Demetrius …show more content…
Change can occur every second dependent on our actions. In the play, magic is used to help the audience simplify and understand the idea of change throughout the plot of the play. Using love/lovers that change quickly and through the idea of magic as a symbol for ever present and ongoing change, Shakespeare assists the audience in identifying with the characters. The use of magic and dreams as a motif can be viewed during Puck’s last speech (Bellringer 216). Puck’s speech states that if the audience does not like the play that the next time it is seen there can be a change (Shakespeare 1211). When Puck addresses the audience he presents the symbolic idea of art to the audience – the concept that art requires an act of imaginative engagement on the part of those who experience it (Fischer 3). With ought imagination this story wouldn’t be possible. The whole story is based upon the myth of discovering your future partner during a precise time frame. The audience’s ability to use their imagination and see what could happen or what might happen enriches the plot. “Art’s power to transform is only as effective as the audience’s ability to distinguish illusion from reality and to bring the possible into being” (Fischer 3). The fairies present to the audience the magic of imagination and love which shows the audience a more complete understanding of the different layers of the
In the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare, three completely different situations that have to do with different topics become intertwined in the magical forest locates in the suburbs of Ancient Athens. Throughout the play, there are many representations of the character’s emotions and feelings, such as jealousy, betrayal, and most importantly, love. The main reason everyone get into their troubles is due to one reason; love. Hermia and Lysander made a decision to elope because of their love for each other; Demetrius chases after her because he loves her; Helena chases Demetrius due to love, etc. In this comedy of Shakespeare’s, love is displayed as something fantastical and bizarre.
Fairies, mortals, magic, love, and hate all intertwine to make A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare a very enchanting tale, that takes the reader on a truly dream-like adventure. The action takes place in Athens, Greece in ancient times, but has the atmosphere of a land of fantasy and illusion which could be anywhere. The mischievousness and the emotions exhibited by characters in the play, along with their attempts to double-cross destiny, not only make the tale entertaining, but also help solidify one of the play’s major themes; that true love and it’s cleverly disguised counterparts can drive beings to do seemingly irrational things.
There are many instances in A Midsummer Night's Dream where love is coerced from or foisted upon unwilling persons. This romantic bondage comes from both man-made edicts and the other-worldly enchantment of love potions. Tinkering with the natural progression of love has consequences. These human and fairy-led machinations, which are brought to light under the pale, watery moon, are an affront to nature. Shakespeare knows that all must be restored to its place under fate's thumb when the party of dreamers awaken.
With its majority of scenes set in a fairy land, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream still feels much more authentic and tangible than many other love stories, such as Romeo and Juliet, because the play greatly exposes the real difficulties of love. Such difficulties come not from external causes, but instead from the dark vision of our own human natures. In real life, the various impediments of love that Lysander and Hermia have mentioned, including “war, death, or sickness,” actually barely exist, but what we do face is the all-thwarting tests given by our own hearts (Shakespeare 1.1.142). To be more specific, in “The Darker Purpose of A Midsummer Night’s
True love’s path is paved with every step. Through the assistance of fanciful elements as well as characters Puck and Oberon, the true message of love in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is revealed. The four lovers know the direction in which their hearts are inclined to turn, but when the love potion is administered, the bounds of their rectangle are thrashed without knowledge or consent. The rapid shifts in affection between the play’s “four lovers” is representative of the idea that love isn’t a conscious choice, but a cruel game in which we are the figurines, being controlled by whomever the player may be, relating the characters’ karmic fates.
Love is a theme which reoccurs through many of Shakespeare’s Plays. In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the theme ‘Love’ is presented from the very beginning in Act 1 Scene 1, through Shakespeare’s use of poetic language, structure and vivid imagery.
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not simply a light-hearted comedy; it is a study of the abstract. Shakespeare shows that the divide between the dream world and reality is inconstant and oftentimes indefinable. Meanwhile, he writes about the power of the intangible emotions, jealousy and desire, to send the natural and supernatural worlds into chaos. Love and desire are the driving forces of this play’s plot, leaving the different characters and social classes to sort out the resulting pandemonium. While the overseeing nobles attack the predicament with poise and logic, the tradesmen and nobles stricken with love recede to foolishness. Yet, it is not the ‘wise’ nobles who find any truth within the haphazard happenings of
Love, a prominent theme in William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” entangles an ensemble of characters into a compelling but also frustrating plot that ultimately questions whether “love at first sight” exists. As someone who doesn’t believe in “true love,” I see the concept of “love at first sight” as an unrealistic physical need that is ultimately a copping mechanism to subdue or numb the outside world. Ultimately, through the characters of Bottom and Titania this falsehood of falling of love at first glance is revealed through their magically developed relationship that occurs when the character of Puck places a “love juice” on Titania’s eyes.
The Theme of Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare In the play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ many aspects of love are explored. In this essay I will be exploring how Shakespeare conveys the theme of love including illusion, confusion, escape, harmony and lust. Historically, it has been suggested that ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was written for a wedding, signifying the importance of love in this play, however there is no real evidence to prove this myth.
Symbolism is highly apparent in the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is no exception. In some instances, symbols actually carry out the role of characters. Shakespeare often writes about love. The love he writes about in his plays take on different forms in each, including themes of love’s difficulty, the forcefulness of love, and the incompatibility of heroism and love, and also including a motif of contrast and symbols of the love potion. As Lysander said in the play, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”
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 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
I will show how love and marriage is viewed in William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The Elizabethan views on love and marriage are different. Some of these ideas are reflected in William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Romantic relationships make up a big part of the play. There are several themes that deserve to be explored, in more detail.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare utilizes mischievous creatures who engage in acts of magic in order to create a contrast between true love, the preferred type of love where lovers share a mutual attraction, and blind love, love where characters crave the love so much that they do not see the flaws in the subject of their affection. Each of these is also compared to marriage, which has societal bindings that most of the characters in the play do not willingly comply to, as they believe that they should follow their heart’s desire—whether their heart be honest or under compulsion. As an audience member, we have the unique perspective of seeing each kind of love in the play and deciding for ourselves, as the upper class did many
Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has often been considered one of the authoritative plays or works on romance. The woods, the weddings, the idea of different laws in those places, and love triangles create a dreamy aura for the viewer of a land where romance is paramount. However, with a closer look at the play, it is seen that Shakespeare encourages the reader to think of love critically. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” readers are made to question the validity of love—what causes it, whether it depends on sex, whether it can be real if a drug causes it, and if the “happiest ending” is truly the happiest.