William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream

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,

The play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare, demonstrates the difficulties of human love. Throughout the course of this play, all the lovers were confused, whether it be from the love potion provided by Oberon, the fairy king, or whether it be through natural terms, (those not affected by the potion). In this essay, we will be looking at how Lysander had agreed with this implication of human love being difficult, the scene where all the lovers are confused, and lastly, the time when Helena was furiously jealous of Hermia.

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.

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been categorized as a comedy play because of all the characters being passionately in love to the point of being foolish. It’s a play all about love, and the characters that are in love are only young adults, so they are still naive when it comes to love. Their naivety and foolishness regarding love is what allows them to be taken advantage of by mischievous fairies when they all run away into the woods. By critiquing the love affairs and numerous misunderstandings that occur within the mystical woods, I argue that Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream portrays the characters’ young love as a foolish fantasy with drastic consequences.

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.

Shakespeare transformed writing as we knew it over 500 years ago. He believed in an interconnected story in which all characters and actions portrayed a deeper meaning. The play Macbeth exemplifies this ideal in countless ways through the use of themes and supporting motifs. Although themes appear throughout, the most impressive is that of betrayal and trust used to expand characters. These characters are depicted around blood through many instances of this theme and this use brings a new layer of depth to Shakespeare’s work.

“Audiences can gain a better understanding of ways to behave in a specific relationship through comparing past and present representations of them in texts.”

One of the few purposes of this scene in the play is to introduce the fairies to the audience. This is important as the fairy’s play a large role in propelling the plot forward to its conclusion. The fairies are derived from characters familiar to English folklore and are some of the most memorable characters in Shakespeare’s Midsummers Night’s Dream. Shakespeare uses poetic imagery as a way to develop the fairies characters as a group and to grant to audience greater understanding of the play. For example when the writer of this play writes in the words of a fairy: “Through bush/ through brier/ over park, over pale/ through flood/ through fire/ I do wander

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.

In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare story about romantic desire. Theseus and Hippolyta, are about to be married; both of them are wonderful figures from classical mythology. (Greek Mythology) Theseus is a great warrior, a kinsman of Hercules; Hippolyta is an Amazon warrior-woman, defeated in battle by Theseus. (Theseus and Hippolyta) He was longing for the wedding day, and this is what opens the play and closing the play with their exit marriage bed. (Theseus and Hippolyta).

Our group focused on a chapter from Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy, “May Games and Metamorphoses on a Midsummer Night” by Barber, C.L. From this section of the book, it gave me a new insight regarding to Shakespeare’s play The Midsummer 's Night Dream. Barber did a great job in his explanation on the romance part of the play and also on the metamorphoses part, however he was unorganized and the methods he used to explain his ideas were confusing.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play about four Athenian lovers. Theseus listens to both Hermia and her father’s request and he tells her to bend to her father’s will or die due to the old Athenian law. Hermia and Lysander flee Athens, into the domain of the fairy kingdom. At this time, Oberon is in a fight with Titania. This fight is over a human child of Titania’s friend. Oberon tells Puck, one of his loyal servants, to get a flower hit by Cupid’s arrow, and drop the oil into Demetrius’s and Titania’s eyes. However, Puck drops the oil into Lysander’s eyes due to Oberon’s vague description, making him fall in love with Helena and despise Hermia. Titania falls in love Bottom, who has the head of an ass, after Oberon places the oil

Imagery is an important factor to understanding this play, it is used for language and description that appeals to the five senses. Nature is one of the key setting for this play, it symbolizes beauty and represents time and disorder. For the collage many pictures were used to symbolize these, one of the pictures included a beautiful woman this is to showcase beauty. In "Midsummer Night's Dream" Lysander compares Helena to tiery stars in a night sky, William Shakespare uses nature to describe the beauty of many females in the play. Demetrius also compares Helena's lips to cherries and her hands to pure white snow, "Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!, That pure congealèd white, high Taurus' snow,"(Act 3 Scene 2), this shows the relationship between nature and beauty as nature's characteristics are being used to describe Helena's beauty in the play. The imagery of nature also represents time as the waxing and waning moon signifies morning, the collage showcases many pictures of natures beauty and the different seasons in the collage represent the different days and time. The clock in the collage is used to represent time shown in the play, "Four days will quickly steep themselves in night. Four nights will

A Midsummer’s Night Dream is a story of requited and unrequited love between two couples, conventions existing within society, supernatural enchantment and features a play within a play. The extract from Act III, Scene 1 is of pivotal importance. It is the first oie themes, symbolismccurrence of two character types converging; namely the Queen of Fairies – Titania – and Bottom, a weaver and performer. The use of distinct language techniques, diction, and contextual relationships expands on themes and symbolism introduced in earlier scenes, and which are prevalent throughout the play. Analysis of language, structure and characterisation within the extract assists in making decisions about performance possibilities, and aids in challenging audience