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Essay William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

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William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be considered an archetypal comedy due in large part to the ill-defined characters. Part of what makes this play work so well is that rather than becoming too invested in any one character’s hopes and fears or desires and struggles, the audience is simply rooting for things to work out well in general. If the audience became too attached to any one character, they might lose sight of the bigger picture in their concern over, for example, Demetrius remaining drugged at the end of the play, or the disturbing repercussions of Helena marrying a man who only a few acts earlier she had urged to “Use me but as your spaniel…” (2.i.212). The …show more content…

Once Demetrius and Lysander are bewitched with the love potion, their love for Hermia is entirely tossed aside in favor of singing Helena’s praises. Yes, they are under a spell, but it is worth noting that at no point in the play does any character make reference to any distinguishing features other than the difference in height between the two girls and perhaps a slight difference in their complexions. Their beauty is made much of, but really nothing beyond that is ever referred to. Also notable is that, as little distinction as there seems to be between the women, there is even less between the men. Both are equally determined to have Hermia when the play starts, and both men speak with equal venom to whichever girl happens to be in their way at the time. When Helena pursues Demetrius while he is pursuing Hermia, she meets with threats and retorts very similar to those that Hermia hears from the enchanted Lysander when he is pursuing Helena. These characters have not come very far at all from the stock characters of Commedia dell’Arte, the innamorati on which they were based. In his book Commedia dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook, John Rudlin describes the speech of the lovers as, “flamboyant, hyperbolical, full of amorous rhetoric.” (108). These characters were differentiated by little other than their names and their relationships to other characters (often, a plot would revolve around a rich old man refusing to allow his

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