William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night 's Dream

Love is a timeless topic. It will forever be the theme of popular entertainment and source of confusion for men and women alike. No one understands this better than William Shakespeare, and he frequently explores this complex emotion in his plays. In "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" Shakespeare cleverly reveals the fickle and inebriating aspects of love through his mischievous character Puck.

Love is a very common theme that is seen in literature, and love is one of the most powerful things that can be felt for someone or something. Love can drive a person to do incredible or horrible things, and we see many forms of love that take place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is demonstrated in the book by many characters including Hermia and Lysander who demonstrate true love. Titania and Bottom show magical 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.”

Shakespeare uses many different themes to present love; relationships, conflict, magic, dreams and fate. Overall, he presents it as something with the ability to make us act irrationally and foolishly. Within A Midsummer Night's Dream we see many examples of how being 'in love' can cause someone to change their perspective entirely. 'The path of true love never did run smooth' is a comment made from one of the main characters, Lysander, which sums up the play's idea that lovers always face difficult hurdles on the path to happiness and will usually turn them into madmen.

Throughout the events which unfold in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare delivers several messages on love. Through this play, one of the significant ideas he suggests is that love is blind, often defying logic and overriding other emotions and priorities. Helena loves Demetrius unconditionally and pursues him despite knowing that he loathes her; conflict arises between Helena and Hermia, childhood best friends, over Demetrius and Lysander; and because she is in love, Queen Titania is able to see beauty and virtue in the ass-headed Nick Bottom.

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 William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Shakespeare describes a love story between a few characters throughout the play. These individuals face obstacles, from fairies to fathers on their path to find love. In addition, there are many interpersonal conflicts that are caused by love.

Love is widely known to be an intense fondness or deep affection for a person or thing. This may be a very positive feeling, but like there is always a negative side to things. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is able to use the characters to present some insight into this side. With the variety of characters throughout the play displaying different scenarios of love, they continuously show that one’s love and desire for anything may come with conflict and people who have opposing opinions as presented through Hermia, Oberon, and Lysander.

Finding a metaphor in Shakespeare’s plays is like searching for a book in a bookstore. It is easy to find one, but requires time to fully understand its rich content and significance. In the expository scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , it first seems that Theseus, the Duke of Athens, emphasizes only his authority and Hermia’s inferior, unexperienced status by telling her to “Know of your youth, examine well your blood” (1.1.68). If Hermia would literally inspect the red fluid flowing in her arteries and veins on stage, she would have mistaken the phrase. The blood is rather a complex metaphor which is crucial for the understanding of the comedy. This paper sketches the thesis that the blood-metaphor in AMND represents hierarchies in family and society given by birth as well as the theory of the four humors. In the Early Modern Period, humorism was an approved medical explanation for personal temperaments based on four distinct bodily fluids, of which blood is one. In some Shakespearean tragedies and histories, the blood symbolizes death and guilt following combats and murders. In the comedy AMND however, the conflicts surrounding order and desire do not necessarily result in bloodsheds, but lead to little combats about blood-lines inside the Athenian clans.

William Shakespeare’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” continuously features the theme of love that serves as a perspective through which three major aspects of the work become apparent. First, Shakespeare develops his characters in this play by showing their participation in and reaction to love. From the beginning, Theseus and Hippolyta’s description of love sets the bar for the whole play. The purity of their love is the reference point against which all other romantic relationships in the play are based. In the process, Theseus’ character traits emerge. He appears a caring and loving individual who is keen on details. Similarly, Puck’s character trait emerges later on. He is mischievous. This trait emerges from his participation in Oberon’s

In any society there are rules and conventions that must be followed in order to uphold the established ideas of normality. These rules are imposed with the intentions of maintaining order and harmony; without them many would believe that society would fall into chaos. Within Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ these rules can be undermined in the confines of settings in which the supernatural reigns, allowing the characters to grow and develop before returning to society as changed people. Through this creation of comedic disorder, characters of authority are often displaced from their positions within a social hierarchy, thus making the supernatural an integral part of Shakespeare’s comedy. Without the supernatural elements that

Love is a powerful force capable of clouding rational thought. The mind succumbs to the whirlwind of emotions over reality, and the lover is sucked into their own fantasy. It is whimsical and irrational. In A Midsummers Night Dream, Shakespeare pokes fun at the effects of love, with its tendency to be blinding, and consequently, a source of contention. Three couples fall victim to love's grip. The young Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius get caught up in a chase for love in the forrest outside of Athens. Love almost tears apart their friendships and leads to foolish actions. Simultaneously in those very woods, the Fairy queen Titania becomes enamored by a half man- half donkey, leading to a night that would be best left unspoken. Quoting Theseus,

Shakespeare’s comedies, like those of most Renaissance playwrights, involve love and its obstacles. Much of the comedy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream derives from the attempt of Lysander and Hermia to remain together while overcoming the adult authority figure who attempts to hinder the love of a young couple. The overcoming of an obstacle functions as a common motif in Renaissance comedy. The audience must wonder, however, whether Lysander and Hermia, as well as Demetrius and Helena, actually love each other. While it is the love potion that alters the objects of the men’s affections, one may interpret the juice as a metaphor for lovers’ inconstancy. The juice only contains magic because the male lovers do not possess a fervent and true love. It is significant that Lysander and Demetrius change their minds about whom they love, but Hermia and Helena never waver; perhaps Shakespeare correlates faithfulness with gender. Audience members generally support the relationship between Lysander and Hermia—partly because her father does not. They are struck by his indifference to his daughter’s happiness: He prefers that she die rather than be happy with a man of whom he does not approve. Egeus, furthermore, provides no reason to Theseus as to why he does not support Lysander; it is as if he disapproves for arbitrary reasons—merely to exert his will. His abuse of paternal authority renders him absurd but dangerous nevertheless. His support for Demetrius colors the audience’s point of

Though deviating from the common logic, one’s action and words follow a sets of principles under the effect of love, so love creates a unique reality in one’s mind. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare conveys the essence of love as an illusion that prioritizes love. The farce between four lovers does not happen in disciplined Athens where people pursue material needs but a mystical forest where elves like Robin Goodfellow seek fun and entertainment. It suggests the irrationality and craziness of love. Shakespeare dramatizes and explains this irrationality by depicting contradiction between characters, describing perspectives from an insider and an outsider in affairs concerning love. As Lysander falls into love with

William Shakespeare is estimated to have lived from 1564 to about 1616. He is often recognized as great English poet, actor, and playwright, and paved the way for many on all of those categories. Over that span he wrote many pieces that are still relevant today such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth. I would like to take a deeper look into one on his pieces “A Midsummers Night’s Dream.” This piece is estimated to have first been preformed in about 1595 and then later published in 1600. Many of his works are love stories and this one is no different, but this one puts a twist on the typical love story by turning it into a comedy. In the play, "A Midsummer Night 's Dream", several examples of love 's association with a higher power

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