Midsummer Night's Dream

Love is a timeless topic. It will forever be the theme of popular entertainment and source of confusion for men and women alike. No one understands this better than William Shakespeare, and he frequently explores this complex emotion in his plays. In "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" Shakespeare cleverly reveals the fickle and inebriating aspects of love through his mischievous character Puck.

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.

The theme, fate vs. free will, occurs multiple times in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Fate vs. free will, occurs in Acts, One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. Shakespeare uses the magic of fairies, or character to influence situations and people. The fairies take away free will on multiple occasions, which creates conflict or a comical tone during scenes. Few occurrences of free will take place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Firstly, Eques will not allow Hermia to marry Lysander. Hermia loves Lysander, but Eques, her father, disapproves of Lysander. Next, Puck, a magical fairy, influences multiple characters throughout the play. Characters include, Lysander, Demetrius, Bottom, and Titania. These characters lose free will and are all influenced

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,

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

Being the only character, other than Bottom, to enter both the human and fairy world, the play makes Puck to be the protagonist. While there his trickery and trouble are antagonistic in nature, his vital part is that of a positive character, ultimately resolving all problems. Puck treats the entire idea of love as madness, the idea Shakespeare was conveying with his trickery.

Thus the order Oberon gives to Puck is in contrast to Cupid’s concept of being blinded by love, Fetch me that flower; the herb I show’d thee once: The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees. (2. 2.169-172). Puck, being the mischievous of fairies, had not correctly done what he was ordered to do by Oberon. In which, lead the chaos of making Lysander and Demetrius blinded by love towards Helena, whom was initially madly in love with Lysander without any love potion confused and betrayed. The setting and the concept of a dream like play due to the prevalence of the fairy world, which also creates an aspect of illusions. Which also is prevalent in the concept of blind love, and how it can be an illusion to those that are entrapped due to the love potion. Another important victim of the love potion was Titania, the Queen of Fairies by Oberon:

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.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the most renowned plays by William Shakespeare, Puck and Bottom have comparative roles for being two different people. They are both comic characters one way or another, and are both critical for the play, as Bottom’s lightheartedness intrigues the audience and Puck’s attitude manipulates the entire plot of the story. They both are an essential part that aided in achieving their goal which Oberon is a part of toward the end of the play.

The theme, fate vs. free will, occurs multiple times in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Fate vs. free will, occurs in acts, one, two, three, four, and five. Shakespeare uses the magic of fairies, or character to influence situations and people. The fairies take away free will on multiple occasions, which creates conflict or a comical tone during scenes. Few occurrences of free will take place in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Firstly, Eques will not allow Hermia to marry Lysander. Hermia loves Lysander, but Eques, her father, disapproves of Lysander. Secondly, Puck, a magically fairy, influences multiple characters throughout the play. Characters include, Lysander, Demetrius, Bottom, and Titania. These characters lose free will and are

Within the genre of melodrama, the atmosphere and emotions of a story are romanticized and magical. Not only does it engage the audience emotionally, but it is also meant to be performed in a very exaggerated manner. William Shakespeare incorporates this melodramatic style into his plays with a specific purpose in mind. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare utilizes the sprightly character of Puck to reinforce the complexity of love, and the idea that magic sometimes causes more harm than good.

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.

Where Shakespeare's tragedies will tell the story, chiefly, of a single principal character, this is rarely the case with his comedies. The comedies are more social and deal with groups of characters. In the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the principal groups are, at first, introduced severally. Though, one group may interact with another (as when Puck anoints Lysander's eyes, or Titania is in love with Bottom) they retain separate identities.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often read as a dramatization of the incompatibility of “reason and love” (III.i. 127), yet many critics pay little attention to how Shakespeare manages to draw his audience into meditating on these notions independently (Burke 116). The play is as much about the conflict between passion and reason concerning love, as it is a warning against attempting to understand love rationally. Similarly, trying to understand the play by reason alone results in an impoverished reading of the play as a whole – it is much better suited to the kind of emotive, arbitrary understanding that is characteristic of dreams. Puck apologises directly to us, the audience,

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play about four Athenian lovers. Theseus listens to both Hermia and her father’s request and he tells her to bend to her father’s will or die due to the old Athenian law. Hermia and Lysander flee Athens, into the domain of the fairy kingdom. At this time, Oberon is in a fight with Titania. This fight is over a human child of Titania’s friend. Oberon tells Puck, one of his loyal servants, to get a flower hit by Cupid’s arrow, and drop the oil into Demetrius’s and Titania’s eyes. However, Puck drops the oil into Lysander’s eyes due to Oberon’s vague description, making him fall in love with Helena and despise Hermia. Titania falls in love Bottom, who has the head of an ass, after Oberon places the oil