Midsummer Night's Dream

The audience is seated, the lights dim, and all of a sudden, through wild anticipation, the music cues as a notification that the show is about to begin. Theater is a creative outlet for the soul to paint a picture towards showcasing a short story. This past weekend, I attended a play at Crabpot Players Theater to observe a parody of one of Shakespeare’s most famous pieces, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As a whole the play was fairly decent, but there were a few minor issues that held the piece back. It is officially time to analyze the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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,

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterful piece of literature that both directly and indirectly comments on the reality of control and power in Western cultures. Shakespeare’s ability to depict human nature gives us insight into how English society functioned in his lifetime, but more importantly allows us to analyze our own perspective of ourselves and the world around us. One way Shakespeare articulates his ideas is through well constructed metaphors and similies, resulting in more powerful writing. One very significant metaphor is spoken by Theseus early on in Act 1, scene 1. Egeus has brought his daughter, Hermia, to the royal court to for Theseus’s opinion on Hermia’s marriage. Egeus has arranged for Hermia to marry Demetrius, a very worthy suitor, but Hermia is truly in love with another man, Lysander. This dilemna is explained to Theseus and he states, “To you your father should be as a god;/ One that composed your beauties, yea, and one/ To whom you are but as a form in wax/ By him imprinted and within his power/ To leave the figure or disfigure it” (I.i.51-55). In summary, Theseus is defending Egeus by saying Hermia was created by Egeus and his will determines her fate. Behind this metaphor is a simple idea that proves how a desire to control can have many unintended consequences as well as negative effects. In order to understand this concept more effectively, it is crucial to analyze how influence is structured socially. The quote demonstrates

In the A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare wrote about different aspects of love. Love is viewed as an arranged marriage in this story because Theseus and Hippolyta and Oberon and Titania had the girls parents decision on whom they must marry, however, their reactions to the marriage were much different. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare explores the mature and stable love between Theseus and Hippolyta in contrast with the relationship of Oberon and Titania, that has a negative impact on the world around them. The story contradicts a healthy relationship to an unhealthy relationship by having one couple be so strong whereas the other relationship is so

Love is many things, and is also used as a reference to sight and vision such as blindness. It is much more than aesthetics and wields the power of sight, and can also cause chaos and destruction. Similarly, Shakespeare utilizes two types of blindness by love; the first being physical due to a love potion a fairy king, Oberon orders upon the humans in Shakespeare’s, A Midsummers Night’s Dream. The second, being metaphorical due to Antony’s immense amount of love towards Cleopatra, in which hinders his political motivation in Shakespeare’s, Antony and Cleopatra.

Although Shakespeare wrote many well-received plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most popular by far, and its engaging love story and comedic tone are undoubtedly the biggest factors contributing to the production’s success. However, while the love square between the four young Athenians is the central plotline of the play, Shakespeare included many humorous elements that alter the story’s course drastically. The misunderstanding between Oberon and Puck over the Athenians accounts for well over half of the play, and if not for the Mechanicals’ production of Pyramus and Thisbe, audiences never would have been introduced to the wonderfully bombastic Bottom. Beyond the purely utilitarian purpose for the fairies and Mechanicals, though, is an excellent and unlikely comedic partnership between Robin Goodfellow and Nick Bottom. Both characters, while radically different, strengthen the play through their assorted antics and interactions.

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.

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been categorized as a comedy play because of all the characters being passionately in love to the point of being foolish. It’s a play all about love, and the characters that are in love are only young adults, so they are still naive when it comes to love. Their naivety and foolishness regarding love is what allows them to be taken advantage of by mischievous fairies when they all run away into the woods. By critiquing the love affairs and numerous misunderstandings that occur within the mystical woods, I argue that Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream portrays the characters’ young love as a foolish fantasy with drastic consequences.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the audience is never truly privy to any of the characters’ dreams; however, Shakespeare portrays reality as a sort of dream. The forest symbolizes a realm where anything can happen, with no regard for time or logic, much like in a dream. Therefore, when the lovers come out of the forest, without explanation for their actions, they believe it to be a dream, even though it had real-life consequences. By having the characters talk about their dreams and believe their realities to be dreams, the play explores the idea that dreams demonstrate reality, in that they show fears and desires, but it also explores the idea that reality can be affected by dreams. While Hoffman’s movie adaptation recognizes this in some aspects, it does not explore it in entirely the same manner.

Love is such an abstract and intangible thing, yet it is something that everyone longs for. In Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the difficulty of love is explored through the obstacles that characters have to face while pursuing their loved ones. Those characters that are in love in the play were conflicted with troubles; however, the obstacles of love do not seem to stop them from being infatuated with each other. The concept of true love is examined throughout this play. By creating obstacles using authority and a higher power, Shakespeare examines the power of love. Through Hermia and Lysander’s loving words, it is reasonable to conclude that love conquers all if you believe in it.

“Audiences can gain a better understanding of ways to behave in a specific relationship through comparing past and present representations of them in texts.”

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.

In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare story about romantic desire. Theseus and Hippolyta, are about to be married; both of them are wonderful figures from classical mythology. (Greek Mythology) Theseus is a great warrior, a kinsman of Hercules; Hippolyta is an Amazon warrior-woman, defeated in battle by Theseus. (Theseus and Hippolyta) He was longing for the wedding day, and this is what opens the play and closing the play with their exit marriage bed. (Theseus and Hippolyta).

There are three distinct levels of action during the play. Firstly, we as the audience see the characters play out the main narratives. Secondly, Shakespeare introduces a play-within-a-play during which the audience observes the mechanicals acting out their tragedy, and thirdly, as part of an epilogue, we are addressed directly by Puck. These differing levels of viewing the play encourages the audience to reflect upon, and compare, the interplay between the levels of address; when the three levels are compared to each other a deeper reading of the play becomes possible, even though the structure is irrational with regards to rational narrative structures. The dramatic conflict is resolved after the fourth act, begging the question of why Shakespeare opted for a play-within-a-play for his final act. The effect of “Nature” (V.i. 278) is contrasted between the main

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