Similarities Between A Midsummer Night's Dream And Othello

Shakespeare is known for his use of recurring themes throughout his work, including love, death and betrayal. These themes are present in his work of Othello. However, the most fundamental issue is jealousy. The lives of the characthers in Othello are ruined by jealousy from the beginning to the end of the play. The telling of the story is carried out by passion, jealousy, and death. Shakespeare’s Othello reveals devastating tragic inevitability, stunning psychological depth, and compelling poetic depth; the fragility and mysterious power of love, as well as demons of doubt, and how suspicion can be triggered by manipulative villain (Barthelemy 12).

In the play Othello, jealousy is shown to be very evident through the actions of the characters. Jealousy is an emotion that everyone shares, and it is ultimately responsible for the tragic ending of the play. Everyone feels jealous at certain times of their lives, and this feeling can cause people to do irrational things. This human emotion also shows people to be weak in the sense that they are never happy with what they have. Shakespeare shows through Othello, Iago, Roderigo, and Brabantio that jealousy is the most corrupt and destructive emotion.

Between The Midsummer Night’s Dream film and play, people have analyzed, compared, contrasted, and studied it constantly. You look between both the play and film and you see the illustrations of how Shakespeare wants his words to fall and how Peter Hall wants his picture to be seen. One can notice the transitions of how Shakespeare wants his words to fall. You notice the transitions within the story of how the characters change, how the setting changes, how the plot changes. Between the movie and the play it integrates the forest and the life within it, you see the river may be a place that the characters change ways along with the plot, and with all you see how they transfer from their fancy, elegant world to the opposite and then back.

Due to the play’s catastrophe, Shakespeare’s Othello highlights that excess love is inherently evil, proving that jealousy is an all consuming human characteristic that ultimately overpowers love. One of the most prominent

Considering the plot conflict, the characters, and the resolution, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado about Nothing have a tremendous amount in common, while still retaining their own unique flair. The two plays are romantic comedies about two sets of lovers who may or may not love each other. In each a spirited romp takes place, dragging the characters into ridiculous situations and absurd emotions. In both, conflict happens between the characters, internal and external. However, compared to Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream looks like a silly ditty.

Betrayal and jealousy are two things that go hand in hand, they are forces that drive each other. In William Shakespeare's Othello, they are forces that work cohesively in order to develop plot and help the development of several characters. In this play the complex characters all feel jealous at some point during the play and it either just jealousy, or they feel jealous after a betrayal. Furthermore the betrayal that happens is used to represent and develop characters jealousy towards other characters and their lifestyles as well as the hatred they feel towards others. Throughout this play there are many instances that show how the forces of betrayal and jealousy work off of the other to develop plot and make the play flow.

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.

Many readers may assume that true love is only upon main characters who appear often; but true love is when someone cares about someone and wants to be with that person. A Midsummer's Night Dream, a play by William Shakespeare, a character mixes up who loves who so he can steal his wife’s Indian prince so his wife will give him all her attention again. While some people think Titania and Oberon aren’t in love at first, they are because they have been together for so long and Oberon gets jealous of anything that gets in the way of their love.

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.

There are several similarities in the three Shakespeare plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tragedy of King Richard II, and Othello. These three Shakespeare plays have several troubled relationships. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia and her father are having a rocky relationship because she does not want to marry Demetrius. “In such a presence here to plead my thoughts; But I beseech your grace that I may know The worst that may befall me in this case, If I refuse to wed Demetrius” (Bevington, 2009, p. 47, 61-64).

Jealousy and Deception are both continuous themes running through out Shakespeare’s Othello. Indeed, it is jealousy that provides the fuel for the plot and deception that leads to the classic downfall of the 'hero' as is common in Shakespeare tragedies. However, it is a theme of hate that the play opens. It is a hate of inveterate anger. It is a hate that is bound up with envy hanging on a strained thread waiting to snap. In The Tragedy of Othello, William Shakespeare tells the tale of the “noble Moor” whose honour and innocence bring about his downfall. Shakespeare writes of the power of jealousy,

Shakespeare uses a combination of recurring themes and motifs such as betrayal, love, conflict, and jealousy throughout his plays and sonnets. In Shakespeare’s Othello, jealousy is the prominent theme, which causes the destruction and tragic downfall of the play’s main characters. Jealousy is masked through lies, misleading situations and manipulation and interpreted in varied ways by the main characters. From beginning to end, jealousy is rooted in every scene, eventually leading to the death and demise of the main character, Othello.

The Elizabethan era, an era filled with renaissance and was a flourishing time period in the arts of poetry, music, and literature. Shakespeare, arguably the most important writer of this time period captivated his audiences with innovative and provocative plays. A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice are two of Shakespeares’ most famous romantic comedies, the characters of these plays enchant audiences with their passion and love for one another and the conflict that creates in this time period. The conflict in both these plays arise from the character’s personal desires, and the pressure to conform to social norms. The plot in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that this conflict is most relevant in is between the love circle of Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena. In The Merchant of Venice Bassanio and Portia have their own agendas whether they are hidden or not the pressure of society and their own lust and desires lead to a conflict.

In the romantic, and dramatic book of “A Midsummers Night’s Dream,” every now and then, the characters aren't that disparate after all. To compare Demetrius and Lysander one of the first things to mention is that Demetrius and Lysander have both been arguing and fighting, over the same woman; Helena in the beginning. Lysander: “Helena, I love thee. By my life, I do. I swear by that which I will lose for thee To prove him false that says I love thee not.”

In the play, A Midsummer Night’s dream, Hermia, Egeus’s daughter is denied to wed her love Lysander, but has to comply with her father’s wishes and marry Demetrius. Infuriated, Hermia runs off with Lysander to his aunt’s house, sick of the Athenian law. As the lovers wander off into the forest, Helena, who is madly in love with Demetrius, tells him about the whereabouts of Hermia. In another part of the forest, Oberon, king of fairies meets Titania, the queen of fairies, arguing for a changeling child from India. When Titania refuses to give him up, Oberon plans revenge, by hiring Robin Goodfellow, also known as “Puck”, to retrieve a magical love flower, anointing her eyes and Demetrius’s, feeling bad for Helena after how Demetrius had treated her. Accidentally, Puck spreads it on Lysander’s eyes, creating major conflicts, later being resolved as the 4 lovers get married.