Just as A Midsummer Night’s Dream could have easily ended in tragedy, Romeo and Juliet held the promise of a comedy until the point of collision. Romeo and Juliet promised their love to one another in secrecy, with the help of the Nurse and Friar, and united their love in procreation. However, fate was not working towards the benefit of the two lovers. More precisely, the battle between the Montagues and Capulets embodies the possible ending likely for A Midsummer Night’s Dream if Lysander and Demetrius had fought. Without the supernatural intervention of the fairies to interrupt their duel and prevent bloodshed, the play could have easily ended in death just as Romeo and Juliet. In preventing the duel, the fairies were able to tip the scales …show more content…
Heyworth describes that the “staggered time disrupts logical sequence,” (11). By this logic, just as Hermia and Lysander made illogical assumptions that lead to rash actions, Juliet and Romeo were faced with the same problem. However, as opposed to A Midsummer Night’s Dream where the pandemonium is eventually lifted, the play is emerged further into utter confusion with each passing moment: until eventually the two lovers take their lives. Shakespeare shows just how time can be used in a comedic way in the progression of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as it hastily followed the actions of Hermia as her marriage was arranged, the escape with her lover into the fairy realm in an attempt to alter their lives, the events that transpired within the green world, and eventually ended with the resolution. Here time adds to the humor since the young lovers are quickly making choices and continue to bicker with one another. Yet Shakespeare shows just how destructive time can become when used to create a tragic …show more content…
Targoff states that Shakespeare, “intensifies the already powerful sense in the play that love has no meaningful posthumous future” (33). More exactly, when the lovers die there is no exchange of prayers or promises to meet again in the afterlife. In fact, Targoff argues that in this moment “Juliet longs for death itself,” (33) and that her last words are not a romantic stream of conscious confessions to her deceased love, but rather to the knife that will end her
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.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare detailed the story between warring characters. From couple conflicts to love quadrilaterals and the interference of outsiders, the story played out as a comedy, with Helena on the receiving end of a running joke. Introduced in Act One as the jealous friend of Hermia, as she was in love with Demetrius, who decided to marry Hermia despite Hermia’s love for Lysander. Hermia appears rather guilty as she confirms her distaste to Demetrius to her friend. However, her father disapproves of her relationship with Lysander. Despite her co-dependent aspirations, Helena exemplifies progressive ideals that counter the societal norms of Midsummer’s era.
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.
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.
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
The concept of fate versus free-will in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet raises the question of whether or not the two “star-crossed lovers” truly had any chance of being with each other. Although Romeo and Juliet devise many ways to be together, they had no hand in their fate. Romeo being banished by the Prince and fighting for his life against Juliet's cousins are examples of how destiny controlled their eventual unpleasant meeting. Through literary elements such as irony, foreshadowing, and interference from other characters along with the major role of medicinal factors, such as the herbs Friar Laurence gives Juliet, the plague that stops the message of the Friar’s plan from reaching Romeo, and the references
Shakespeare manifests the final scene of Romeo and Juliet to illustrate how love triumphs over the terror of death and depicts how the Capulet and Montague parents’ mutual love for their children dismisses the ancient feud. The protagonists, Romeo and Juliet’s preference of being killed rather than “death be prorogued, wanting thy love” (Page 91; Act 2, Scene 2), indicates they would rather die than death be delayed without the fulfilment of each other’s love. Romeo commits suicide as he is unaware that Juliet’s death is fiction, which results in Juliet finding his corpse when she awakens and stabs herself as they both do not wish to live with the absence of each other’s love. Again, Shakespeare portrays that love conquers the most feared prospect of life:
Don’t you hate it when something doesn’t turn out the way you wanted it to? When you care so deeply about something and sacrifice so much just so that it can happen, but despite it all, ends in ruins. This is the theme of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In this tragic tale, two fated lovers risk everything, even life itself, to be with one another. They go against family, friends and fate to be together. Had premonitions in the play been taken more seriously by key characters, tragedy could have been avoided.
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.
First, Shakespeare generates comic effect within the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by the situations that he places the characters in. For one example, the characters Demetrius, Helena, Hermia and Lysander get involved in a love triangle mix up. Hermia and Lysander love each other while Demetrius wishes to be married to Hermia, leaving Helena chasing after Demetrius, someone that does not acknowledge that she even exists. Oberon the King of the fairies suggests to Puck a way to help their situation by rubbing the love potion from a flower struck by Cupids arrow into Demetrius’ eyes so that way he could fall in love with Helena. Unfortunately, Puck makes the mistake of rubbing the potion in Lysander’s eyes and Helena is the first person he
A main idea is A midsummer night’s dream is jealousy people have for others. Shakespeare first refers to jealousy when Helena is speaking to Hermia. Helena obviously envies Hermia for she had Demetrius fall in hove with her. The jealousy is seen again during the mud fight between Helena and Hermia. This comical scene occurs after Puck’s mishap, and Demetrius and Lysander have both fallen in love with Hermia. Only this time, Hermia is the jealous one. Dramatic irony is used, since the reader knows the only reason Lysander fell in love with Helena is because Puck mistook him for Demetrius, but Hermia is completely oblivious to that. Hermia is enraged when she says “O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love! What, have you come by night and stol’n my love’s heart from him?” But she doesn’t know that Lysander is under a spell. To convey the concept of jealousy, Shakespeare uses the dramatic irony to make the topic less serious, and more humorous.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place in Athens where the the Duke Theseus and the Queen of the Amazons Hippolyta are set to get married. Following this we see the fruition of two more plots of love, Helena, Lysander, Demetrius, and Hermia and the king and queen of the fairies Oberon and Titania. The plot I am going to focus on will be that of the four lovers, the complication and the conflict that they’re love causes. The conflict begins when “Take time to pause, and by the next new moon—the sealing day betwixt my love and me
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
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