A Midsummer Night's Dream

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

This play is a love story that is split between four sets of lovers; Hippolyta and Theseus, Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius and Titania and Oberon. The story begins with a distraught father, Egeus, asking the Duke, Thesus, to bring the law upon his daughter 's, Hermia’s, head. His request is made because he wants her to marry Demetrius and she has disobeyed him by seeing Lysander in secret. The Duke gives Hermia up to the day of his wedding to decide to obey her father or suffer the consequence of consignment to a nunnery if she chooses to oppose him. This decision spurs Hermia and Lysander to meet in the woods to facilitate their elopement. Things get interesting at this point because Puck, a

Love is a timeless topic which Shakespeare explores in depth in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream “. Shakespeare utilizes the format of a play within a play to communicate the complexities of love. Love is a force that characters cannot control. The play includes scenes of lovers searching for fulfillment in the arms of characters who are unavailable. The magic love potion wreaks havoc between actual lovers and it is clear just how negatively it is portrayed. The entire play revolves around the difficulties of maintaining love and how foolish and insecure the pursuit of love can make us. It also touches on the fickleness of love, that love can be

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,

Have you ever heard a quote that really stood out to you. And then you went and told you friends that quote and they liked it. And they told people who told other people and then everyone liked. Eventually, you know with all the social media programs these days, its going to end up on facebook or instagram and even more people are going to find out about it. Thats one way a quote can become famous but another way is if it is in a popular movie or book. In this case it is from one of Shakespeare's finest and most known, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the quote “the course of true love never did run smoothly” applies to the different people in the book: the first couple is Hermia and Lysander, Second Demetrius and Helena, and finally Pyramus and Thisbe.

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.

The strongest emotion humans can exchange is the feeling of affection and love. In Midsummer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare the characters of the play will do anything for love. It does not matter whether love is one sided, like as the case of Helena, or forbidden by your lovers father as Lysander , taking risks and fighting for love, as Hermia did is how true love is shown. Even though love takes them on difficult paths in the end they find their ways to happiness.

As Duke Theseus and Hippolyta prepare for their wedding, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Egeus arrives with his daughter Hermia, who is in love with Lysander. Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius who loves her back. Helena is in love with Demetrius. The Duke tells Hermia she will either die or become a nun if she does not obey. Hermia and Lysander run away to the forest. In the forest, Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies, mix the couples up when they squeeze a potion in the eyes of other characters. Theseus and Hippolyta arrive in the forest to discover the sleeping lovers and when Theseus hears of what happened, he allows the couples to marry as they wish, despite Egeus ' will.

1. I was confused when I first started reading this, I got a bit lost when the setting kept changing and the magical elements thrown me off at first. As I kept looking back through the story and rereading parts I started to understand this world more. Shakespeare does a great job of encapturing you in this world with the way he lets the characters decide their actions. The switch from first to third person does a fantastic job of giving us all the information we need, and the way everything falls into place at the end just makes this story that much better.

Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has been portrayed in many different ways. Along with the 1999 film, countless plays have reinvented this timeless masterpiece. In order to compare most effective acting, blocking, and prop usage, I have watched three different videos of Act III, Scene II, as listed above. Each had their perks, as well as faults.

The major role of dreaming in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is to uncover the different relationships between reality and a dream. The major theme in the story is dreaming which recurs primarily when the characters take a stab at explaining their peculiar dreams or events in the magical forest to Theseus and Hippolyta but they do not believe them because they think that the four lovers are making this up. When Bottom stirs from his slumber and tries to explain his dream, “I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.

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

A Midsummer’s Night Dream, possesses four different perspectives of one intertwined plot. It begins with Hippolyta and Theseus planning their wedding. Then, the conflict is introduced where a young woman, Hermia, has to choose between marrying a man she does not love, Demetrius, or being punished by death or becoming a nun for disobeying her father because she loves another, Lysander. There is also a woman, Helena, who is in love with Demetrius, but he does not feel the same towards her. These young lovers become victims of Oberon’s scheme.

The Shakespeare classic, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, grabbed my attention when we read through the summer reading list in class. I’ve read Romeo and Juliet in class, and have read Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost on my own time. However, I did not enjoy any of them. When I saw this play on our summer reading list, I decided to try it out. I wanted to see if I really did, or did not, enjoy Shakespeare.

On July 3rd I went to go watch A Midsummer Night's Dream at the City Theatre. Before