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Power In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Power is a part of everyday life. The amount of power someone has defines who a person is, and plays a natural role in day to day life. Just as power defines people, it also defines relationships. In relationships involving love, power is not mutual and rather shifts in favor of one person over the other. In William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare critiques the idea of characters losing their power by falling in love because they allow their lover to have power over them and their actions. When characters lose their power as they fall in love, they are also allowing their mind to be corrupted by their lover. In the third act of the play, Lysander mistakenly takes the love potion meant for Demetrius and wakes up to see Helena. Hermia and Helena are confused as they find that Lysander is now pledging his love to Helena instead of Hermia, who he was formerly in love with. Hermia accuses Helena of stealing her lover and threatens her by saying, “how low am I? I am not yet so low/ But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes” (3.2.306-307). Hermia and Helena are …show more content…

Earlier in the play, Demetrius and Lysander were both in love with Hermia, but Lysander sought a more pleasant solution rather than fighting for Hermia. While Puck was acting out what Lysander would say, Demetrius still believed that it was Lysander. Lysander’s newfound love for Helena is making him act out, making him act more violent than he would on a regular basis. Throughout the play, Lysander shows no signs of violent tendencies, up until someone stands in the way of him and Helena. As a result of this, Lysander is losing his power to Helena. His love for Helena causes him to have no control over his behavior which then results in fighting Demetrius. Overall, characters are losing power in their relationships due to their love for another person making them resort to irrational

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Power is an important part of the world and how it runs, but those who possess it do not always see it this way. Power is an extremely abstract idea. One can find many different variations of the word when asking for a definition person to person. The dictionary simply puts it as, “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others…” which is a common theme that could be found between most people’s definitions of the word. We conceive power as a person’s ability to have others listen to him, and, most importantly agree with him.

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In the play A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare, many of the characters relentlessly pursue their goals in the face of illogical decisions, and, while fictional items such as the “love-in-idleness” flower are used to explain the character’s sudden love for each other, the play does illustrate how love and ambition can lead to unforeseen consequences. For example, when Puck accidently anointed Lysander’s eyes with the “love-in-idleness” juice, he started a chain of events leading to Lysander and Demetrius fighting over Helena while Hermia is treated as though she is worthless. Moreover, at one point, Lysander and Demetrius even threatened to duel each other when Lysander awoke after being anointed with the flower 's juice and said, "Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word is that vile name to perish on my sword" (61). This shows how the character’s love for certain other characters, and their ambition to pursue said love, can lead to the destruction of previous relationships and lead them to make dangerous decisions.

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I know not by what power I am made bold" (1.1.55-56). This quote shows that Hermia is willing to stand up for herself and take control of her own fate, even when it means going against societal expectations. However, despite her agency, Hermia is also subject to the whims of fate and the supernatural. In Act 2, Scene 1, Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and uses a love potion to make Lysander fall in love with Helena.

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Control is defined as the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events. In play A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare there is control, love, hatred, jealousy, and happiness. Oberon controls people to feel anger, he controls people out of power, and controls people out of love. Many people control others because of anger.

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he had Puck drug them for his enjoyment and to help out Helena who he takes pity on. He takes pity on her because no one loves her, and because he feels bad about Demetrius brushing her off. Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia have a crazy and complicated love square that gets even more complicated throughout the play. Being crazy in love is a major theme of A Midsummer Night’s dream by Shakespeare. This is shown by many characters throughout the play.

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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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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 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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Everyone, at one point in their lives has wanted power more than anything. Those who do get it have to make the decision whether they want to use it for good or evil. Power can turn a person into something they never dreamed they would become because it starts to take over their lives and people do not know what to do with so much power. There are many examples of power in the play Macbeth and every person that got it used it in very different ways. This caused many changes in people from turning from good to evil or evil to good.

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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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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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In William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream the circumstances surrounding love have been put into question, this occurs when a magical nectar is put in the eyes of three major characters, and changes their feelings towards the people in their lives. Titania, Lysander and Demetrius all have had the nectar put into their eyes, though Demetrius avoids having this done to him in act 2 scene 2 which is the scene that the focus of this paper will be looking at. Throughout the play, we focus largely on the love life of Helena, which unfortunately does not seem to exist. She is in love with Demetrius, whom does not care for her in the same way, he does not cherish her at all before he is under the influence of magic. Once Lysander declares

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With many of the different scenes throughout the play, the theme of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is that love is difficult. In the play when Hermia 's father tries to tear Hermia and Lysander

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