Midsummer Night's Dream Comic Relief Essay

Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while the story involving Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, Helena, Oberon and Titania is developing, the rustic gentlemen (Bottom and his friends) are shown rehearsing for a play that they will perform in honor of the upcoming wedding of Theseus (the Duke of Athens) and Hippolyta. The play, “Pyramus and Thisby,” is based on a story that was told by the ancient Roman writer Ovid and retold by Chaucer. The “Pyramus and Thisby” play is not performed until the fifth and final act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By then, as Barton points out, the major problems of Lysander, Demetrius and the rest have all been neatly resolved. As such, the “Pyramus and Thisby” play-within-a-play “seems, in effect, to take place beyond the normal, plot-defined boundaries of comedy” (Barton 110).

Theseus, as an added level of irony, spends a fair amount of time voicing his disdain for the imagination, and for plays – and then, just after that, he chooses a play for the night’s entertainment. He disregards “some satire, keen and critical” in favor of Pyramus and Thisbe, in fact. (V.1.58) One would think that, as the representative of cool reason, Theseus would opt to listen to something less fanciful, but he belies his own position against the imagination and chooses an “airy nothing” instead. (V.1.17) It is in this direct contradiction that Shakespeare cinches the irony of Theseus. Even so, once he has chosen Pyramus and Thisbe, Theseus maintains his stand: “the best in this kind [plays] are but shadows.” (V.1.224) If this were true, and he believed it, why would he then choose a ‘shadow’ for entertainment? Why not choose something more ‘real,’ something that has more of an effect on the world? The simple answer is that plays themselves do affect the world. For even this ‘shadow,’ Pyramus and Thisbe, does in the end draw some emotion from its watchers – Theseus says “this passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad.” (V.1.303) Hippolyta furthers his sentiment, adding “Beshrew my heart but I pity the man.” (V.1.305) If the worst of plays can draw such emotion, then plays hold power indeed.

“ True love doesn't happen right away; it's an ever-growing process. It develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together,”Is an important quote said by Ricardo Montalban. Mr. Montalban meant that true love might not be given easily. It will take time and effort to get what you want in the end. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a famous play written by Shakespeare in the early 1600’s in which four characters, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena are trapped in a love triangle. Hermia and Lysander were in love with each other, but their love was not meant to happen. Hermia’s father, Egeus wanted her to marry Demetrius or no one at all. Hermia did not love Demetrius, but she had

Everyone at one point or another judges someone else and makes the wrong assumption. People have that habit, but sometimes people can fool others. After all, people dress and act how they want to look to others. In the Elizabethan era romantic comedy A Midsummer’s Night Dream, William Shakespeare suggests the theme that people have hidden layers and disguises which can lead others to foolish choices.

Read a play called "Midsummer Night's Dream", which is one of Shakespeare's early plays, and I get a lot of important things. Fairies, dreams and lovers are the three main elements.

In this time, each social class had a certain accepted wardrobe they were expected to wear but in the thearter all rules were off. Not only did the actors dress up how ever they pleased but people typically wore their own choice of clothing to see the prefromances even if they were poor. Shakespears play reflect strongly the era he grew up in and emphisised soical classes, relationships between men and women and common stereyotypes of the time. Shakespeares plays reflected both the good and the bad of the day which made them so popular because he never sugar coated anything and gave it to the people how it really was. For our benefit, it helps modern socitey to better understand the times and relate to them more easily by showing us what it was really like to live in that time era.

Within A Midsummer Night’s Dream there are many different similes and metaphors that are themselves within another simile or metaphor. What stuck out to me was the meaning of that, the multi-layered symbolism. From the title of the play to the ending speech, the possibility of this being a dream is clearly stated. Inside of that the woods are a dreamlike state that are outside of Athens in what could be called a purgatory between the reality of Athens and the fiction of the play within the play. Through the changes in setting, Helena’s idea of love being able to take different forms is constantly recycled. The various viewpoints of love within the play are all individually described in the differing settings, which culminates in an outside perspective that is hindsight. To be able to look back and see that the various metaphors of love are unable to stand alone and must be combined in order to see love objectively.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play written by William Shakespeare. The play portrays many different types of comedy. Insult comedy is a genre where offensive things are said to someone to make the audience laugh. For example, in Act III, Scene 2, Lysander is insulting Hermia on her size. He says,

