A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play written by William Shakespeare in 1595 - 1596. Although there were some ill-conceived notions about fairies during Elizabethan society, the society that this play was written in, Shakespeare goes against those notions. Shakespeare portrays fairies in a different light that allows him to use comedy as a technique to develop the play. Dreams were not only an element seen throughout the play but also an attribute that people of Elizabethan society had lots of beliefs on. In the play, elements such as fairies and dreams contribute to a prevalent technique seen throughout the entire play: comedy. By going against what Elizabethan society thought of on topics such as fairies and dreams, Shakespeare is able …show more content…
During Elizabethan society, almost everyone held strong, negative beliefs about fairies. Fairies were often seen as synonymous with the Devil and there were thought to wreak havoc in the lives of people (Oldridge, pg. 2) Of course, religion played a major role in the development of this belief but literature played a major role as well. Although literature associated fairies and the Devil with one another, they weren’t necessarily considered demons themselves. This could be because of all the texts that were written about fairies. One of the earliest works of literature in which fairies are portrayed as other-worldly creatures with bad intentions is a poem by Thomas Churchyard. In this poem, Churchyard tells of a dream he had in which he encounters a fairy queen and this fairy then leads him to a group of women. The women then begin to dance but this dancing turns into something sinister; the women tell the dreamer that God has abandoned him and then quickly retreat back into hell. While Churchyard isn’t a very recognizable author, his poetry was the very start of the negative views on fairies. By the late sixteenth century, many Christians believed that fairies were creatures filled with malice and the only way to get rid of them is to preach the word of God. It was this point that people began to see fairies as evil beings; they were seen as beings who wanted to corrupt people and to stray them from God. Because of literature that was similar in nature to Churchyard’s poetry in nature, Elizabethan culture saw fairies as evil and this was the environment in which Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Fairies play a prominent role in the play and they are also the source of some confusion and dispute between the characters of the
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.
William Shakespeare wrote the play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, sometime in the 1590's. The play, a romantic comedy, portrays the adventures of four young lovers, an amateur actor's group, their interactions with a Duke and Duchess, and with fairies in a moonlit forest. Although Shakespeare used certain themes in this play to portray Greek aspects, the reflection of Elizabethan England is dominant in several different ways. Shakespeare's use of fairies, the way women are treated, and the use of a class system in this play are all perfect examples of how very Elizabethan this beloved tale actually is.
The fairies and the fairy realm have many responsibilities in this play. The most important of which is that they are the cause of much of the conflict and comedy within this story. They represent mischievousness and pleasantry which gives the play most of its emotion and feeling. They relate to humans because they make mistakes but differ in the fact that they do not understand the human world.
During the late 15th century by William Shakespeare, or more commonly known as Shakespeare wrote the play A Midsummer's Night Dream. Shakespeare was both a playwright and a poet, producing many famous pieces such as Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and the infamous Romeo and Juliet, along with over a hundred sonnets to name a few. In the play A Midsummer’s Night Dream, he writes of four young lovers who wander into the woods, and the trials they endure along the way. Within this story, Shakespeare also shows that it is not possible to control another person's actions because the two characters keep trying and failing to do so.
“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.
Hermia’s speech in Act 2, Scene 2, of Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, contains an abundance of dream imagery. She has awoken from a terrible dream after falling asleep in the forest with Lysander. They were lost and tired so they decided to rest. Lysander wanted to sleep beside her but, she refused since they are not yet married and while they slept Puck applied a love potion on Lysander’s eyes thinking he was Demetrius. Lysander wakes and is repulsed by the sight of Hermia and never wants to see her again because he is now in love with Helena. Hermia awakes from her terrible dream and retells it thinking that Lysander is nearby listening. Then she realizes that he is not there and she does not see him anywhere. Hermia expresses the sentiment that she will find Lysander or she will surely die. She stated,
Midsummer Night’s Dream mainly depicted the baffling journey of four Athenian young lovers, and a frivolous group of actors who unwittingly interacted with the Duke, Duchess, and somehow fairies. Being that the story took place in an eerie forest in Athens, there was a fight betwixt the fairy king himself and his lovely wife Titania, which had an impact on the environment. To win back the devotion of his wife Oberon showed her how fortuitous she was by making her fall in love with a weaver who was transformed into
A Midsummer’s Night Dream is a romantic comedy that Shakespeare had created in the sixteenth century. All the events that happen in the play and the movie are happening around the wedding of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, former Queen of the Amazons.
A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare demonstrates that imagination is an amazing thing, as it allows the audience to think differently and be unique and form new ideas, concepts and images. Shakespeare’s play uses an immense amount of imagination to help develop the story create conflicts and complications to engage the audience. Imagination is also used in the way Shakespeare presents the play to the audience and in the way the characters are presented.
Have you ever heard a quote that really stood out to you. And then you went and told you friends that quote and they liked it. And they told people who told other people and then everyone liked. Eventually, you know with all the social media programs these days, its going to end up on facebook or instagram and even more people are going to find out about it. Thats one way a quote can become famous but another way is if it is in a popular movie or book. In this case it is from one of Shakespeare's finest and most known, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the quote “the course of true love never did run smoothly” applies to the different people in the book: the first couple is Hermia and Lysander, Second Demetrius and Helena, and finally Pyramus and Thisbe.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" was written in the early part of William Shakespeare's life in 1596. It was written to be played at artistic carnivals and tried to please all parts of society; the carpenters to please all the galleries,
Shakespeare’s usage of metaphor and simile in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is best understood as an attempt to provide some useful context for relationships and emotions, most often love and friendship, or the lack thereof. One example of such a usage is in Act 3, Scene 2 of the play. Here, the two Athenian couples wake up in the forest and fall under the effects of the flower, thus confusing the romantic relationships between them. Hermia comes to find her Lysander has fallen for Helena. Hermia suspects that the two have both conspired against her in some cruel joke, and begins lashing out against Helena. She says “We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, / Have with our needles created both one flower, / Both one sampler sitting on one cushion, / Both warbling of one song, both in one key; / As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, / Had been incorporate. So we grew together, / Like a double cherry, seeming parted; / But yet a union in partition / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem: / So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; / Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, / Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.” (Shakespeare 2.3.206-13). Shakespeare writes this list of vibrant metaphors to establish the prior relationship between these two characters and to make it evident how affected Helena is by this unexpected turn of events, as well as to add a greater range of emotion to the comedy, thereby lending it more literary and popular appeal.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that utilises comedy to convey complex ideas that are seen throughout the play, concepts like the jealousy Helena has towards Hermia, Egeus’s strong hostility towards Hermia and Lysander’s relationship and unrequited love. He uses comical tools like unconscious irony and hyperbole to turn rather difficult topics into humorous representations of them. Events like how Puck thinks Titania had fallen in love with him, not knowing he was bearing the head of an ass, are portrayed in a humorous way so the viewer understands the meaning, but sees it as a light- hearted narrative. Shakespeare carefully uses comedy that does not overpower the meaning of the play, but puts a completely different perspective on some of the themes.
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