William Russell English 9 2/28/17 A Midsummer Night’s Dream Essay (Final Draft) For centuries, literary works have relied on love to establish engaging subplots and presidential character motivations; however, different authors have interpreted this complex emotion with varying degrees of success. In the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, love is depicted differently depending on the relational status of the characters and the situations in which they are involved in. In the beginning of the play, Shakespeare establishes the indecisive and conflicted relationship that has formed between Theseus and Hippolyta.
People say you only fall in love once; however, what if you have no choice but to fall in love a second time? One might have extreme feelings for one person, but the next minute they could have feelings for another person. Love can be portrayed as a bully that victimises those who fall for its games. In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love is expressed as a bully and targets the people of Athens and those within a magical fairyland. Although, the characters have good intentions, many things go wrong.
In this extract from Act 1 Scene 4 of Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare presents contrasting attitudes to love through the dialogue between Mercutio and Romeo. Mercutio encourages Romeo to forget about his unrequited love for Rosaline and embrace love in a more positive way, suggesting that he should dance and borrow Cupid's wings to soar above his troubles. However, Romeo sees love as a heavy burden, too rough and boisterous, and he feels unable to move. He sees love as a painful experience, piercing him like a thorn. Shakespeare presents attitudes to love in different ways throughout the play.
Have you ever seen examples of forced love? Do they seem happy? Do they get Along? These are many ongoing questions about forced love. For example, In the comedy: “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by William Shakespeare, there are many forced love situations.
Shakespeare presents love as a harmful force that has the ability to manipulate how people feel through characters like Romeo as his emotions are dependant on how his love is reciprocated. In Act 1 Scene 1, Romeo states that he is ‘not here’. This is not Romeo’s as a result of his love for Rosalind that was ultimately unrequited. The repetition of the adverb ‘not’ signifies Romeo’s negative attitudes throughout Act 1 until he meets Juliet, and the language he uses changes to include images of light (‘Juliet is the sun’). By Romeo being ‘not Romeo’ it can be interpreted that unrequited love has ultimately caused the death of his memories of his past self and forced him to go into a depressive state.
*One of the most iconic love stories ever written has many different love types throughout the story. Shakespeare’s “Romeo And Juliet” has examples of Unrequited love, Romantic love, parental love, Friendship, and Love of Family Honor. Two very prominent love types shown in this story are Unrequited love, and Romantic love. These two love types have similarities and differences, and will be expanded on after examples are shown. The story of “Romeo And Juliet” has many love types.
Romeo and Juliet is a story about their tragic love. In “Romeo and Juliet” Shakespeare says, “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourished with lovers' tears; What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”. (Romeo and Juliet1.1.185-189) Some would agree Romeo's love for Juliet was filled with smoke but they both saw a spark in each other. The smoke may have killed them both but they were in love.
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, he has explored love in a variety of ways, not only romantic. For instance, in the prologue, it emphasises that fate and astrology influences love by referring to Romeo and Juliet as ‘Star-Cross’d lovers.” This phrase illustrates a pair of lovers that cannot be together or are doomed to fail. Throughout the play and especially in the prologue, Shakespeare perpetuates the conception of fate being influential against Romeo and Juliet’s relationship. In 14th century Italy and during Elizabethan England, many believed that stars were associated with fortune and fate and that they could predict human events.
In the two plays, A Midsummer’s Night Dream and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams and William Shakespeare show majorly how different characters show the traits of being actually in love and how other characters confuse love with physical tendencies instead. Going more in debt of how different characters show these traits differ tremendously. One of the major themes in A midsummer’s Night Dream is love. Something that Shakespeare uses often in well known plays.
As Lord Montague, the Nurse, and Lord Capulet all show their love to either Romeo or Juliet. In Act I, Scene 1, Lord Montague is very concerned about Romeo. Romeo is sad and depressed and his father can't figure out why. He tells Benvolio, Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow’ We would as willingly give cure as know.
Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream dealt with the theme of love and its four types, including loves many complications such as disappointment and confusion. The play rotates around different forms of love, two of them being friendship love (Phileo) 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. However, their friendship love is tested throughout the play by their pursuit of true love which, in the end, ultimately prevails.
Romeo and Juliet, the story where two forbidden lovers take their own lives for the sake of love. Within this story Shakespeare shows multiple kinds of love that everyone experiences in life, and within this essay i will be talking about two. The two main types of love i noticed in Shakespeare’s story “Romeo and Juliet”, were Unrequited love and obviously, the main focus, romantic love. These two types of loves have their share of differences but surprisingly they have their similarities as well. The first type of love shown in Romeo and Juliet is unrequited love.
The character Orsino is one of the best examples of love’s connection to not only the fictional society of the novel but also our society. The duke is obsessed with more with the idea of love than even loving others. In one of his most famous line he says “If music be the food of love, play on;/ give me excess of it, that surfeiting,/ the appetite may sicken, and so die. ”(1.1, 1-3).
Despite popular opinion, love at first sight does not exist. The idea of “love” is widely misinterpreted as a mere attraction between two individuals. However, many do not understand that love goes much further than this, and what follows is a common misconception between love and lust. Shakespeare in his 17th century play Twelfth Night delves deeper into this idea of love. He presents the character Duke Orsino who appear to be infatuated and love-sick for the Countess Olivia, a woman with which he knows little about.
The first instance which supports the notion that a lapse of communication is responsible for the unsuccessful nature of heterosexual relationships is the case of Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia’s relationship. Both start the play preoccupied with their own concerns, Orsino is worried about finding love, specifically with Olivia, meanwhile she is busy mourning the death of her brother by refusing to marry anyone for seven years. However, it is Orsino’s obsession with seeking love and how he goes about pursuing Olivia that best exemplifies the problematic nature of a male and female’s relationship. Orsino opened the play by saying of love, “Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die” (1.1.1-3), essentially saying that he so badly craves the feeling being in love gives him, that he would like in so great a quantity that it would end his life.
