The Foolish Escapades In 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

If there was no such thing as sympathy, empathy, or love in our world, it would be a hard place to live. If there was no hard law or reason in our world, it would be a crazy place to live. Neither of these worlds would be anybody’s first choice as a home - it's just common sense take away either of these two fundamental aspects of life, and everything is immediately chaos. In fact, it is only in a world such as ours, where legal and human emotion work together, that we are happy. In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare recognizes this truth and uses the two settings to represent the city of Athens as law, order, civility, and judgment, while the woods represent chaos, incivility, dreams, and love.

Love is one of the most difficult mysteries of life. The difficulty of love is shown throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the play, the characters have to deal with jealousy that comes along with being in love. Love’s difficulty in the play comes from love being out of balance. Love being out of balance is a romantic situation where a difference gets in the way of happiness in the relationship. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrates these conflicts with a little bit of humor and buoyancy. The four young Athenians have many difficulties with love. Hermia loves Lysander and Lysander returns the feelings; Helena loves Demetrius but Demetrius loves Hermia. The two men love the same women, which leaves Hermia

In the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the plethora of comedic styles used by Shakespeare illustrate his intention to poke fun at love throughout the play. The play is notorious for its intricate and irrational plotline, mainly due to the constantly shifting love triangles. Once the powerful fairies become involved with the fate of the naive lovers – Demetrius, Helena, Lysander and Hermia – matters are further complicated. The complication inflicted by the fairies is credited to the powerful love potion that Oberon, King of the Fairies, hands over to Puck, a mischievous fairy, to use on his wife Titania, with intentions to embarrass and distract her. This spiteful attitude is due to Oberon and Titania’s argument over the custody of an

To provide some context, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream interferes with love through the deception of fairies. When Hermia’s father insists she marry Demetrius, she runs away with Hermia and Lysander. Contrastingly, Helena chases after an uninterested Demetrius, helplessly in love. The fairies meddle with these two couples by accidentally casting a love

In an attempt to discover a way to rationally understand love, the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are often unsuccessful. This shows the audience the difficulty within love’s obstacle and demonstrates that even if love seems to be favorably working within two lovers, it can often be difficult in reason. A craftsman by the name of Bottom says to Titania, “And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays” (III, i, 38). Affected by a potion that was made from the juice of a flower, struck with one of Cupid’s arrows, Titania wakes up and immediately falls in love with Bottom, who took the form of an ass. Unaware of his transformation due to Puck’s mischievousness, Bottom is found foolish and arrogant of Titania’s instantaneous love for him. The audience can see Shakespeare’s mockery of love and reason when creating a puzzling romance between two different lovers, especially between an exquisite and graceful fairy queen and a repulsive and grotesque ass. Through this demonstration, Shakespeare seems to suggest, then, that the work of a love potion is a way to show that sexual appeal is valued more over common sense. Moreover, this creates the perception that, through the demonstration of the lives of the characters, we can be effortlessly blinded by the irrelevant traits of a person that will make people potentially “fall in love” rather than their character or persona. To further strengthen this point, a

In A Midsummer's Night, by William Shakespeare, various characters fall in love, or believe they are in love, because of the actions of others. The play portrays the narrative that love is crazy, and makes people do crazy things. Even though someone may attempt to control another’s relationship, there is always a higher power influencing love. In the end, true love comes when lovers are destined to be together. This is demonstrated in the relationship between Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, and Oberon and Titania. In all of these relationships, the couples are challenged, but yet find a way to be together.

Help,” (Act III.i) shows the actors running away from Bottom when they first see him. Similarily, magic is used to make lovers within the play desire someone else. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there is a love square between Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Oberon tells Puck to fetch a magic flower and drop its juice in Demetrius’s eyes.

Science has proven that emotions can make one behave foolishly. Emotions over power our senses and cause the human brain to make irrational decisions. As seen in the play Mid Summer Night's Dream, there are many different ways in which foolishness is present throughout the comedy. The city of Athens, represents law and order. It signifies the human struggle to suppress irrational tendencies and foolish behavior.

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream shows four young lovers navigating their tumultuous romances, the duke preparing for his wedding, a set of fairies intervening with the young lovers, and a play, "The most lamentable / comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus / and Thisbe" (lines 11-13). The duke's wedding, the relationships of the four lovers, the fairies, and the play that is produced are subplots in A Midsummer Night's Dream which provide depth to the play through the parallels and contrasts created. And throughout the play, the theme of appearances not always being reality is stressed through the dream-like atmosphere that is created when characters are found sleeping and magic is used.

This causes Oberson to become insanely jealous because he desperately wants the beautiful boy and wants to raise him as one of his knights. Puck explains this by saying, “She (Titania) never had so sweet a changeling; And jealous Oberon

This play of love is just as dramatic as that of Romeo and Juliet, but not nearly so tragic. A Midsummer’s Night Dream may start out with chaos much like how Romeo and Juliet end with chaos, but this play ends in peace and happiness. How the characters get to that point however was rather difficult. It was full of stress and drama; confusion and chaos; singing fairies and a man with an ass’ head. This tale of four lovers is also the tale of a warrior and a duke; a civilist and a king of shadows; and a mischievous sprite called Robin Goodfellow.

Moreover, Oberon begins his transformation to becoming an Elizabethan fairy when Titania give him the Indian boy. First, Titania asked Oberon to dance with her on Theseus’ wedding day. Oberon replied, “Give me that boy, and I will go with thee” (54), yet Titania still refuses to. This shows Oberon is still jealous of the Indian boy and has not began to transform yet.

The first love I would like to discuss from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is what I refer to as foolish love. Let’s start with Helena and Demetrius, Helena is madly in love with Demetrius but Demetrius does not feel the same way about Helena. In the story, Demetrius tells Helena in “ Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth tell you, I do not, nor love you?” (Bevington, 2014). Demetrius has made it very clear to Helena

A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place in Athens where the the Duke Theseus and the Queen of the Amazons Hippolyta are set to get married. Following this we see the fruition of two more plots of love, Helena, Lysander, Demetrius, and Hermia and the king and queen of the fairies Oberon and Titania. The plot I am going to focus on will be that of the four lovers, the complication and the conflict that they’re love causes. The conflict begins when “Take time to pause, and by the next new moon—the sealing day betwixt my love and me

Theseus rules by trying to make everyone happy while abiding by the old Athenian law. Theseus says, “Look you arm yourself to fit the fancies your father’s will.” (1.1.117-118) In this scene, Theseus is telling Hermia to marry Demetrius or to get ready to die. Egeus says that she is his property by the Athenian law. This causes Hermia to run away with her love, Lysander. At the end of the play, Theseus says, “Egeus, I will overbear your will.” (4.1.182) He is telling Hermia’s father that the law will be void for this marriage. This tells that Theseus will override it for the happiness of the four lovers. Oberon rules in a way where he is happy even if it sacrifices someone else's happiness. He will do mischievous things and blackmail others, including Titania, for his own satisfaction or gain. Oberon says, “Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.” (2.1.143) Here, he is telling Titania that if she doesn’t give him the boy, he will not dance with he at Theseus’s and Hippolyta’s wedding. They are supposed to dance at the wedding to tell them that they bless their marriage. Oberon is blackmailing her so that if she doesn’t give him the boy, they won’t dance, thus giving the couples the impression that they don’t bless them. Also, right after he squeezes the love flowers juice on Titania’s eyelid, Oberon says, “Wake when some vile