“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night. Four nights will quickly dream away the time”. From the very first line of William Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we are introduced the motif of dreams which is present throughout. The significance of the role played by dreams cannot be stressed enough. It is present in almost all aspects of the play, no where more so than in the woods, where the four lovers of the story flee to. The dreams in a MSND are not just a thematic setting but also serve to delve into the true natures of the characters themselves. For my presentation today I will be exploring a number of different aspects relating to the role that dreams play, as well as the role

One of the most unique part of Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream is it's instrumentation. Britten did not followed the “standard” instrumentation that many composers use during this time. Besides the orchestra, he also includes instrument such as harpsichord, wide varieties of percussion instruments, a stage band and even more interesting that he also uses countertenor, children choir, and a coloratura soprano. What I also find interesting is that for the character Puck, Britten did not assign him any singing part, but most of the time his role would be speaking. On the other hand, instead of following what the original text that was written by Shakespear, Britten decided to write his own translation of the text in order to make the composition

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare portrays the theme love, but what is love? Love is a variety of different feelings from impersonal affection. It is expressed in so many different attitudes that it is indescribable. It is unpredictable and you never know what to expect. Love is a common theme because it can be portrayed in so many different ways depending on the writer. Shakespeare wrote about love because of his nature and because it created such an interesting story. In the play, love is presented as unfair, passionate, misleading, and mysterious.

The inclusion of a play within a play often serves to highlight and reinforce the dramatic nature of the primary play. Pyramus and Thisbe do this exact practice in a midsummer night’s dream. Pyramus and Thisbe is the play which is performed by the mechanicals at the end of the play. Because the craftsmen are such bumbling actors, their performance satirizes the melodramatic Athenian lovers and gives the play a purely joyful, comedic ending. Pyramus and Thisbe face parental an social disapproval in the play-within-a-play, just as Hermia and Lysander do, in this sense the main storyline of both plays are fairly comparable, as both sets of lovers enter the sanctity of the woods to be together whilst evading the capture of an unjust ruler. This is a use of intertextuality which subtly drives the main story whilst playing on the minds of the audience. However the endings of the separate plays are completely different and Shakespeare juxtaposes the tragic ending of Pyramus and Thisbe with the comic ending of a midsummer night’s dream. Pyramus and Thisbe ends in tragedy when both the lovers kill themselves, yet is distorted into a comedy by the use of farce, due to the use of the language and the poor acting skills of the mechanicals. It could even be called a melodrama, whereas the final act of a midsummer night’s dream has all the functions of a comedic ending such as a happy resolution. The tragic nature of the ending in Pyramus and Thisbe serves to remind the viewer how close

Although the original story is a tragic one, due to the last moments that the main characters have, the theatre group alters that characteristic by naming their play “The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.” (A Midsummer Night's Dream 8) The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is, by no means, a story that make people laugh, nevertheless, the group of craftsmen turn it into a comedy that unpurposely share a great deal of details with Hermia and Lysander’s

First, Shakespeare is able to open up people by showing them a new way to live or see the world that they have never seen before. “And those backgrounds help them identify with Shakespeare characters in a way many outside prison walls can’t (Rose).” According to Kentucky inmates author Sean Rose states that it deals with race, it deals with discrimination, and it deals with gambling, debt, cutting people but it shows that it can open someone that has been through all that (Rose). “Shakespeare understood the human condition like nobody else (Rose).” Shakespeare shows compassion to the people in many ways that no one can or imagine doing in their life.

Pyramus and Thisby’s situation is identical to Hermia’s and Lysander’s situation at the beginning of Midsummer Nights Dream: they are two faithful lovers separated by cruel and stubborn parents. Moreover, Pyramus’ and Thisby’s stories links, in a more subtle way, to Demetrius and Helena, they are not divided by the enmity of their families, but by Demetrius’ rejection of Helena. Nevertheless, a similarity can be drawn, just like Pyramus and Thisby are divided by a physical wall, Demetrius and Helena are separated by an insurmountable wall of misunderstanding. Despite this parallelism, Pyramus and Thisby are ridiculous, unlike Hermia and Lysander or Helena and Demetrius. Their solemnity parodies the lovers’ earnestness, and, Quince’s poetry sounds tasteless and cliché, rather than passionate and genuine. Quince’s play is a tragedy that misses sad end and high feelings, however, by showing death for love, Pyramus and Thisby enlightens the possible tragedy hidden in