Symbolism In Midsummer Night's Dream By William Shakespeare

verses reality. The flower’s love juice is causing lovers to blindly fall in love, with the

A Misummer Night’s Dream is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare. In this play there are multiple themes however the most evident theme is love. Why is love an evident theme? It is an evident theme because the play commences with two Greek mythology characters─ the Duke of Athens, Theseus and Amazon queen Hippolita planning their marriage. However as Theseus plans his marriage he has to help Egeus persuade his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius. Unfortunately both the Duke and Egeus failed to persuade Hermia into marrying Demetrius so the fairies (another set of characters. The fairies in this play consisted of goddess of chastity and Queen of fairies, Titania and King of fairies Oberon and his assistance Robin Goodfellow) decide

William Shakespeare is a successful playwright as he uses the style of history, tragedy and comedy which is an entertaining aspect that is in all his plays.

The story of A Midsummer Night's Dream was mainly about love and its abnormal dealings. In the play, Shakespeare tried to show that love is unpredictable, unreasonable, and at times is blind. The theme of love was constantly used during the play and basically everything that was said and done was related to the concept of love and its unpredictable ness. Shakespeare made all of the characters interact their lives to be based on each other’s. At first, everything was very confusing, and the characters were faced with many different problems. In the end, however, they were still able to persevere and win their true love, the love they were searching for in the first place.

Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most popular play. The comedy is famous with fancy weave motifs of ancient mythology, literature and English folklore. It gives the impression of a completely unique combination of real and fantastic, funny and serious, poetry and humor. In this play there are two main lines – real and fantastic. Classical ideals are valued above contemporary folk narratives.

In many of Shakespeare’s literary works one can find multiple themes that reflect or question our reality. He accomplishes this by using figurative language such as metaphors and similes. Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream encompasses many themes and apply them to certain characters or through communication between multiple characters. Helena portrays themes of love, betrayal, jealousy, and gender norms in Midsummer Night’s Dream presenting them through her speech and behavior. She depicts the challenges of a woman and also the flaws of human nature. In Act 2 scene 1 and Act 3 scene 2 Helena uses a metaphor twice which emulates these themes presenting us a broader understanding of her representation within the play and the play as a whole. Following are lines from Helena.

In this passage, Demetrius is confessing that his love to Hermia is no longer and Helena is his true love now. Shakespeare is constantly emphasizing the unpredictability of love. This example goes deeper to show how love can change as one grows up and matures. Although Demetrius does not actually start loving Helena instead of Hermia because of this, it is still a good example of love changing with age. Demetrius uses a lot of figurative language to compare Hermia to something in the past he has grown out of.

Shakespeare wrote the play a Midsummer Night’s and he added irony into his play. He has many of the different kinds of irony in his play dramaticl, verbal. He uses them through his characters Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, Helena, and others. In the story they characters love gets all mixed up when the fairy king Oberon uses a flower to change who the men love and he also uses it on his wife Titania and she falls in love with a donkey man Bottom.

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.

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.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that utilises comedy to convey complex ideas that are seen throughout the play, concepts like the jealousy Helena has towards Hermia, Egeus’s strong hostility towards Hermia and Lysander’s relationship and unrequited love. He uses comical tools like unconscious irony and hyperbole to turn rather difficult topics into humorous representations of them. Events like how Puck thinks Titania had fallen in love with him, not knowing he was bearing the head of an ass, are portrayed in a humorous way so the viewer understands the meaning, but sees it as a light- hearted narrative. Shakespeare carefully uses comedy that does not overpower the meaning of the play, but puts a completely different perspective on some of the themes.

In William Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" many symbols, imagery, allusions and dramatic irony are portrayed throughout the play. The collage helped to showcase the major idea's and connections to the play with the use of the dramatic elements.

What literary criticism lens is most effective in creating meaning and entertainment throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has several characters involved in a love triangle. Many scenes in the story involves power being used or taken away and use of money. Throughout the play, readers and viewers experiences Hermia’s power is being taken away by her father, Eugues,which is her kindred, not letting her marry the man she truly loves,Lysander. Later throughout the story, Robin, character from the story contains a enthrall love juice that has power and makes another character from the story, Titania, fall in love with a donkey.The marxist literary criticism lens is the most effective in creating meaning and entertaining readers and viewers in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The supernatural world is rather distinct to that of the human world entrenched in societal standards and boundaries. Shakespeare’s play, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, explores this concept, particularly through the use of Puck. In agreement to Harold Bloom’s statement, the following essay will analyse how Puck is significant because, by being so disparate, he is able to show the limitations of the human. This will be done through, first, exploring a definition of the human in relation to the supernatural. Subsequently, the essay will use a Freudian lense to analyse the morality of Puck and, lastly, the essay will focus on Puck’s physical characteristics as well as his ability to span across boundaries in the play and the metatheatrical realm.

An example of this is the moon, the symbolism of which is reflected in the title, the midnight setting and inspires open air performances. Purpose-built playhouses served as a stage in Elizabethan times and were located outside the City, and ‘where the central acts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream take place: a location beyond authorized boundaries, where game-playing and role-playing are freely possible’ (Hackett, 2000, p.33). The moon is symbolic of time, chastity and sexual desire. Its importance within this extract is emphasised with the use of both alliteration ‘The moon, methinks’ (Line 170) and personification, ‘looks with wat’ry eye,’ (Lines 179). This personification of the moon is then linked by repetition to the personification of a flower, a symbolic reference to the female, ‘And when she [the moon] weeps, weeps every little flower / Lamenting some enforced chastity’ (Lines 180-1). It is a reference to Theseus’s warning to Hermia in Act 1, Scene 1, that if she refuses to marry Demetrius she will ‘endure the livery of a nun’ (REF NORTON HERE). Another example of symbolic meaning in this extract is Titania. The presentation of her as a woman of high status and importance is reflective of Queen Elizabeth. A critic of Elizabethan writing, Louis Montrose, argues that ‘moments of textual disclosure also illuminate the interplay between gender politics in the Elizabethan