ipl-logo

How Does Shakespeare Use Dramatic Irony In A Midsummer Night's Dream

577 Words3 Pages

A Midsummers Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare's most famous and successful plays. It has a lot of abstract parts to it that made it so popular. It is a comedy love play. It was written between 1595 and 1596. It portrays the event surrounding the marriage of Theseus and the Duke of Athens. A Midsummers Night’s Dream was written during one of Shakespeare's highly creative period in his career. This play discovered his more mature drama, moving away from his shallow plays that characterised earlier drama. Unlike any of shakespeare's other works A Midsummers Night’s Dream does not have any written sources. One of the classical and folkloric allusions of the play was the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, it was originally presented in Ovid’s the The Metamorphosis. Another illusion was Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding this was in the canterbury tales the “knight's tale”. In …show more content…

He had the characters of the play wandering in and out of eachother's play. He did this by creating parallels and echoes between the different plays and people in one play. In A Midsummer's Night’s Dream irony and dramatic overlap each other. Dramatic irony relates to how the audience aware of the four lovers situation. Demetrius and Lysander are suddenly not in love with Helena. They do not know why they fall in love with her but the audience or the viewer does know why. Although the play A Midsummer's Night’s Dream involves a lot of love elements, it is not truly a love story. The play is so light hearted it keeps the audience never doubting that things will end happily. It helps the audience to enjoy the pay without being caught up in tension of the uncertain ending. The play of the Midsummer's Night’s Dream has a connection between Pyramus and Thisbe and Romeo and Juliet. This is a play with a tragedy in a comedy. In both plays the children rebel against their

Show More
Related
594 Words | 3 Pages

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is about two lovers who can’t be together because Hermia’s father won’t let her and Lysander get married so they try to run away. Shakespeare was influenced through many things that led him to writing the play. The play was a counterpart to Romeo and Juliet. The Pyramus and Thisbe story is also connected to the play. Midsummer Night’s Dream has a lot background and historical context.

Read More
98 Words | 1 Pages

Melisa Pierre-Louis Professor Brett English 10 December 2nd, 2016 A Midsummer Night’s Dream Annotated essay. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare is a comedy that contains a lot of aspects. They communicate in one way or another to the audience, depending on how we (the audience) analyze what Shakespeare is trying to convey.

Read More
366 Words | 2 Pages

Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night’s Dream depicts a number of human truths including: lust, disappointment, confusion, deception, choice, betrayal, and marriage. The story begins with Hermia refusing to comply with her father Egeus 's wish for her to marry Demetrius. In response, Egeus turns to a law requiring a daughter to marry a prospected man chosen by her father, or else face death or lifelong chastity as a nun. Faced with this dilemma, Hermia and her lover Lysander elope by going into the forest. Hermia tells this to her best friend Helena, but Helena in turn reveals the plan to Demetrius in an attempt to win back his favor.

Read More
566 Words | 3 Pages

As one of William Shakespeare’s most beloved plays, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a masterpiece of literary art. Through its use of figurative language, this play expertly weaves together a complex web of themes, characters, and plotlines. In this essay, we will explore how Shakespeare employs figurative language to create a rich and dynamic world within the play. The first example of Shakespeare’s use of figurative language can be found in the opening lines of Act I, Scene I: “Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; / Four nights will quickly dream away the time.”

Read More
300 Words | 2 Pages

The characters in the play are negatively affected by, and are victims to love. Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare illustrates the idea that love is great; Given many examples throughout the play, though, it is clearly presented that the characters have been victimized by love. Through the play, it is shown that love can lead to a death. For example, Egeus wants the old Athenian law to be put into play, so his daughter will marry Demetrius, who Egeus had chosen for her to marry. “I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,” Egeus whined; She “Shall be either to this gentleman, or to her death, according to our law.”

Read More
687 Words | 3 Pages

How does A Midsummer Night’s Dream portray people in love? A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a story about love and how love is depicted in many different ways. People in the story will do anything to fall in love even if it is the wrong person. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare there is a couple different examples about how they will do anything to fall in love, One example is that Demetrius loves Hermia but Hermia loves Lysander while Lysander loves Helena because of a potion he is given.

Read More
734 Words | 3 Pages

When the reader comes to the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , they would experience an intriguing tale that spins you on the ride of imagination. Written by William Shakespeare, the story goes through many attempts by four lovers set to be with their destined significant other. But in their efforts, each of them are experiencing different things that in reality, shouldn’t have even happened. As if it was all just them dreaming about the very events that had just unfolded. Others can support their stories, while the many people who haven’t gone through the mess believe that they’re unbelievable.

Read More
1464 Words | 6 Pages

Shakespeare’s attitude towards love is evident in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and sets the tone of the play, that there are different types of love that makes it complicated. One of the main conflicts in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is forbidden love. Hermia is being forced by her father Egeus, to marry Demetrius. Her true love is Lysander, who she is not allowed to marry due to her father’s disapproval. “The course of true love never did run smooth” Shakespeare).

Read More
1472 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
506 Words | 3 Pages

Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595 during the magical Renaissance period, or sometimes known as the “Art” period. During this period arts become a culture and a living. From beautiful paintings that made you want to stare and wonder to music that sounded out worldly, from a beautiful planet where this music could originate from. William Shakespeare decided to merge two beautiful arts into one scene. Shakespeare is well-known for his dramatic plays.

Read More
254 Words | 2 Pages

Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream in order to entertain his readers and to provide a different perspective on love. In comparison to his other plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is based on love and comedy as opposed to love and tragedy. This story includes a variety of different plots within its grand scheme to express the role of women and love, along with the effects of magic, and the results from imagination and misunderstandings. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy based on complicated love and heightened imaginations that led to conflict and confusion, to then be cleared by magic; which really makes the audience wonder if the whole play was actually a dream within the reality of the imagination. There are many different themes

Read More
1703 Words | 7 Pages

Back to the Elizabethan period, where modern literature wildly spread through Shakespeare’s works where his literary pieces are loaded with dream motifs, and since dreams in that period of time are prophetic. Therefore, the purpose of using dreams in Shakespeare is to refer to the future or upcoming events. Furthermore, dreams in A Midsummer night’s dream are associated with the magical forest where the lovers sleep and wake up on a magical spell that Puck’s used in order to create love conflict, which makes the lovers feel that they are day-dreaming. In the end of the play, Puck gives his final speech where it mentioned; “If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumber’d here, while these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream.”

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

The play A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was written by a famous writer William Shakespeare, in the play he invites the audience into a dream and blurs the reality. As many of his plays this one is not the exception, and the main theme is about love. He presents different aspects of love, in this case is a romantic comedy. The story also contains a world of fairies, creatures who take it upon themselves to guide humans in the directions they believe is necessary. This play major action takes place during the night time in the woods that appears numerous times during the play.

Read More
542 Words | 3 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.

Read More
810 Words | 4 Pages

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 the four loves, two being friendship love (Phileo) and romantic (Eros) or true love. Love is the most important theme of the play and the asymmetrical love between the four Athenians cause conflict throughout the play. There is a strong friendship love between, Hermia and Helena, however, their Phileo is tested throughout the play by their pursuit of true love which ultimately prevails. The power of Eros love is evident in the play as true love continuously triumphs over Phileo love.

Read More

More about How Does Shakespeare Use Dramatic Irony In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Related Topics

Open Document