William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream

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.

Love is a theme which reoccurs through many of Shakespeare’s Plays. In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the theme ‘Love’ is presented from the very beginning in Act 1 Scene 1, through Shakespeare’s use of poetic language, structure and vivid imagery.

The quotation, pre-reading questions, and vocabulary in the anticipation guide for A Midsummer Night’s Dream paint a certain picture in my mind as to what this play is going to be about. Looking at the vocabulary, most of the words relate to love, authority and formal ceremonies, which may depict that this play is a love story. The quote stated says “The course of love never did run smooth”, this is also evidence that the play might relate to love, but it also states that there might be a conflict between the two romantically influenced characters. One of the pre-reading questions states “A person can be vain and loveable at the same time.” This may point to the main character(s) feelings about another character. They don’t necessarily like

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,

A dream is a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occuring in a person’s mind during sleep. Love is a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. Love and dreams go hand in hand and in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love takes on many of the characteristics of dreams and the two are almost indiscernible. Some characteristics of dreams are nightmarish, possibly peaceful, short-lived, exaggerated, able to foretell the future, supernatural, uncontrollable, and that they have no chronological time. Mainly though, dreams are a way for people to picture fantasies and play out uncontrollable actions without fear of consequences. In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love is a key recurring topic that can be either good or bad.

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

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’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.

Written during the Elizabethan era where gender roles played an important part in society and relationships, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare portrays the interaction between both sexes, and the women’s response to the expectation of such norms. Although the characters: Hippolyta, Hermia, Helena, and Titania, are portrayed as objects (both sexual and material) contingent upon their male lovers, they are also given empowerment.

Love does not run smoothly for the lovers in the romantic comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” written between the years 1590–1596 by the prominent, English playwright; William Shakespeare. The play revolves around four lovers that each faces incessant complications for love. Demetrius, Hermia, and Lysander are trapped in a triangle of love in which Demetrius and Lysander both love Hermia, but Hermia’s heart only belongs to Lysander. Helena is not involved in the love triangle, but loves Demetrius, which—traditional to any love predicament—does not love her back. To Demetrius’ avail, Hermia’s father [Egeus] tries to coerce Hermia to marry his choice [Demetrius] or yield to the law of Athens and face the sanction of death or (suggested by

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” written by William Shakespeare in 1595, shows us fantastical elements and a griping narrative that demonstrations the values of both the real and imagined world and what links them together. The play has been read and watched for the four decades.

A common theme in literature is love. Love can take hold in an instant and can make you do things you never would have done otherwise. Love appears in several different ways in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hermia and Lysander show true love, while Helena demonstrates unrequited love. Titania and Bottom presents us with magic love. In the play, love is also the cause of a few broken hearts. While there is no one common definition of love that suits all of the characters, the romantic relationship in the play all leans to one simple rule laid out by Lysander, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Love is the primary concern in A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. Love is presented in different types of variation throughout the play. Conflict in the play demonstrates the difficulties of romance, and involves a number of romantic elements. The most common love represented is in the form of a messy love triangle. All the characters in the play are either magically in love or naturally in love. Love as a whole consists of confusion, twisted affection, a bundle of mixed emotions, and power however in the end they will resolve themselves.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be described as the most “greenest” of all of Shakespeare’s works as it is the play that contains the most elements of the outside world away from the city and court life. Because the genre of this play is a comedy, we know that everything will turn out okay. The title of this play includes in it two elements: the first being that midsummer is a time of feasting and marrying, but also of liminal moment, when something ends but something else begins. The second is that a dream occurs in the play. The fantastical world of fairies and magic in the plot is directly related to the phenomenon of love since all of the falling in and out of love occurs in a forest of fairy magic in ancient Greece of Athens. Because of Oberon, the