Figurative Language In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare makes heavy use of hyperbole, the twisting of reality into something greater than what it actually is, in both the dialogue and the ridiculous, larger-than-life nature of the situations that occur to provide a basis for the conflict between reality and illusion, blurring the line that separates the two concepts.

At one time, Demetrius loved Helena, and then he fell in love with someone else. Initially, Demetrius had given his love to Helena: “He hailed down oaths that he was only mine, / And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt, / So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt” (MND 1.1.243-245). Helena loved Demetrius, and he promised to be with her forever. However once he met her friend, Hermia, Demetrius left Helena to chase after her friend. Helena’s jealousy of Demetrius’ love drives her to think about what he really wants. Helena believes that Hermia’s beauty is why Demetrius desires her. She tells Hermia, “Demetrius loves your fair”, and she goes further to say, “Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, / The rest I’d give to be to you translated” (MND 1.1.182, 190-191). Her jealousy of Demetrius’ love has turned into jealousy of Hermia’s beauty. Helena obsesses over having Demetrius back to the point that she continuously follows him around. Demetrius is tired of Helena chasing him: “Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?” (MND 2.1.199). Demetrius does not understand why she tries so hard to be with him when he does not even compliment her. Demetrius threatens Helena to leave him alone: “I’ll run from thee, and hide me in the brakes, / And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts” (MND 2.1.227-228). At this point, he is beyond exhausted with Helena, and he will do anything to get away from her.

3. The exposition of the story is when Hermia's father tries to make her marry Demetrius, but she does not love him and refuses. She Is given four days to decide if she wants to marry him or die, so she makes a plan to run away from the city with her true love Lysander. The rising action is when the fairies begin to fight over the boy raised in the woods. So the Oberon makes the plan to put something into Titania's eyes to trick her into loving the beast.

Finally, William Shakespeare uses grotesque diction in the way the narrator makes his mistress look weird and strange in compared to other women. For example, when he uses the words “than”, “breath”, and “reeks” from line 8 of the poem to give describe the way her breath smells. It lets the reader understand that the mistress has really bad breath due to the fact that the word remains means to have an unpleasant smell that comes out whenever she speaks. It could be that the narrator’s mistress doesn't properly cleans her mouth properly by trying to make the bad breath go away or maybe she has a virus that is making her breath stink and can't go away. Another example of grotesque choices of words can be found in line 3 when he uses the words

Demetrius says this because he is in the same condition he was during the night. His feeling of love towards Helena is being described as the feeling of a dream, for love is something momentary. From common knowledge, we know that love fades or changes overtime and this relates to how Demetrius feels. His feeling of love he is going through is only bound to fade at some point, if the love potion does not completely override him. The strong emotion of love for a person can also disappear in an instant.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so” (1.1.226-228). Demetrius’s obsession for Hermia makes Helena feel ugly and unwanted. By the time the love potion going around causes both Lysander and Demetrius to fall in love with her, Helena is so used to the hate-filled words and full of insecurity she feels they’re playing a trick on her. Before the love potion she couldn’t even compare to Hermia in Demetrius’s eyes. She couldn 't bring herself to see why they would both be in love with her when she couldn 't even get one of them to love her before. She’s spent so long comparing herself to Hermia and trying to be like her she forgets her own self worth.

Egeus’ connotative and figurative language in this excerpt is a little odd to me. He speaks of Lysander to the Duke negatively when everything Lysander is doing for his daughter is wonderful. He is taking wonderful things that people do when they’re in love and twisting it to make it seem like Lysander is committing a crime. During the time that this was written, women had to listen to their fathers and obey everything they were told to do. Because Egeus already had given his daughter away to Demetrius, it was a low kind of crime that Lysander would come and do this with Hermia, his daughter.

Theseus in Midsummer Nights Dream by Shakespeare has a speech that is full of poetic language that shows how he goes from being skeptical to exploring the power of imagination. In that he uses rhythm in this passage, as example " More strange than true: I never may believe, These antique fables, nor these fairy toys...". In the beginning of his speech he is skeptical, because Theseus does not understand what lovers see in each other. For him he thinks lovers, lunatics, and poets are the same because they have overactive imaginations. In his speech he transfers his thoughts from being skeptical to being more opened minded about the imagination of lovers.

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.

Demetrius delivers this line in the forest after Helena has provided him with the information concerning Hermia and Lysander's plans to elope. Since Demetrius has taken what he wants from her and tells her to leave him alone. This shows that love can possess a cruel and abusive nature.

Shakespeare was an avid and sophisticated reader of Ovidian myth. Additionally, he was a metamorphic artist and clever writer who must have been well-informed about the classics to borrow inspiration from numerous classical sources. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a typical example of Shakespeare’s comedies that dramatize the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. It emphasizes on the conflict between social convention and love. The poem has no particular written source but is inspired by various sources and allusions derived from Greek and Roman history, poetry, and drama.

but he doth know’” (1.1.232-235). During her piece, Helena ponders why Demetrius loves Hermia over herself “given that their beauty is equal” (Wells). She states that according to “‘Athens’” she and Hermia are thought to be “‘as fair’” as the other. However, Helena is distraught due to the fact that there is but one person who sees past this: her true love, Demetrius.

“I will not stay thy questions. Let me go. Or if thou follow me, do not believe, but I shall do thee mischief in the wood.” This shows that Demetrius does not care about Helena at

Occurring in Act 2 scene 1, Helena informs Demetrius of Hermia and Lysander’s plans to run away together in hopes of winning Demetrius’s heart. After hearing about their plan, Demetrius is determined to stop Hermia and pursues after her into the woods. Helena isn’t far behind and tries to reason with Demetrius. Once again she expresses her love for him and even offers him to do anything