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A Midsummer's Night Dream By William Shakespeare

542 Words3 Pages

Literary masterpieces are all around us in the world. The most famous of these are the ones that have stood the test of time even after hundreds of years. A Midsummer’s Night Dream is a story that most have heard in one way or another, whether in a remediation or by seeing the play themselves. The love of the characters in this play, while seemingly innocent enough, is the result of completely unnatural tampering. The fairies broke a moral boundary by faking the love of the four humans. The story begins with both suitors, Lysander and Demetrius, loving only one woman, Hermia. Helena, another woman, is enamored with Demetrius, and cannot help but follow him everywhere he goes. When the love of Hermia and Lysander leads them into a magic …show more content…

Egeus had given up his daughter to Demetrius for wedding, but being rebellious, she went against her father’s wishes. The only chance she had for redeeming their relationship was to wed Demetrius and to give up her foolish dream of marrying Lysander. Due to the foolhardiness of Robin, this relationship is given no chance of ever being redeemed, and Hermia is cursed to never be on the good side of her father again. Robin’s tampering, however, was not the only unnatural part of the love quadrilateral happening in this story. The laws of the Athenians clearly state that a woman must marry the man her father chooses for her. Theseus originally holds true to this law but soon chooses to ignore it. While it is not the greatest situation for Hermia to be in, being wed off to a suitor of her father’s choosing, it is still the law, and the law must be followed by all. Theseus, in pardoning Hermia, not only chooses to ignore a clearly written law but actively goes against it. It seems that the only person in the right here is Egeus, who is portrayed as an evil father trying to force his daughter into marriage when in actuality he is a man doing what every father of a daughter must do, choose her

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Many authors have published articles that treats the subject based upon one aspect of the play. One important element of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the disparity that is distinguished between reality and a world inhabited by fairies and other magical beings and forces.

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Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream film adaptation creates a fantastical spin on the well-known Shakespeare play. The director is able to create an effective dream-like setting with the use of projections, lighting, and puppetry. From the beginning, there is a sense of wonder created, as without word or introduction, Puck, played by Kathryn Hunter, glides onto stage and lays down on a mattress supported by branches. Puck is then lifted into the air and a large white sheet consumes the stage. Even for those familiar with the play, such as myself, it immediately commands your mind to travel to the dream world Taymor has created.

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  In addition to love, the lovers also run away together because Hermia 's father will only condone a marriage between her and

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“ I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: as she is mine, I may dispose of her, which shall either be with this fine gentleman (Demetrius) or to her death according to our law, immediately provided in that case” (1.1.45-48). Hermia wishes to marry her true love Lysander, who in turn loves her as well; however, even though he is as good a man as Demetrius, status-wise, Hermia’s father, Egeus, would rather kill her or turn her into a nun than let Hermia control her life. This practice was widely done by the Elizabethans. Daughters had no choice but to marry the man their father

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688 Words | 3 Pages

“Pyramus and Thisbe” tells the story of two young lovers who are forbidden to be together due to the fact that their families are enemies. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream tells the story of the chaos and craziness that surrounds the days prior to Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding. In both of these stories, the reader is able to find several similarities and differences.

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765 Words | 4 Pages

Athens and the forest are the two settings for A Midsummer Night’s Dream because they represent the oppositions between reality and magic, order and chaos, and rationality and imagination. In Athens and the forest there is a clear distinction between reality and magic. We know that Athens is realistic because there is law and order in the community as well as leaders of Athens. An example of members of the community and the leaders of Athens having order is when Egeus goes to Theseus for guidance.

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In this play, he has created a marriage that promotes respect towards women. Traditionally, women are not treated as equals in their society, but Sophocles believes otherwise and expresses his opinion through his plays. Sophocles presents that the marriage between Oedipus and Jocasta is respectable and equal. When Oedipus was going through a difficult time, Jocasta became aware of this and wanted nothing else but to help Oedipus find what he was looking for. Oedipus, who is in search of the truth regarding his birth, is questioning Jocasta, looking for answers.

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1015 Words | 5 Pages

A Midsummer Night’s Dream dealt with the universal theme of love and its complications: lust, disappointment, confusion, and marriage, featuring three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. The play rotates around different forms of love, two of them being love for friendship (Philia) and romantic (Eros) or true love. Love is the most important theme of the play and the asymmetrical love seen in the play between the four Athenians and romantic encounters cause conflict within the play. There is a strong friendship love between two characters, Hermia and Helena. These two ladies are regarded as sisters as they have grown up together always having each other’s

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Lysander’s unbridled love for Hermia shows obvious respect towards females, making him out to be one of the few characters admired by the audience. In our scene, Lysander’s subtext is an excited yet mannerly teenager who fears Theseus yet still stands up for himself and Hermia. When he saw that his relationship was being threatened he stopped cowering and pushed Egeus and Demetrius away pleading his case to Theseus. Hermia, who has a similar definition of love, trusts the emotion and thinks of it as a driving force in her life. When given the choice between spending the rest of her life as a nun and being forced into a loveless marriage, she decides that staying perpetually celibate would be the superior choice: “‘So will I grow, so live, so die my lord, ere I will yield my virgin patent up unto his lordship, whose unwishèd yoke my soul consents not to give sovereignty’”

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1633 Words | 7 Pages

They are the perfect example of difficulty of love, that is, passionate circumstances in which an injustice or discrepancy interferes in the consistency of the engagement. Finally, the habitual happy end in comedies is produced, although they have had problems to achieve it like the love potion; the second are Demetrius and Helena. Their relationship has evolved during the play. At first, Demetrius is in love with Hermia, but it is at the end when his love for Helena appears. However, Helena has been always in love with him.

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895 Words | 4 Pages

Leaving Hermia and Lysander to run away in the forest; Lysander then becomes a victim of misapplied magic and wakes up in love with Helena. The trouble comes when Hermia tells her plan to her friend, Helena. Helena loves Demetrius, so she tells him of Hermia and Lysander's idea to run away, and Demetrius follows them, this is where the fairies get involved. “Before the time I did Lysander see / Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me.

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1017 Words | 5 Pages

She tells of how the male gods such as Zeus fraternize with whomever they desire, but when a goddess sleeps with a mortal, she is punished and reprimanded (5.129-142). When Odysseus returns home to Penelope, he explains how “the nymph Calypso held him back, deep in her arching caverns, craving him for a husband” (23.77-78) and expects his wife to simply accept and understand his situation. If the roles were switched, however, and Penelope had slept with another man, Odysseus would have no doubt been angered, even though Penelope believed him to be long dead. During 8th century B.C., women were considered the property of men. A girl belonged to her father until she married, where she then belonged to her husband.

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1157 Words | 5 Pages

Hermia, a proud character, says she loves Lysander and that she would rather become a nun than marry

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767 Words | 4 Pages

This is what the lovers wanted at the beginning of the story; to marry the one they love. And with Theseus bringing final closure and order to what chaos occurred in the forest, the four lovers will get married along side Theseus and Hippolyta back at Athens. In the forest outside of Athens, chaos and order are present throughout the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the forest, the fairies attempt to manipulate the love between the lovers and bring chaos upon them.

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986 Words | 4 Pages

The male characters in this play often feel uncomfortable when their female counterparts break gendered stereotypes. This is the same feeling that drove Theseus to war with the Amazons. An equally important woman is Hermia: Theseus and her father have in mind Demetrius for Hermia’s groom, yet she still refuses even after a small threat from Theseus, “Be advised, fair maid. To you, your father should be as a god” (1.1.47-48). Here in patriarchal Athens, fathers are the head households and hold influence over near-all decisions.

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