...A Midsummer Night’s Dream Throughout your life you might occasionally find yourself having difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is just your imagination. William Shakespeare, born in April 1564, was one of the greatest play writers of all time. In each of his plays Shakespeare focused on conveying a message or theme to the audience. One of his most beloved works is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Throughout this play William Shakespeare is trying to make the distinction between appearances versus reality. Using the concepts of love, a play-within-a-play, and dreams Shakespeare is able to make the distinction between the two. This essay will examine each concept and explain its importance in distinguishing between how things look versus what they actually are. Love is a major theme throughout the story. There are many different types of love between the different characters. First, there is noble love between Theseus and Hippolyta. Next is true love, which is shared between Lysander and Hermia. Also, Oberon and Titania share a magical love because both are fairies. Shakespeare confuses reality by including fairies in this story. The fairies can interact with the humans and can even fall in love with them. Another tactic used by Shakespeare is that the fairies have a magic liquid that when poured onto a persons eyelids will cause that person to fall in love with the first thing that person sees once they open their eyes. This potion is poured into many characters...
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...What can two random components like love and a potion have in common? According to Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, pouring a love potion on two separate love interest did not make for a good night. Thankfully, George Lucas’s storyline explained Shakespeare’s play in the animated movie ‘Strange Magic’. While there are some differences, the similarities between “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and ‘Strange Magic’ are salient. While the plots are similar, each work stands alone due to their differences. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is one of Shakespeare’s play comedies. The play begins with Theseus who is preparing the city for his marriage to Hippolyta with a festival. Theseus is named the Duke of Athens, which makes him have the highest title Meanwhile, Egeus enters followed by Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius. Hermia is Egeus’ daughter and she is in love with...
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...Allusions in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Carlos Fuentes wrote “There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past” (Myself with Others: Selected Essays). Judging from William Shakespeare’s own extensive use of allusions, he would agree with Carlos Fuentes. William Shakespeare was an English Renaissance author of many timeless pieces, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a tale of how love, (whether it be true love or the misuse of love potions,) blurs the fine line between dreams and reality. In the preceding literary piece, and many more of his unlisted works, William Shakespeare used allusions. Literary allusions are “implied or indirect references to a person, event, or thing, or to a part of another text” (Encyclopedia Britannica). William Shakespeare, author of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, used allusions to reinforce the intended persona of his characters. As revealed earlier, Shakespeare used allusions to better the character development in his writing. This was made very self-evident when it came to Hermia’s character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hermia...
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...A Midsummer Night's Dream Genre Comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream is a classic example of Shakespearean comedy. What, you don't believe us? We'll prove it to you. We've got a checklist that details all the typical conventions and features of the genre so you can see for yourself: Light, humorous tone: Check. The play features fairy magic (like Oberon's love potion), silly pranks (like the transformation of a guy's head into that of a jackass), and the botched performance of a play-within-the-play by a bunch of wannabe actors. Need we say more? Clever dialogue and witty banter: Check. Shakespeare is a huge fan of punning and snappy wordplay, so naturally, his characters know how to get their witty repartee on. Shakespeare reserves some of the best dialogue for his warring lovers, especially Oberon and Titania, and even the "rude mechanicals" manage to wow us with their clever banter. Deception and disguise: Let's see…Hermia and Lysander try to sneak away from Athens to elope (behind Egeus's back). Also, Titania and the young lovers have no idea they've been drugged by Oberon and his magic love juice. So, check. Mistaken identity: Check. Sort of. In most of Shakespeare's other comedies, someone usually runs around in a disguise to mask his or her identity. (Sometimes, a lover is even tricked into sleeping with the wrong person by mistake.) This isn't necessarily the case in A Midsummer Night's Dream, unless we count the fact that the love juice causes Titania to fall head...
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...6/14/14 05 A Midsummer Night's Dream. Love can be known to be crazy and complicated. love has many different aspects to it and it can be understood to be magical and a beautiful thing, as well as vise versa. love is known to have many powers and Shakespeare is very interested in both magic itself and love. These two things in A Midsummer Night's Dream are greatly connected. This is why I think that the magical and surreal world Shakespeare creates in his play, reflects the almost supernatural power of love. The things that he creates within his text to embody this are the love potion, the "dreams", the double worlds, and the forests. the love potion and magic itself that are woven within the play makes some characters feel love drunk, confused, or under the influence. the first example of this is when Demetrius thinks he's in love with Helena while under the potions powers, when you can tell from the beginning of the play he really is not. "O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what my love shall I compare thine eyne." (3.2.137-138) This piece of text evidence shows exactly the powers of this plant. The potion on Demetrius makes him think that he is in love with Helena, but he doesn't realize that he is under the influence of this potion, leaving him confused and not sure of his real feelings for Hermia. Another thing that involves the love potion and reflects the actions of being drunk is when Oberon orders puck to put the love potion onto Tatania's eyes...
