What Is Hermia's Relationship In A Midsummers Night Dream

In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare, Helena and Hermia are different in many ways. They are different in characteristics and actions. In addition, they have a different lover. Moreover, Helena believes love is a child's play. In the other hand, Hermia begs the differ.

In the Greek myth Pyramus and Thisbe retold by Edith Hamilton in Mythology, two lovers end up dead after one jumps to a wrongful conclusion. Pyramus and Thisbe, two neighbors in forbidden love, speaking only through a chink in their shared wall, crave sharing a touch. The two lovers plan to “slip away and steal out through the city into the open country where at last they could be together in freedom” (Hamilton 134). Thisbe arrives first and suddenly sees a lioness, covered in blood, coming at her. In her escape, Thisbe drops her cloak. When Pyramus arrives and finds the bloody cloak he immediately assumes Thisbe murdered by the lioness and plunges his sword into his side. When Thisbe returns and sees Pyramus dying, she too kills herself out

In both stories, two lovers are held back by their parent’s disapproval and take matters into their own hands. In “Pyramus and Thisbe”, Pryamus and Thisbe’s parents keep the two away from each other by building a wall between their rooms so they couldn’t talk to each other. Egeus, Hermia’s father in A

Another crucial aspect of love and the disorder that often follows in its wake is the idea of irrationality. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses the motif of dreams to show how irrationality and love are connected. By Act 5, Scene 1, all of the play’s romantic conflicts have finally been resolved. As Theseus and Hippolyta reflect on the tumultuous relationships of Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena, it becomes clear that they each have a different opinion on the subject. Although the young Athenians claimed to have awoken from a strange dream to find their conflicts resolved, Theseus and Hippolyta are not so sure whether to believe their story. Theseus, the more cynical of the two, believes that the four lovers were simply driven to insanity by love, and that the fairy world was probably just a figment of their imaginations. Hippolyta, on the other hand, believes that there is more than meets the eye to this story, and that it could be the truth. Both give interesting reasons for their viewpoints.

Likewise, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, dreams mix with reality in the form of characters and their actions, mainly during the interaction between the Lovers and the Fairies. Hermia, committed to marry Demetrius by her father, Egeus, is instead in love with Lysander. Not desiring to go along with her father's primary plan, Hermia’s only options given to her by her father and Theseus, the dispenser of justice, are “Either to die the death, or to abjure /

Lysander and Hermia represent a love so strong it can make you think irrational. Love can mess with your feelings when you are willing to do anything for each other. This is a couple which refuse to deny their feelings and risk the consequences in order to be together. Hermia is a big personality with her own opinions. Hermia feels that she should be able to choose whom she marries. Hermia’s choice to be her man is Lysander, a charming, kind, hopeless romantic. It is not Hermia’s choice, it is her father’s Egeus who forces her to marry Demetrius. These two react to their situation in the only way they can think of. The two young lovers, while companions don’t agree with this coming together decide to experience life and confront the conflict of growth with one another (Kennedy and Kennedy 272).This love is so strong that they run away from their families. Being told “no” makes them want to be together even more, it’s the forbidden fruit that drives you to do things you wouldn’t normally do. Hermia and Lysander love is young and rebellious. Lysander sums up the meaning of the play and the relationship with Hermia with “Aye me, for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth…” (Shakespeare 1397). Lysander understands that if he and Hermia are to be together then there will be many obstacles they must face but they will face them together. Lysander is

In The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas alludes to Pyramus and Thisbe because of the shared “star-crossed lovers” theme between Valentine de Villefort and Maximilien Morrel. Pyramus and Thisbe are two young Babylonians in love. Sadly,

The love that Lysander and Hermia share is very unlike the relationship between Helena and Demetrius. Lysander and Hermia have loved each other for a very long period of time and have dreamed of getting married. However, Hermia’s father, Egeus, disapproves of this couple. Hermia and Lysander’s love for each other is tested when Egeus tries to shatter their relationship

Because of this, Pyramus and Thisbe can only further their love in the afterlife or by secretly meeting. Personal choices have a greater impact on the characters in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet and “Pyramus and Thisbe.” To begin with, in both the short story and the drama, the two main characters share a forbidden love yet make resistent personal choices in order to be together. Shakespeare does a magnificent job portraying such examples. For instance, Romeo states at the feast “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

In the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, we find two lovers who stop at no means to express each other’s love. Yet through a series of unfortunate events the two lovers eventually took their lives out of the belief that the other had died. After re-evaluating the two lovers’ thought process through the entire tragedy we can see that all had occurred due to an act of rashness; both failing to access the situation clearly leading to their own downfalls. It was as if Shakespeare, in an effort to recreate the tragedy in modern scenery, had made two star-crossed lovers bound together by fate and later apart by fate almost exactly the same way as Pyramus and Thisbe. However in this tragedy, the rashness was not only shared between the lovers but mostly between Romeo and the Friar. It was through their actions that the events of this tragedy had sprouted.

However, Romeo wasn’t a-where of the plan and kills himself. With the shock of this Juliet then kills herself. “Pyramus and Thisbe” is a myth which is about a man and a woman who live in Babylonia, who are neighbors, and who also have fallen in love. The families between the two had hated each other, which had restricted their secret of love. When they were to talk to each other, they had meet in an area in their houses which had a crack in the wall.

For instance, Helena’s dramatic reaction to the sudden admiration of two men once the spell is placed is mirrored by Pyramus and Thisbe both committing suicide by the end of the play within the original. While Helena was convinced that Demetrius and Lysander were both trying to fool her, Hermia dealt with the confusion, heart break, and anguish about her lover, Lysander, suddenly loving another woman. Within the forest of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, both sets of Athenian lovers deal with romantic confusion and anguish that is later parodied by “Pyramus and Thisbe” through the actions of the main characters. Once Pyramus and Thisbe escape to the forest, both characters assume that the other has died when they are separated. These assumptions eventually fuel the suicide of both characters.

Pyramus and Thisbe, neighbors, who fell in love as they grew up; but were forbidden to be together by their parents. The only way that they could communicate was through a crack in the wall, separating their houses. Until one day, they were fed up and arranged to meet up at the Tomb of Ninus, near a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived first, and she encounters a lioness, frightened, Thisbe ran into a cave, dropping her cloak. The lion picked up the cloak in its bloody jaws and dropped it back on the ground. Upon Pyramus’ arrival, he sees Thisbe’s cloak covered in blood, assuming the lion had killed her; so he pierced his sword into his side. When Thisbe returned, she found Pyramus’ dead body and out of despair, she stabbed herself with the sword.

Lysander and Hermia also portray true love. Refusing to marry her suitor, Demetrius, she willingly gives up everything and runs away from Athens with her lover, Lysander, “There my Lysander and I shall meet, and thence from Athens turn away our eyes.” In the play within the play, Pyramus and Thisbe also present us with true love. Their situation

Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while the story involving Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, Helena, Oberon and Titania is developing, the rustic gentlemen (Bottom and his friends) are shown rehearsing for a play that they will perform in honor of the upcoming wedding of Theseus (the Duke of Athens) and Hippolyta. The play, “Pyramus and Thisby,” is based on a story that was told by the ancient Roman writer Ovid and retold by Chaucer. The “Pyramus and Thisby” play is not performed until the fifth and final act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By then, as Barton points out, the major problems of Lysander, Demetrius and the rest have all been neatly resolved. As such, the “Pyramus and Thisby” play-within-a-play “seems, in effect, to take place beyond the normal, plot-defined boundaries of comedy” (Barton 110).