Conventions In A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare is a 16th century comedy concerning the themes of love, marriage, class, gender and the supernatural, among other things. The comedy is set in Athens, though it reflects English culture and the Elizabethan era. Like many works of literature, the play blends and borrows conventions and ideas from other texts and genres. Shakespeare borrows conventions from the poetry genre including iambic pentameter, rhymed verse and catalectic trochaic tetrameter in order to distinguish class; along with the use of prose, this also conveys the theme of the hegemony. The play blends conventions and ideas from the Greek Tragedy genre, making use of pathos and themes of betrayal as well as love and the supernatural and the inclusion of a character flaw. A major intertextual link is that to ‘Metamorphosis’ whose storyline is sometimes mirrored and ideas borrowed, as seen through the chase in the forest and the allusion to Apollo and Daphne. Themes of transformation, appearances and reality are prevalent and the convention of a play within a play, also included in Ovid’s work, present. Arguably, this idea could have also derived from The

This is observable through Bottom and Thesus. In the performance which the mechanicals perform for the Duke, Bottom starts his part using iambic pentameter, saying “Oh grim-looked night, O night with hue so black…” which suggests that he has developed intellectually and has knowledge of classic plays. In terms of Thesus, in Act 5 Scene 1 his dialogue is made up of a mix of verse and prose, an example of this is when he says “Pyramus draws near the wall; silence!”. This change in his way of speaking mirrors his change in views; the audience is positioned to see him as wiser and more down to earth. This is emphasised when he “overbears” Egeus’ will and allows the lovers to marry who they