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Fairies In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream shows four young lovers navigating their tumultuous romances, the duke preparing for his wedding, a set of fairies intervening with the young lovers, and a play, "The most lamentable / comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus / and Thisbe" (lines 11-13). The duke's wedding, the relationships of the four lovers, the fairies, and the play that is produced are subplots in A Midsummer Night's Dream which provide depth to the play through the parallels and contrasts created. And throughout the play, the theme of appearances not always being reality is stressed through the dream-like atmosphere that is created when characters are found sleeping and magic is used. The play-within-the-play complex, sometimes referred to as metatheater (Rosenmeyer), put on by Shakespeare provides irony to the general roles of the audience and the actors. Actors become the stage writes as their …show more content…

Just as Hermia's father Egeus forbids the love of Hermia and Lysander, the play depicting the love of Pyramus and Thisbe shows Pyramus exclaiming unto the night out of sorrow, "O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, / That stand'st between her father's ground and mine" (183-185) because Thisbe's father forbids the love of the couple. And in the form of Hermia and Lysander's covert meeting in the woods for love (I. i. 167), Pyramus and Thisbe meet at the wall (V. i. 204-207). However, the subplots do contrast as Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena's lives end in holy matrimony and Pyramus and Thisbe's lives end in death out of

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