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.

In the A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare wrote about different aspects of love. Love is viewed as an arranged marriage in this story because Theseus and Hippolyta and Oberon and Titania had the girls parents decision on whom they must marry, however, their reactions to the marriage were much different. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare explores the mature and stable love between Theseus and Hippolyta in contrast with the relationship of Oberon and Titania, that has a negative impact on the world around them. The story contradicts a healthy relationship to an unhealthy relationship by having one couple be so strong whereas the other relationship is so

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.

Love is many things, and is also used as a reference to sight and vision such as blindness. It is much more than aesthetics and wields the power of sight, and can also cause chaos and destruction. Similarly, Shakespeare utilizes two types of blindness by love; the first being physical due to a love potion a fairy king, Oberon orders upon the humans in Shakespeare’s, A Midsummers Night’s Dream. The second, being metaphorical due to Antony’s immense amount of love towards Cleopatra, in which hinders his political motivation in Shakespeare’s, Antony and Cleopatra.

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.

The play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, involves several different couples; Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, Helena and Demetrius, Titania and Bottom, and Titania and Oberon. What aspects of love are explored in each of these relationships and what point is Shakespeare trying to make about love. Shakespeare shows love in multiple ways, whether its mature, forbidden, married, spell-bound, or unrequited. By doing this Shakespeare is trying to suggest that love really is an obstacle course that turns us all into madmen.

In any history textbook, there will most definitely be at least one example of a royal leader overthrown by their citizens. But why is it that some royal leaders, or any very powerful leaders, have trouble controlling their power? The answer is found in the amount of power the leaders possess, and how they choose to control it. The historic leaders found in history books often lose control of their power because their amount of power is too large, so it is very difficult to use it effectively. Oberon and Puck, characters in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, learn this the hard way, and use their power to attempt at solving the problems of the four lovers. Oberon and Puck are the characters with the most power in the play because of their supernatural advantage, similar to how a royal leader is born into their position. They create many unnecessary problems while doing this, such as Nick Bottom and Titania 's strange love, and Helena’s supposed mockery.In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a large amount of power is proved as difficult to control, and too much power in the hands of only a few characters can create more problems than there originally was, because of miscommunication and poor planning of the characters in power.

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

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

In A MidSummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, we are introduced to a character named Puck. The character depicted in Shakespeare play is based off of Elizabethan folklore. Puck was one of the most famous figures in English fairy tradition at the time. Puck was seen as a sly and crafty spirit, and is often referred to as Robin Goodfellow. Some sources believe that his roots go back as far as the Greek God Pan and to the Pagan deity, the Green Man. The name, Puck, derives from the Middle English 'pook ' or 'pouke ', another word for an elf or sprite. In early England, the name Puck seems to have been used in association with the Devil, probably through the encouragement of the Church. He was viewed back in that