Michael Robil
10 December 2017
Professor Seal
Live Theatre Critique of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
If there was no such thing as sympathy, empathy, or love in our world, it would be a hard place to live. If there was no hard law or reason in our world, it would be a crazy place to live. Neither of these worlds would be anybody’s first choice as a home - it's just common sense take away either of these two fundamental aspects of life, and everything is immediately chaos. In fact, it is only in a world such as ours, where legal and human emotion work together, that we are happy. In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare recognizes this truth and uses the two settings to represent the city of Athens as law, order, civility, and judgment, while the woods represent chaos, incivility, dreams, and love.
I had the pleasure of seeing one of William Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed beautifully at the Tucker Theatre at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. This performance space looks more like an industrial warehouse than an art house, but walking in we are transformed to the magical land of Midsummer. I chose A Midsummer Night’s Dream play because its major theme is love. There is plenty of comedy to entice those who are not interested in love, and there are some fairies. Another theme is friendship. Friends and what they think and say are extremely important. Most will have had some experience of two
Throughout the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare uses both fate and free will to present his philosophy towards the nature of love. The characters struggle through confusion and conflicts to be with the one they love. Although the course of their love did not go well, love ultimately triumphs over all at the end of the play. The chaos reaches a climax causing great disruption among the lovers. However, the turmoil is eventually resolved by Puck, who fixes his mistake. The confusion then ends and the lovers are with their true love. Throughout the play Shakespeare's philosophy was displayed in various scenes, and his concept still holds true in modern society.
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.
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.
Empathy is stronger than sympathy. Humans are more likely to connect emotionally when they’ve been through the same situation themselves. Shakespeare’s works effectively use this with easily relatable and ongoing themes encompassing love and revenge. This further evokes feelings that resonate with readers and cause his literature to be celebrated. Besides these basic emotions and hate, he touches on more general points and illustrates broad speculations. His play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be a portrayal with the turmoil in the relationships between 4 lovers and many fairies. Originally, their connection contained fondness that could truly be considered radiant, yet it was quickly disrupted and brought to an end. This is depicted by the
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.
William Shakespeare starts with a seemingly unresolvable conflict in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The main characters are lovers who are either unrequited in their love or hassled by the love of another. These lovers are inevitably paired. How does Shakespeare make this happen? He creates many subplots that, before long, are all snarled up into a chaotic knot. So, what actions does Shakespeare take to resolve these new quandaries? He ends up trusting a single key entity with his comedy. It’s only then that he introduces a special character into his world: a mischievous fairy whom is known by the name of Puck. Puck is the catalyst for all these subplots and, indeed, for the entirety of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Try to take Puck
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.
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
Imagery is an important factor to understanding this play, it is used for language and description that appeals to the five senses. Nature is one of the key setting for this play, it symbolizes beauty and represents time and disorder. For the collage many pictures were used to symbolize these, one of the pictures included a beautiful woman this is to showcase beauty. In "Midsummer Night's Dream" Lysander compares Helena to tiery stars in a night sky, William Shakespare uses nature to describe the beauty of many females in the play. Demetrius also compares Helena's lips to cherries and her hands to pure white snow, "Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!, That pure congealèd white, high Taurus' snow,"(Act 3 Scene 2), this shows the relationship between nature and beauty as nature's characteristics are being used to describe Helena's beauty in the play. The imagery of nature also represents time as the waxing and waning moon signifies morning, the collage showcases many pictures of natures beauty and the different seasons in the collage represent the different days and time. The clock in the collage is used to represent time shown in the play, "Four days will quickly steep themselves in night. Four nights will
What literary criticism lens is most effective in creating meaning and entertainment throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has several characters involved in a love triangle. Many scenes in the story involves power being used or taken away and use of money. Throughout the play, readers and viewers experiences Hermia’s power is being taken away by her father, Eugues,which is her kindred, not letting her marry the man she truly loves,Lysander. Later throughout the story, Robin, character from the story contains a enthrall love juice that has power and makes another character from the story, Titania, fall in love with a donkey.The marxist literary criticism lens is the most effective in creating meaning and entertaining readers and viewers in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The supernatural world is rather distinct to that of the human world entrenched in societal standards and boundaries. Shakespeare’s play, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, explores this concept, particularly through the use of Puck. In agreement to Harold Bloom’s statement, the following essay will analyse how Puck is significant because, by being so disparate, he is able to show the limitations of the human. This will be done through, first, exploring a definition of the human in relation to the supernatural. Subsequently, the essay will use a Freudian lense to analyse the morality of Puck and, lastly, the essay will focus on Puck’s physical characteristics as well as his ability to span across boundaries in the play and the metatheatrical realm.
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
Throughout history literature has changed into many different forms and styles, it has also stayed the same in many different ways, literary techniques and elements are key to a good piece of writing, a perfect example that shows us just this is in, A Midsummer Nights Dream, where we will further explore the different literary elements that were used most notably the plot. The plot of a story lays out the foundation and the background for the entire play to come, we'll compare and contrast this element and look at the different sub elements which are produced. We will define similarities and difference in these elements form both the play o the film. Taking a look at things such as climax, play incidents, and the conflict will all give us
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.
5. She decides to enter a nunery and live alone if she cannot marry Lysander.