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Chaos In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Decent Essays

Many people go through different chaotic experiences in their lives, however, how one decides to restore order to their chaos, is most important. In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, due to simultaneous appearances of chaos throughout the play, it leaves the audience speculating about the order yet to come, thus, developing/strengthening the plot of the play. The various occurrences of order and chaos within the play include the arguments between Titania and Oberon, the unstable love circle between the four lovers and finally the bizarre relationship between Titania and Bottom. To begin with, the first occurrence of order and chaos within the play concerns Oberon and Titania and their quarreling. When the two main powers of the …show more content…

Shakespeare really spends a lot of time developing the chaos of the lovers, making the conflict much more intricate than any of the other cases. Lysander originally loved Hermia but now because of Puck and his potion, Lysander confesses his love for Helena saying “Not Hermia, but Helena I love.”(II.ii.119). Furthermore, Demetrius also falls in love with Helena and this causes many chaotic fights between the four lovers. The chaos is the most magnified here, because of the positive relationship the lovers had before it makes it harder for the audience to process their shocking altercations now. Like always, the restoration of order draws near the end of the play due to Shakespeare needing to develop different conflicts simultaneously. Oberon resolves the chaos by telling Puck to put a juice on Lysanders' eyes in order to reverse his previous spell (III.ii.452), this leaves the love circle altered to everyone’s liking and also resolves the fighting simultaneously. Throughout the play, Shakespeare has shown the audience the relationship between all of the lovers, he intertwines the real world and fairy world in order to effectively develop the plot by having the lovers directly impacted by fairies plan, concurrently, making it the most significant case of order and chaos. The final case of order and chaos that the audience experiences is presumably the …show more content…

The last consequence of the fairy world and real world colliding involve Titania and Bottom. Due to Oberon clouding Titania’s vision and Puck turning Bottom into an ass, it mixes together perfectly, to form a very humorous, yet chaotic situation. This relationship is very important for the structure of the play due to it being it the base for the entire plot. The whole reason Titania and Bottom’s relationship prevails is that Oberon needs a distraction for her, it would make his task much easier to acquire the child if Titania was preoccupied. The main plot revolves around this and soon after, more conflicts follow. This the last conflict that Shakespeare must restore order to, making it a very important moment. Oberon restores order to the situation after he has met his goal, saying “I will release the fairy queen [Squeezing a herb on Titania’s eyes]”(IV.i.69), Titania has no memory of the child or their altercations, therefore their relationship is now as it was before the child. Soon after, Hippolyta makes a remark indirectly addressing the order and chaos within the play,

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