Fairies In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In his comedic play, A Midsummers Night Dream (1595), William Shakespeare utilizes the enchanting adventures of young Athenian lovers and a group of low-class rudimentary actors and their shared experiences with supernatural creatures to portray the opportunity of being in command of their destiny. By presenting conflicts to these three diverse realms, Shakespeare allows these characters to connect despite their hierarchical distinctions to reveal their determination to conquer their adversity. He uses dramatic irony, metaphor, and symbolism to heighten the audience's awareness of their self-determination and their firm control on their future. Shakespeare inspires the public by instilling in them that despite their challenging circumstances, they can still be masters of their own fate, bestowing a feeling of newfound hope and freewill.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.

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.

The course of love never did run smooth (Shakespeare I.i.134). William Shakespeare’s captivating, profound play illustrates the complications of four Athenians’ love lives. Two lovers yearn to run away together to get married, but trouble sets in and their lives become more complex when magical fairies and a love potion get involved. The four Athenians have to battle their way through love’s complications. The perplexing “love square,” mythical interference, and the endeavor to find equanimity are the three obstacles that the main characters urge to get past during the comedy. As these obstacles are thrown at the Athenians, the four lovers grow confused, and because of Robin, the audience laughs often. The play may begin with anything and end with anything, but if the dreamer is sad at the end he will be sad as if by prescience at the beginning; if he is cheerful at the beginning he will be cheerful if the stars fall (The American Chesterton Society).

To provide some context, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream interferes with love through the deception of fairies. When Hermia’s father insists she marry Demetrius, she runs away with Hermia and Lysander. Contrastingly, Helena chases after an uninterested Demetrius, helplessly in love. The fairies meddle with these two couples by accidentally casting a love

William Shakespeare’s writing in A Midsummer Night’s Dream evokes magical imagery in the reader’s mind allowing the story to come to life before their eyes. Magic is one of the main themes woven throughout William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Magic is defined as a “special power, influence, or skill” (Magic, 2015). In this play Shakespeare uses magic as a tool to influence the audience’s perception of certain elements in the play. Shakespeare uses magic to symbolize the unfathomable power of love, create a mystical atmosphere, and to contrast the realty of Athens and the fantasy world of the forest.

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.

Helena’s monologue in Act 1, Scene 1 from lines 232 to 257 in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream relates to the play as a whole by describing true love and the journey one has to go through to obtain it, and explains the actions of the lovers in the play. After Helena expresses her jealousy of Hermia because Demetrius only loves Hermia, she starts to voice her displeasure with Demetrius and his love preference. Helena says, “Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste. And therefore love is said to be a child, because in choice he is so oft beguiled.” (Lines 243-45) This suggests that love is quick to be deceived, and that true love is only obtained after being deceived by false love. This can be further proven by the love juice, (nectar

Through the actions of the fairies in midsummers night’s dream , william shakespeare shows how magic can achieve impossible outcomes.

Lysander and Demetrius are the two Athenian lovers experience magic. They both experience the love potion and both fall for Helena. Helena is a human, and cannot understand the magic used on Lysander and Demetrius. Helena chooses to believe the men are playing a joke on her. Helena said, “Never did mockers waste more idle breath” (3.2.1206). Helena even says to Hermia, “Have you conspired, have

Helena puts forth the evocative themes of “hate” and “mock[ery],” clearly exhibiting that she feels quite a lot of emotion towards the way that Lysander and Demetrius are acting. Helena’s evidently very low self-esteem causes her to believe that Demetrius and Lysander are “joining in souls” or teaming up on her to make fun of her, when they are contrarily being quite affectionate. This clearly exemplifies how dramatic irony, a common theme throughout the play, can actually intend to teach the lesson that love is very complex and quite magical, conveyed by the fairies. Similarly to Helena, Bottom, a farcical member of the mechanicals that gets comeuppance for his high self-esteem by being turned into an ass by Puck, is also unaware of the reality of his situation. When Bottom comes to the realization that he has undergone some sort of change, he is still completely uninformed about his true state of being, but yet the audience knows exactly what has occurred. Bottom infers, “This is to make an ass of me” (3.1.99). It is very ironic that Bottom thinks they are “mak[ing] an ass of [him],” when in reality he has literally been transformed into an ass. This random, confusing aspect of the play symbolizes the randomness and complexity of love. Additionally, later in the scene, Titania admires Bottom’s appearance, demonstrating the blindness of love. Shakespeare evidently utilizes the comedic device of

The fairies and the fairy realm have many responsibilities in this play. The most important of which is that they are the cause of much of the conflict and comedy within this story. They represent mischievousness and pleasantry which gives the play most of its emotion and feeling. They relate to humans because they make mistakes but differ in the fact that they do not understand the human world.

Shakespeare shows just how time can be used in a comedic way in the progression of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as it hastily followed the actions of Hermia as her marriage was arranged, the escape with her lover into the fairy realm in an attempt to alter their lives, the events that transpired within the green world, and eventually ended with the resolution. Here time adds to the humor since the young lovers are quickly making choices and continue to bicker with one another. Yet Shakespeare shows just how destructive time can become when used to create a tragic

A main idea is A midsummer night’s dream is jealousy people have for others. Shakespeare first refers to jealousy when Helena is speaking to Hermia. Helena obviously envies Hermia for she had Demetrius fall in hove with her. The jealousy is seen again during the mud fight between Helena and Hermia. This comical scene occurs after Puck’s mishap, and Demetrius and Lysander have both fallen in love with Hermia. Only this time, Hermia is the jealous one. Dramatic irony is used, since the reader knows the only reason Lysander fell in love with Helena is because Puck mistook him for Demetrius, but Hermia is completely oblivious to that. Hermia is enraged when she says “O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love! What, have you come by night and stol’n my love’s heart from him?” But she doesn’t know that Lysander is under a spell. To convey the concept of jealousy, Shakespeare uses the dramatic irony to make the topic less serious, and more humorous.

“Laughter may seem to be only like an exhalation of air, but out of that air we came; in the beginning we inhaled it; it is a truth, not a fantasy, a truth couple of good which comedy stoutly maintains”(Fry 79), this quote and Christopher Fry’s “Comedy” explains that comedy is an outlet, it does not shield you from the truth… it is the truth and that laughter is not just “air” laughter is more than that it frees us and comforts. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a perfect example, it is known as one of Shakespeare's most comedic plays. A Midsummer Night’s Dream written by Shakespeare contains four subplots that are all intertwined at one point or another, the Lovers, the Fairies, the Athenian court, and the Rude Mechanicals. Each plot has its own build of characters and problems, some subplots creating problems for others. The comedic nature comes of the story from three main areas, the lovers, the fairies, and the Mechanicals, the plot of the lovers contribute with the fighting and shifts in love, the fairies contribute to the overall comedy with the deception and mistakes, and the Mechanicals contribute comedy to the play though irony and malapropisms.