The Power of Magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

True love’s path is paved with every step. Through the assistance of fanciful elements as well as characters Puck and Oberon, the true message of love in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is revealed. The four lovers know the direction in which their hearts are inclined to turn, but when the love potion is administered, the bounds of their rectangle are thrashed without knowledge or consent. The rapid shifts in affection between the play’s “four lovers” is representative of the idea that love isn’t a conscious choice, but a cruel game in which we are the figurines, being controlled by whomever the player may be, relating the characters’ karmic fates.

Hermia and Lysander behave irrationally throughout the whole play because they’re head over heels for each other; however, their love is oppressed by both her father Egeus and the strict Athenian law. In Act 1, Scene 1 when Egeus is at court with Hermia he uses a demanding and dominating tone to state, ‘as she is mine i may dispose of her’ This causes them to act spontaneously and irrationally and as a consequence, they run away from Athens to get married. This entertains the audience by adding more conflict and complication to the story. After they elope to the forest, magic becomes the force that turns love to a dramatic and conflict filled experience that is also entertaining. Lysander acts in irrational ways when he is put under the spell of ‘Love in Idleness’ where he states how madly he loves on Helena, and how much he hates Hermia. ‘Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose, / or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.’ Derogatory language and repetition is used to emphasise his hate toward Hermia and orders her to leave him alone. For example, in Act 3, Scene 2, Lysander has fallen in love with Helena and tells Hermia how he hates her. ‘Out, loathed medicine! O hated potion, hence!’ Conflict between characters create comedy in the play which entertains the audience because of the dramatic irony. Lysander’s insults in the statement are repetition as it is the same meaning but in different words. This language technique emphasises that Lysander wants Hermia to leave him alone.

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.

During the late 15th century by William Shakespeare, or more commonly known as Shakespeare wrote the play A Midsummer's Night Dream. Shakespeare was both a playwright and a poet, producing many famous pieces such as Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and the infamous Romeo and Juliet, along with over a hundred sonnets to name a few. In the play A Midsummer’s Night Dream, he writes of four young lovers who wander into the woods, and the trials they endure along the way. Within this story, Shakespeare also shows that it is not possible to control another person's actions because the two characters keep trying and failing to do so.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare easily blurs the lines of reality by inviting the audience into a dream. He seamlessly toys with the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Among the patterns within the play, one is controlled and ordered by a series of contrasts: the conflict of the sleeping and waking states, the interchange of reality and illusion, and the mirrored worlds of Fairy and Human. A Midsummer Night's Dream gives us insight into man's conflict with characteristics of human behavior.

Love is a term used daily in one’s life. Many categorize love in many forms. These forms differ from one-another such as the difference between love for food and love for one’s spouse. However, in the play; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, love takes different forms than the ones experienced in reality. One can classify the different types of love used in this play into three different categories; true love, love produced by cupid’s flower, and the state of lust.

Hermia of course is in love with Lysander , and Lysander is in love with Hermia. But there is also, Demetrius who is also in love with Hermia and Helena who is in love with Demetrius. They have been through many obstacles, like in the Act 3 scene 2. After Puck put the love potion on Lysander and he fell in love with Helena, he has followed her around nonstop. As Helena goes to find Hermia, Lysander follows close behind. “Lys: Why should you think that I should woo in scorn? Hel: You do advance your cunning more and more.” This is Lysander and Helena talking to each other, Lysander saying why would I mock you if I love you and Helena saying you just get better and better at your jokes, but in a sarcastic way. This shows the relationship between Hermia and Helena in Shakespeare's a Midsummer’s Night Dream.

William Shakespeare starts with a seemingly unresolvable conflict in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The main characters are lovers who are either unrequited in their love or hassled by the love of another. These lovers are inevitably paired. How does Shakespeare make this happen? He creates many subplots that, before long, are all snarled up into a chaotic knot. So, what actions does Shakespeare take to resolve these new quandaries? He ends up trusting a single key entity with his comedy. It’s only then that he introduces a special character into his world: a mischievous fairy whom is known by the name of Puck. Puck is the catalyst for all these subplots and, indeed, for the entirety of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Try to take Puck

Helena has always loved Demetrius and at one point in time he loved her as well, but as soon as he met Hermia, he left Helena behind in pursue of Hermia. However, Helena could not get over the lost of her love so she became desperate in her attempt to make him love her again. There trial was one not loving the other, but loving another; making their love rough and hard to look at. When it came to be known that Demetrius wanted to marry Hermia, but Hermia was going to run away, Helena decided to tell Demetrius in hopes that he would want to see her again. Furthermore, Helena hoped to be alone with Demetrius in hopes of convincing him to love her again, “The more you beat me I will fawn on you. Use me but as your spaniel: spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me; only give me leave (unworthy as I am) to follow you”(II.i.211-214). Helena is saying that she wants Demetrius to love her and not Hermia, so she is willing to be his dog. This was this couples biggest trial and there were many more, but there is one last couple to

Attempting to seek freedom from the shackles of Athenian society, reflecting among the segregation lifestyle a woman carries in Athens leads to Hermia’s decision to run away with Lysander in the search for sealing their love on Mayday;backlashes against her will as a result of puck’s confusion to Oberon's orders towards the use of the flower of love. Puck’s mistake reflects greatly on the actions of the protagonist showing their deception of reality versus illusion as they scavenge through the forest learning reality while waking up to what feels like an illusion.

48) without the ability to look beyond what he sees. The notion of fantasy versus reality is not limited only to the fairies, however; Shakespeare makes his audience aware of supernatural elements in other characters as well by his use of different styles of verse. Furthermore, by comparing the play-within-a-play, and the royals’ response to it, to the larger narrative, Shakespeare gives further warning against literalising the effects of the play. Metaphor pervades the play and the play should likewise be read as metaphor.

A Midsummer Night 's Dream is a play about love. All of its action—from the escapades of Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena in the forest, to the argument between Oberon and Titania, to the play about two lovelorn youths that Bottom and his friends perform at Duke Theseus 's marriage to Hippolyta—are motivated by love. But A Midsummer Night 's Dream is not a romance, in which the audience gets caught up in a passionate love affair between two characters. It 's a comedy, and because it 's clear from the outset that it 's a comedy and that all will turn out happily, rather than try to overcome the audience with the exquisite and overwhelming passion of love, A Midsummer Night 's Dream invites the audience to laugh at the way the passion of love can make people blind, foolish, inconstant, and desperate. At various times, the power and passion of love threatens to destroy friendships, turn men against men and women against women, and through

Some people believe in magic, while others do not. Magic alters something or someone using supernatural forces. In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, magic is a secret, mysterious force. Characters are influenced into love by the power of a magic potion. Titania, the queen of the fairies, falls in love with Nick Bottom, a mechanical actor, who is a non-magical character. Lysander, one of the four lovers, falls in love with Helena after being desperately in love with Hermia. Finally, Demetrius falls in love with Helena, whom he hated before, changing the entire love triangle within the play. Magic influences the characters in the play because it clouds their judgement by making them fall in love with someone who they did not think of loving before.

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.

Mandy Conway Mrs. Guynes English 12 16 March 2000 A Critical Analysis of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is "A Midsummer Night's Dream." They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare's comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play-with-in-a-play, which master writers only write successfully. Shakespeare proves here to be a master writer. Critics find it a task to explain the intricateness of the play, audiences find it very pleasing to read and watch. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a