William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream

One of his plays, ‘A midsummer’s night dream’, includes the themes of love and magic,where love is represented as a force that makes people act in irrational ways to entertain the audience in a comical and dramatic way. He used different techniques throughout the play to create a tumultuous and intriguing factor. The storyline of the play follows various couples such as Hermia and Lysander and Oberon and Titania. These couples show examples of irrational behaviours with love and magic throughout the play.

Different Types of Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy, written in 1595 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. This was when the society was dominated by men. During the period, England was ruled by a powerful and well respected queen.

True love is shown in various places in the play. One of the earliest couples that demonstrate this is Theseus and Hippolyta. They stay true and loyal to each other, showing their desires and passion for each other. The way Theseus has portray his love to Hippolyta is by his eagerness to be wedded to her, “Another moon – but O methinks, how slow this old moon wanes!” By the end of the play, they are happily married.

Hermia’s speech in Act 2, Scene 2, of Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night’s Dream, contains an abundance of dream imagery. She has awoken from a terrible dream after falling asleep in the forest with Lysander. They were lost and tired so they decided to rest. Lysander wanted to sleep beside her but, she refused since they are not yet married and while they slept Puck applied a love potion on Lysander’s eyes thinking he was Demetrius. Lysander wakes and is repulsed by the sight of Hermia and never wants to see her again because he is now in love with Helena. Hermia awakes from her terrible dream and retells it thinking that Lysander is nearby listening. Then she realizes that he is not there and she does not see him anywhere. Hermia expresses the sentiment that she will find Lysander or she will surely die. She stated,

Next, to contradict with another view of Cutis, who asserts a similarity between the “Theseus-Hippolyta” relationship and the “Oberon-Titania relationship,” I will prove that the extreme meanness of Oberon to Titania is of another kind, in that Oberon is capable of sympathizing with Titania, and in that the meanness of Oberon comes from his overabundant love for Titania (Cutis 183). Under a fairy land setting, “a place of confused

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a masterful piece of literature that both directly and indirectly comments on the reality of control and power in Western cultures. Shakespeare’s ability to depict human nature gives us insight into how English society functioned in his lifetime, but more importantly allows us to analyze our own perspective of ourselves and the world around us. One way Shakespeare articulates his ideas is through well constructed metaphors and similies, resulting in more powerful writing. One very significant metaphor is spoken by Theseus early on in Act 1, scene 1. Egeus has brought his daughter, Hermia, to the royal court to for Theseus’s opinion on Hermia’s marriage. Egeus has arranged for Hermia to marry Demetrius, a very worthy suitor, but Hermia is truly in love with another man, Lysander. This dilemna is explained to Theseus and he states, “To you your father should be as a god;/ One that composed your beauties, yea, and one/ To whom you are but as a form in wax/ By him imprinted and within his power/ To leave the figure or disfigure it” (I.i.51-55). In summary, Theseus is defending Egeus by saying Hermia was created by Egeus and his will determines her fate. Behind this metaphor is a simple idea that proves how a desire to control can have many unintended consequences as well as negative effects. In order to understand this concept more effectively, it is crucial to analyze how influence is structured socially. The quote demonstrates

Love is many things, and is also used as a reference to sight and vision such as blindness. It is much more than aesthetics and wields the power of sight, and can also cause chaos and destruction. Similarly, Shakespeare utilizes two types of blindness by love; the first being physical due to a love potion a fairy king, Oberon orders upon the humans in Shakespeare’s, A Midsummers Night’s Dream. The second, being metaphorical due to Antony’s immense amount of love towards Cleopatra, in which hinders his political motivation in Shakespeare’s, Antony and Cleopatra.

Another crucial aspect of love and the disorder that often follows in its wake is the idea of irrationality. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses the motif of dreams to show how irrationality and love are connected. By Act 5, Scene 1, all of the play’s romantic conflicts have finally been resolved. As Theseus and Hippolyta reflect on the tumultuous relationships of Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena, it becomes clear that they each have a different opinion on the subject. Although the young Athenians claimed to have awoken from a strange dream to find their conflicts resolved, Theseus and Hippolyta are not so sure whether to believe their story. Theseus, the more cynical of the two, believes that the four lovers were simply driven to insanity by love, and that the fairy world was probably just a figment of their imaginations. Hippolyta, on the other hand, believes that there is more than meets the eye to this story, and that it could be the truth. Both give interesting reasons for their viewpoints.

Love is such an abstract and intangible thing, yet it is something that everyone longs for. In Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the difficulty of love is explored through the obstacles that characters have to face while pursuing their loved ones. Those characters that are in love in the play were conflicted with troubles; however, the obstacles of love do not seem to stop them from being infatuated with each other. The concept of true love is examined throughout this play. By creating obstacles using authority and a higher power, Shakespeare examines the power of love. Through Hermia and Lysander’s loving words, it is reasonable to conclude that love conquers all if you believe in it.

In Athens, women had very little rights. Womens fathers were the ones who got to choose whom they married, and that caused trouble for the lovers. Hermia’s father, Egeus, strongly believed in this rule. At the beginning, Egeus decides that he wants Hermia to marry Demetrius, which is good for Demetrius but bad for Hermia. Hermia, daringly refuses her father’s wishes, so they seek the help of Theseus, the Duke of Athens. Theseus listens to their situation, and being the authority in the situation, tells Hermia: “Either to die the death, or to abjure for the society of men. Therefore, fair Hermia,... if you yield not to your father’s choice, you can endure the livery of a nun...”(24). This shows how authority, in this case the law, gets in the way of “the course of true love…”(28). Egeus’s decision to have Hermia marry Demetrius does not only affect Hermia but also affects Helena. When Hermia’s father chooses Demetris to be her

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.

Different Aspects of Love Presented in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream Lysander + Hermia = True love? Sexual Attraction (Lust) ------------------------------------------------------- Titania + Oberon = Love or hate (Married )

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

The Theme of Love in A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare presents us with multiple types of love by using numerous couples in various different situations. For example: Doting loves, the love induced by Oberon's potion and in some aspects, Lysander and Hermia's love for each other; there are true loves: Oberon and Titania, Lysander and Hermia (for the first half at least, as Lysander's love switches to Helena temporarily) and Theseus and Hippolyta. Also, there is Helena's love for Demetrius, which could be described as a true love, even though at first it is unrequited.