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...“Love is the strongest and most fragile thing we have in life.” -Vanessa Paradis. Love is an emotional connection between two people. Love is a strong bond between friends, soul mates, or family. Though love can be a strong bond between two people, it can prove to be even more fragile. One mistake, one misstep and the love can disappear. In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream it is evident, through the actions of Oberon and Lysander, that love can be both strong and fragile. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the actions of Oberon allows the reader to question the strength of the love between the Fairy King and Titania. Oberon is portrayed to have two personalities. Though he can be caring, loving, and benevolent. Oberon is...
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...Midsummer Night’s Dream (MSND) is one of the masterpieces that Shakespeare has foretold. The play is a tragic comedy that hinges on a group of quarreling lovers. The lovers include Helena, Demetrius, Hermia, and Lysander. Lysander and Hermia are in love, but Hermia’s father wants Hermia to marry Demetrius, a man with strong interest in her. Helena is in love with Demetrius, but he has his eyes on Hermia, so he abuses her and puts her down. They seek council with the king of Athens to end the feud, but he gives Hermia three choices, to die, to become a nun, or to marry Demetrius. Lysander and Hermia escape into the woods and the other lovers search for them. Other groups in this play include fairies and the actors putting on a show for the...
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...Shakespeare’s Four Different Kinds of Love in AMND A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy/fantasy fiction by William Shakespeare wrote in 1595 or 1596 where Theseus plans to marry Hippolyta, and where lovers spend the night in the forest and fairies do spells and pranks on them. The play takes place in Athens. The plays first performance was on January 1, 1605 (Study.com, 2003-2018) and has been a popular play all over the world, ever since. The play is about love; it is not a tragedy. There were many different types of love portrayed in the play. Shakespeare talked about four different kinds of love in A Midsummer Night’s dream. He talked about forced love, parental love, romantic love, and complicated love. Forced Love- At the beginning of the play Theseus and Hippolyta have a forced love....
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...SYNOPSIS A Midsummer Night's Dream" deals with the universal theme of love and its complications: lust, disappointment, confusion, marriage. The plot focuses on three parallel stories: * The trials and experiences of two sets of lovers camping in a magical forest * The world of the Fairy King and Queen and their elves * And a group of amateur actors attempting to stage a production of "Pyramus and Thisby" for the wedding of the Duke of Athens. Hermia is in love with Lysander, but her father wants her to marry Demetrius (who is loved by Helena). Hermia has to choose between marrying Demetrius, death or becoming a nun. To escape the arranged marriage, she and Lysander elope into the woods followed by Demetrius and Helena. While there we have the two male characters in love with Hermia, while Helena is trying to win the heart of Demetrius back. With this going on in the ‘main plot’ we are re-introduced to the fairies who try to ‘help’ the situation by using a love potion. The whole thing goes completely wrong which adds to the comedic elements of this play and ends up with Lysander and Demetrius now loving Helena and they find themselves in the same situation that they were already in before. "The course of true love never did run smooth" comments Lysander, uttering one of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s most important themes. The theme of love’s difficulty, which is explored through the motif of love out of balance. The prime example of this is the unbalanced love among...
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...take from this play is , “The course of true love never did run smooth” (1.1.134). https://www.shmoop.com/midsummer-nights-dream There are a lot of examples of dramatic irony in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One example was when Titania fell in love with Bottom which was the man who turned into a donkey. “Fetch me that flower . . . . The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid will make man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees” (2.1.175- 178).https://www.shmoop.com/midsummer-nights-dream This shows...
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...Love is Blind, Among Other Things “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a comedy by William Shakespeare set in and around the city of Athens during a time when the belief in the existence of magic and magical beings was not outrageous. The characters used form a wide variety of social classes from royalty to the lowly working class which helps to show that the affects of love are not confined to any specific group of people, but that everyone is equally afflicted. Helena is one of the four young lovers depicted in this play and has a unique perspective on love by being the only female who does not have a suitor. Shakespeare uses Helena’s first soliloquy at the end of act one, scene one, along with the play itself to help solve some of love’s more mysterious questions such as: why people love others who do not love them; why people fall in love with certain people; and why people fall in and out of love. Why is it that some people love others who do not love them back? When Helena is following Demetrius through the forest while he is trying to find Hermia and Lysander, Demetrius constantly berates Helena, telling her that he does not love her “I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.” (2.1.188) and that it sickens him to look upon her “For I am sick when I do look on thee.” (2.1.212). Helena, feeling Demetrius’ scorn, continues to follow him and profess her love for him “The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.” (2.1.204). The logic for why she follows him cannot exist in the mind...
