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 …show more content…
Here, the structure and rhyme scheme of the lovers’ lines reveals Shakespeare’s underlying meaning for this otherwise playful comedy. Most of the lines between the lovers in the woods are heroic couplets, rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. Being nobles, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena speak in the formal, intellectual iambic pentameter; yet, love has left them acting foolish and silly, as shown through the constant rhymes reminiscent of a juvenile love poem. The couplets dismantle the formality and intellectual aspect of the lovers’ language, as the lovers rhyme lines including Helena’s “No, no I am as ugly as a bear,/For beasts that meet me run away for fear” (Shakespeare II.ii.100-101). This structure creates the chaotic, comedic tone of the scene, which ultimately leaves the lovers looking like fools lost in delirium as they run about the woods. Yet, emerging from the woods in Act 3, Demetrius has been detached of his previous life of delusion, saying that it is as if he has recovered from a sickness and now can properly taste. Finally disenchanted with Hermia, Demetrius has realized his true love for Helena. Meanwhile, Lysander and Hermia reunite after splitting earlier in the woods. It was not the lawful decree of the logical Theseus that concluded the primary conflict of this play. The illogical lovers with their heroic couplets ultimately created two stable couples out of the abstract social
In his comedic play, A Midsummers Night Dream (1595), William Shakespeare utilizes the enchanting adventures of young Athenian lovers and a group of low-class rudimentary actors and their shared experiences with supernatural creatures to portray the opportunity of being in command of their destiny. By presenting conflicts to these three diverse realms, Shakespeare allows these characters to connect despite their hierarchical distinctions to reveal their determination to conquer their adversity. He uses dramatic irony, metaphor, and symbolism to heighten the audience's awareness of their self-determination and their firm control on their future. Shakespeare inspires the public by instilling in them that despite their challenging circumstances, they can still be masters of their own fate, bestowing a feeling of newfound hope and freewill.
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.
Love is a timeless topic which Shakespeare explores in depth in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream “. Shakespeare utilizes the format of a play within a play to communicate the complexities of love. Love is a force that characters cannot control. The play includes scenes of lovers searching for fulfillment in the arms of characters who are unavailable. The magic love potion wreaks havoc between actual lovers and it is clear just how negatively it is portrayed. The entire play revolves around the difficulties of maintaining love and how foolish and insecure the pursuit of love can make us. It also touches on the fickleness of love, that love can be
Love is such an abstract and intangible thing, yet it is something that everyone longs for. In Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the difficulty of love is explored through the obstacles that characters have to face while pursuing their loved ones. Those characters that are in love in the play were conflicted with troubles; however, the obstacles of love do not seem to stop them from being infatuated with each other. The concept of true love is examined throughout this play. By creating obstacles using authority and a higher power, Shakespeare examines the power of love. Through Hermia and Lysander’s loving words, it is reasonable to conclude that love conquers all if you believe in it.
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.
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.
“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.
Mandy Conway Mrs. Guynes English 12 16 March 2000 A Critical Analysis of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is "A Midsummer Night's Dream." They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare's comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play-with-in-a-play, which master writers only write successfully. Shakespeare proves here to be a master writer. Critics find it a task to explain the intricateness of the play, audiences find it very pleasing to read and watch. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a
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.
In a wild, comedic and magical series of events of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, one of the most salient elements of this play is the contrast that is established between the “real" world and a world inhabited by fairies, sprites, and other magical beings and forces. In this essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you should explore both the divide and the overlap between these two distinct realms and the appearances versus reality of the world these characters inhabit in the play. You will also discover ways that it reveals the character’s true nature. In doing so, the function of the magical world as a contrast to the “real" world is identified and analyzed. For this argumentative essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare argues that the primary function of this magical world evokes the different aspects and true desires that revolve around love through psychoanalysis. Which is, after all, the subject of the play; which is also subject to forces that are often beyond the capacity of humans to understand them. We will see the true meaning of the story through psychoanalytic theory which allows the audience to delve deeper within the unconscious minds of the characters.
The distinction between reality and dreams can be a fine line, often confounding our perceptions of what is real and what simply appears to be. Shakespeare’s mystical play A Midsummer Night’s Dream examines this concept as the worlds of law and desire struggle against each other. The four main storylines of the play: the royal wedding, the four lovers, the fairies, and the rude mechanicals quickly become entangled in a mix of magic and love. At the head of this chaos is Puck, the fairy servant who successfully wreaks havoc on the characters of the play before restoring order by the play’s conclusion. Along the way, the audience is captivated by the drama of the intertwining storylines as they try to determine which of the play’s numerous realities
Society today encourages rationality in nearly every situation. That being said, irrational behavior is tolerated today as much as it was in the time of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. One does not have to go far to realize this fact – consider the reality television shows today (ex. Jersey Shore, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, The Bachelor, etc.) The reason behind the popularity of these ridiculous shows is quite simple: people find entertainment in watching others make fools out of themselves! Shakespeare was quite aware of this in his writing of Midsummer, with the characterization of Helena, the absurd quarreling between Oberon and Titania, and the foolish love of Hermia and Lysander.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare easily blurs the lines of reality by inviting the audience into a dream. He seamlessly toys with the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Among the patterns within the play, one is controlled and ordered by a series of contrasts: the conflict of the sleeping and waking states, the interchange of reality and illusion, and the mirrored worlds of Fairy and Human. A Midsummer Night's Dream gives us insight into man's conflict with characteristics of human behavior.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often read as a dramatization of the incompatibility of “reason and love” (III.i. 127), yet many critics pay little attention to how Shakespeare manages to draw his audience into meditating on these notions independently (Burke 116). The play is as much about the conflict between passion and reason concerning love, as it is a warning against attempting to understand love rationally. Similarly, trying to understand the play by reason alone results in an impoverished reading of the play as a whole – it is much better suited to the kind of emotive, arbitrary understanding that is characteristic of dreams. Puck apologises directly to us, the audience,
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.