Shakespeare: Magic and Supernatural Occurances

Magic and supernatural occurrences in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard III, and The Tempest are used to create a surreal world to confuse and resolve conflicts in each play. Magic provides the audience with an escape from reality and the comfort of the play’s unrealistic nature. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a love potion from a magical flower is used and misused to provide comic relief and resolution to love’s difficulties, supernatural ghosts are used to condemn a horrific murderer in Richard III to ensure his downfall and deserved death and finally, magic from Prospero’s book in The Tempest is used for his righteous revenge and harmony amongst the characters. The Duke of Athens, Theseus, states, “the best in this kind are but shadows; and the / worst are no worse, if imagination amend them” providing Shakespeare’s use of magic in his various plays is a real participant in the entertainment and structure in them.   Magic and supernatural occurrences are used by Shakespeare to create illusionary situations to resolve bigger conflicts, such as love’s difficulties, revenge, and justice.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, magic appears in several dimensions. The title of the play suggests that the play itself is a dream and the heat from a midsummer night causes the imagination to wander. The next dimension is character bound in Shakespeare’s use of fairies in a mythical forest. The fairies then discover a magical object, a flower that contains a love potion.   Magic provides coincidences and mistakes to form a complex plot filled with confused characters. Robin Goodfellow or Puck is Oberon’s (the fairy king) jester who sets many of the play’s humorous, conflicting, and balanced events in motion through his use and misuse of magic. Lysander tells his love Hermia that, “the course of true love never did run smooth” (I.i. 134) foreshadowing Puck’s misuse of magic on Lysander to confuse the lovers. Oberon tells Puck to retrieve the magical flower to spread... [continues]

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