Shakespeare’s most popular play, A Midsummer Night’s dream, is a romantic comedy that features young lovers that fall deeply in and out of love in a brief period of time. This play is unique because it demonstrates tragedy and comedy at the same time. The comedy not only provides amusement and laughter but also helps ease tension between characters. In the play, A “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, William Shakespeare produces a comedy through foolish characters and mistaken identities.…
Gow has set up a simple story set in the late 1960’s about three different families with their own sets of issues taking a holiday at the end of the school year. Although this particular journey may seem to be a physical journey, it’s simply a metaphor for the inner journey that each character from each family takes to reach a stage of restoration and hope. From the very beginning of the play Gow incorporates “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” into his own work by beginning his own drama with the ending of Shakespeare’s play with the character Tom playing “Puck”. This is extremely significant as Gow uses his play as a comparison or rather an appropriation of Shakespeare’s drama using Tom as the centre of activity and the character that initiates action. This interweaves beautifully with the character Puck as he is the fairy that directs the other fairies in Shakespeare’s drama. Gow has shown his audience who the main character is and by placing Tom in the role of “Puck” he tells viewers that it is Tom who is going to be the centre of the journeys taking place in the…
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare is telling the readers that, love needs no reason to exist; it defies logic and ignores all circumstances. This compelling message is very thoroughly communicated with the connection of the fantasy world and reality. The connection occurs in a forest, where each character of significance is, at one point, present. Here, the characters experience unforeseen events, as a result of the debatable use of magic, from those in power. However, despite the extreme unusualness and complications, the characters challenge the circumstances, and persist in loving the one they feel closest to. In this play, this situation is best represented by three significant relationships. The first exists between a lover and her hater, the next involves a young and rebellious couple, and the last concerns an ill-fated mechanical and the queen of the fairies.…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare that takes place in Athens, Greece and in the forest where chaos unfolds on four lovers: Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. In these relationships the men are in power, belittling the women. Also, in the forest chaos happens between the fairies, King Oberon and Queen Titania, because he puts a potion on her and other in which the men are in control of the society they are in. An example of patriarchy is in the relationships between Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and Helena when the men take control. Throughout the play the men have power over the women, as…
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander, articulating one of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s most important themes—that of the difficulty of love (I.i.134). Though most of the conflict in the play stems from the troubles of romance, and though the play involves a number of romantic elements, it is not truly a love story; it distances the audience from the emotions of the characters in order to poke fun at the torments and afflictions that those in love suffer. The tone of the play is so lighthearted that the audience never doubts that…
Sexuality as a theme in A Midsummer nights dream is one of the more blatantly obvious undertones of the play and the need to promote heterosexuality in the face of perceived homosexual attractions is personified in the battle between Oberon and TItania over the child from India. The story of the “lovely boy” is told from two points of view, Puck's and Titania's. Puck tells a companion fairy that Oberon is “passing fell and…
Helena loves Demetrius but he is in love with Hermia but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Oberon tells Puck, his servant, to create a love potion and squeeze it into Demetrius’ eyes so he stops being rude to Helena and falls madly in love with her. Puck instead sprinkles love potion in Lysander and Robin sprinkled it in Demetrius’ eyes while resting and when they awoke they both saw Helena and fell in love with her. This fiasco causes a misunderstanding between Helena and Hermia. Helena believes that both Demetrius and Lysander and Hermia are playing a cruel trick on her and Hermia swears Helena as stolen her beloved Lysander from her. When the audience knows more about the other characters than they do is what makes this play a comedic one and after Hermia tried to attack Helena made the reader have an urge to keep reading and intrigued because it can relate to everyday life. Shakespeare’s diction allowed the reader to see the emotions both Helena and Hermia had on their faces. He emphasized the theme of the night and how the main characters are so infatuated with one’s look or appearance…
“The course of true love never did run smooth” Lysander said in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is a play is about a group of four Athenian lovers and their journey through love along with the ruler of Athens and his soon to be wife, and of course the King fairy and his wife. This quote from Lysander, one of the Athenian lovers, is relevant in this story because of the difficulties in all of the relationships. Lysander and his lover Hermia, Theseus, the king of Athens, and his lover Hippolyta, and lastly, Oberon, the fairy king, and his wife Titania, all travel a bumpy road on the path to true love.…
Shakespeare uses many different avenues to create comic affect in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. First, with the use of his main character’s love triangle and the intermingling of the fairies. For instance, starting in act two Oberon gives Puck the task of helping Helena by applying a love potion on Demetrius’s eyes. Unfortunately, Puck accidently applies the potion to Lysander, which causes an array of hilarious confusion. This confusion turns into arguments and funny antics between the four humans. At the beginning, the triangle consisted of Hermia and Lysander in love with each other while Demetrius supposedly in love with Hermia. Additionally, Helena is in love with Demetrius and does not believe him or Lysander when they confess their love…
What if you were tricked into no longer loving your true love. In Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare a shakespearean comedy, Puck is a fairy who’s profession is serving Oberon the king of the fairies. Puck also is a known jokester who always is getting himself in trouble. He is also a very static character throughout the play. Puck is a three dimensional and complex character because of his difference in traits from mischievous to loyalty to compassion.…
In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck not only served as the solution to the lovers’ confusion but also as the root of lover’s magical mix-ups. The couples in the beginning struggle to find a way to be with each other so they run off to the woods. Puck and Oberon hear the situation and come up with a plan. The plan was suppose to help them instead it caused more problems. Puck mixes up the couples and causes a huge confusion. Oberon demands for Puck to resolve the mess he created.…
As Lysander says, "The course of true love never did run smooth." Love in A Midsummer Night's Dream is portrayed as complicated and difficult, yet Shakespeare does it in a way that is humorous and lighthearted. In this play love often brings out the worst in people, yet in the end it's what brings everyone back together. Love has the ability to spellbind people as Shakespeare represents symbolically through Puck's actions, and we see how intensely complicated it can be when it nearly tears apart Hermia's family and causes argument between the four main human characters. The four types of love, forced love, parental love, romantic love and complicated love permeate all aspects of life in this play and we see the awesome power it has over human emotion, psychology, and behavior.…
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a tale involving the manipulation of love and the way love works itself out between various sets of people. It tells the story of characters that encounter chaotic situations of real love and also love that was controlled for the benefit of others. The characters caught up in the "love scandal"� are Oberon, Titania, Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena. All these characters were involved in the different triangles of love presented in the story. The main theme in A Midsummer Nights Dream is the manipulation of love and how occasionally it takes time get the path of love on the right track.…
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.…
Throughout the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare uses both fate and free will to present his philosophy towards the nature of love. The characters struggle through confusion and conflicts to be with the one they love. Although the course of their love did not go well, love ultimately triumphs over all at the end of the play. The chaos reaches a climax causing great disruption among the lovers. However, the turmoil is eventually resolved by Puck, who fixes his mistake. The confusion then ends and the lovers are with their true love. Throughout the play Shakespeare's philosophy was displayed in various scenes, and his concept still holds true in modern society.…