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...Love means many things, to each person it means something different. Sometimes, the word love doesn't even mean love, it merely becomes an image of something we want it to be. In the book a Midsummer Night's Dream love can be defined in three different ways; friendship love, relationship love, and mistaken love. The friendship love comes between the couples Hermia & Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, and Thisbe and Pyramus. In act five Thisbe and Pyramus were shocked but yet accepted what had happened between the couples and set the wedding and events for them. This shows friendship love between the couples because they accepted their differences like true friends do. The next type of love is relationship love. We see it mostly between Hermia...
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...‘As men prove their weakness, they demonstrate their power.’ The male characters in a midsummer night’s dream are depicted as ones, who are given authority; however the female characters in the play aren’t submissive to them and they seem to have very little power over them. Oberon has power through aristocracy and his marriage with Tatiana who is queen of the fairies. He is initially at odds with his wife, because she refuses to relinquish control of a young Indian prince whom he wants for a knight. Oberon’s desire for revenge on Tatiana leads him to send Puck to obtain the love-potion flower that creates so much of the play’s confusion and farce. We also know that Oberon and Titania have been clashing a lot and that their big "brawls" have been very destructive. Titania tells us that the fights have been so violent that they've disrupted the seasons and the weather, which has caused devastating winds, rain, and flooding. As a result, crops have been ruined and there's been a shortage of food for humans. As Titania admits, "this progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension" (2.1.3). This shows that Oberon is equally as powerful as Titania, normally women were dominated by their husbands as a woman belongs to their father until they’re married ultimately becoming their husbands possession. Furthermore, the fact Titania is reluctant to gain control of an Indian prince and questions Oberon’s choices is an example of her independence rather than to follow him without...
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...life’s problems; however, the truth of the matter is that empathy alone is not enough. This reality is demonstrated through various forms of literature. To begin with, in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose battles with a terminal illness and morphine addiction. Regardless of the amount of compassion the other characters may show towards her, it is not enough to save her life. Likewise, in Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, Mrs. Schächter suffers from terrifying hallucinations which cause her to scream relentlessly about fire and flames. Even if the other individuals on the train try to empathize with her, they are unable to help her in the state that she is in. Finally, in William Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Robin Goodfellow makes an error that causes a series of mixed up events. However, mere empathy alone could not have prevented it from occurring. Even if the characters in these three texts were to possess a highly developed sense of empathy, some of the problems they encounter are inevitable. First of all, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Mrs. Dubose is diagnosed with an illness and given only a few months to live. Among her last deeds, she decided that she did not want to die under the influence of her morphine addiction. However, overcoming an addiction is not a pleasant process and the children, Jeremy Atticus Finch and Jean Louise Finch were often on the receiving end of this hostility. One day, as the children passed by her house...
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...Olivia Smith Pd 4 MSND A In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mistaken identities cause an uproar of emotional mix-ups. The background of the play is a simple love "square" involving four people.: Hermia loves Lysander and Lysander loves Hermia, but Demetrious also loves her, and Helena loves Demetrious. Hermia and Demetrious are engaged to marry against Hermia's will. They all end up running off into the wood on a magic spring evening when fairies turn everything upside down. While they are asleep, Puck squeezes the juice from a magic flower that makes whomever's eye it enters to fall in love with the first person they see. He puts it onto Lysander's eye, thinking he was Demetrius. This begins the game of mistaken identities, because Helena is the first person Lysander sees, which causes him to fall in love with her instead of Hermia. So now, Lysander loves Helena, Helena loves Demetrius, Demetrius loves Hermia and Hermia loves Lysander. The confusion increases. Every encounter the couples have gets more confusing and exasperating. Then Puck realizes his mistake and puts the flower juice on Demetrius' eyes, making him fall in love with Helena as well. Helena, whose love towards Demetrius has been in vain, thinks that Lysander and Demetrius are mocking her, because they are both, suddenly, mysteriously in love with her. Her exasperation is ironic, because now she has too much love instead of too little. Her anger and verbal abuse of the lovers and of Hermia, whom she suspects...
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