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A Midsummer Night's Dream Research Paper

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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 …show more content…

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

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