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Does Shakespeare Use Turning Things Upside Down In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Peculiar Love
What would William Shakespeare, or anyone’s scripts, be like without comedy? Comedy is used throughout literature to add an intriguing element to the content. Shakespeare uses multiple types of comedy including mistaken identities, intertwining plots, suspension of natural laws, turning things upside down, the element of marriage, and language. Shakespeare used his imagination and various types of comedy to keep an audience entertained, especially turning things upside down in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare uses turning things upside down to add new and twisting elements of plot to the literature, and assisting readers in deepening their understanding of the theme, plot, and characters of the play .
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In the first act, Lysander and Hermia told Helena their plans to depart to the forest and elope since her father, Egeus, demands she marries Demetrius. Demetrius is in love with Hermia, while Helena is in love with him. Helena states to herself:
I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again (1.1.252-257). Hermia is proposing that she will tell Demetrius that Helena is running away tomorrow night and he will run after her. If he is grateful that she does this, it will be worth her pain in helping him pursue her. Helena telling Demetrius about Lysander and Hermia is a comedy of turning things upside down because a woman is chasing a man and his favor for her. In the Elizabethan era, it is the men who do the

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Shakespeare created three types of plays: tragedy, comedy and history. Shakespeare’s writing is entertaining and humorous because of its highbrow and lowbrow humor to appeal to the audiences during his time period. For example in the article, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare: Understanding The Funny Bits,” by Randy Murray it states that, “ There is”low” comedy in Shakespeare’s tragedies as well as the comedies. It's important.

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This quote shows that Helena does not care what Demetrius does to her because she loves him. She thinks that he is a perfect man. She is only seeing what she wants to see and not what is true. She does not see his faults. After Oberon cures Titania from the love flower he says,“...

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She saw many other things in her dream beside the eagle, and Odysseus starts to tell her what does it mean to have a dream like this. After that, she decided that she will marry a man who is as smart as her husband, and she decide to make archery contest between suiters and the one who shoot the arrow through the twelve axes, he will be her new husband and take her away from the palace that she came to as a bride. Odysseus encouraged her not to delay the archery contest, and

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  Hermia, much to her father 's dismay, is deeply in a mutual love with a different nobleman, Lysander.   In addition, Hermia 's childhood best friend and Demetrius were in love prior to his sights turning towards Hermia.   This crushed Helena, causing her to lose self-confidence, but still: she yearns for Demetrius 's love.   Hermia and Lysander 's love, Egeus 's harsh rule, and Helena 's unrequited love for Demetrius causes the lovers to leave Athens.

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Hermia and Helena are best friends until there friendship had many complications. Hermia of course is in love with Lysander , and Lysander is in love with Hermia. But there is also Demetrius who is also in love with Hermia and Helena who is in love with Demetrius. They have been through many obstacles, like in the Act 3 scene 2. After Puck put the love potion on Lysander and he fell in love with Helena, he has been following her around nonstop.

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17). It isn’t clear to the people she is doing it for but “[her] deeds [are] marked by a nobility of purpose, and [she] must be willing to risk [her] life for [her] ideals” (Campbell 1). She had to act as if she had a heart of iron but it’s marked by nobility of purpose which was to protect her son and her husbands’ kingdom even if it meant risking her own life by rejecting the suitors hands in marriage or being judge by her son and husband the same man in her life that she is risking it all for. Nevertheless she doesn’t stop her quest she continues and she decide to test Odysseus by Her cunning request to Eurycleia to move the wedding bed that Odysseus made himself to see his response “Ulysses was very angry and said,… who could move it from its place…, I made with my very own hands. There was a young olive…tree at its roots" (Homer Par.19).In Using her bed as the finale test of Odysseus true identity shows her strong mindedness, she didn’t just give him an easy test, she gave him the test, that only Odysseus would be able to answer in such detail.

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Demetrius wants to win Hermia from Lysander when he tells Lysander to “yield thy crazed title to my certain right.” (Shakespeare 1.1.93-94) This exemplifies that Demetrius is attempting to control both Lysander and Hermia in this scene. He knows that he can not alter Lysanders mind, so he

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  In addition, Hermia 's childhood best friend and Demetrius were in love prior to his sights turning towards Hermia.   This crushed Helena, causing her to lose self-confidence, but still: she yearns for Demetrius 's reciprocated love.   Lysander and Hermia are in love with each other.   Egeus does not approve of his daughter 's chosen love.

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The woods is apart from society and it is here that women’s stereotypical gender roles start to break. By going into the woods to run off with Lysander, Hermia is committing the ultimate crime, disobeying not only her father’s orders, but also the orders of the duke of Athens. It is here that Hermia makes a decision of her own and where she is finally free of the stereotypical roles of women. It is also here where Helena takes control of her life. Usually, the stereotype is that the man goes after the woman, not the other ways around, and that if a man tells the woman to go away, the woman must go away; however, Helena turns these ‘rules’ upside down.

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The strong effects of love makes Helena a bit foolish and blind in the ways she reacts to it. In scene one of act one, the readers learn that Helena still loves Demetrius even though he loves her friend, Hermia, now. When Helena is first introduced, she demonstrates her jealousy and insecurities by asking Hermia for some of her beauty to win Demetrius back. Hermia and Lysander inform her that they are running away, and that

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On the other hand, Demetrius loves Helena’s friend, Hermia, and wants to marry her. However, Helena is still in love

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Although the perspective of women in the Elizabethan era was much different from the perspective of manhood, it was also similar in a sense that manhood and womanhood both played an essential role during their era. The thought of men being the ones to do things such as commit murder and be ambitious is still prevalent today. In our society we view women as people who are soft and not quite as ambitious as the opposite sex. The notion that women are incapable of committing murder is obscure as they are physically capable of doing harm to any human body as well as being able to have ambition such as

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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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710 Words | 3 Pages

The strong effects of love makes Helena a bit foolish and blind in the ways she reacts to it. In scene one of act one, the readers learn that Helena still loves Demetrius even though he loves her friend, Hermia, now. When Helena is first introduced, she demonstrates her jealousy and insecurities by asking Hermia for some of her beauty to win Demetrius back. Hermia and Lysander inform her that they are running away, and that

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Dreams are wild, magical, and mysterious. The majority of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is spent in a heavily wooded forest full of fairies and irrational young lovers, creating a night only fallible as a dream. The story contains a royal wedding about to take place and the young lovers Hermia and Lysander provoked to eloping because Hermia’s father will only let her marry Demetrius. Hermia’s best friend Helena, who loves Demetrius, tells Demetrius Hermia and Lysander’s plot to escape to the forest nearby so that she may follow him. Local townsmen also decide to meet in the forest to rehearse for a play to be performed at the royal wedding.

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