Throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, magic, illusion, and enchantment maintain common themes surrounding the main characters in the play. Most simply, magic is surely in the eye of the beholder - whether they realize it or not. Inherently, love, can be viewed as a type of illusion, or better yet, magic. This being said, perspective is one of the most important elements to consider when analyzing what relation magic has to love; and in this case it is illustrated both as supernatural and natural. As we can clearly recognized in the play, love is portrayed a type of magic - this is the “natural” side of things. However, love can also be caused by magic, in this case, Puck’s love potion, The potion alludes to the “supernatural” …show more content…
It can be argued that Act V was of no necessity to the plot of the play. In essence it serves as a comical yet powerful conclusion to the play and resolution to the conflict, all the while examining small elements of Shakespeare's thoughts that allow us to understand why he included its content. One main point that Shakespeare wanted to drive home is the fact that the play could have ended in tragedy as opposed to comedy. The play by Pyramus and Thisbe helps us better understand this, this is due to the fact that it closely parallels the lovers actions. This being said, Shakespeare continues to challenge the readers views on imagination and reality, in this instance, love and magic. By watching the play, it opens our eyes to see exactly how love can affect us. “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact” (5.1.7-8). When Theseus states this he is outlining the fact that without imagination - and some lunacy - creativity and ambition can be stunted. Similarly to love and magic, without love we would not have any “magical” ambitions or creativity, in essence making the world a bland place to
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.
This play tells of how Romeo and Juliet fell in “love”. At the beginning Juliet tells us that she is against marriage if there is no love. After she meets Romeo she believes what is lust is truly love. This lust is what leads to their marriage, which Juliet proposes, and to their deaths. In the play Romeo and Juliet the playwright, William Shakespeare, helps us understand that lust is a violent form of love, by characterizing Juliet as someone who gives in to lust, thus leading to her death.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream dealt with the universal theme of love and its complications: lust, disappointment, confusion, and marriage, featuring three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. The play rotates around different forms of love, two of them being love for friendship (Philia) 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. These two ladies are regarded as sisters as they have grown up together always having each other’s
The quote from Sigmund Freud, “One is very crazy when in love.” is very relateable to Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Love is the dominant theme of the play. With the major conflicts surrounding the topic of love. Shakespeare demonstrates two major types of love.
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
Love can cause illusions and false realities that enhance the idea of perfection that does not really exist. Juliet’s idea of Romeo being a man of wax is questioned when Juliet learns that Romeo killed her cousin, Tybalt. She is conflicted as to whether she should hate Romeo or not for killing someone in her family. She exclaims, “Oh, that deceit should dwell/ In such a gorgeous palace!”
Toba Beta once said: "“Justice could be as blind as love.” Shakespeare 's play A Midsummer Night 's Dream captures the blind bias of both love and justice. Egeus, a respected nobleman in Athens, arranged for his daughter, Hermia, to marry nobleman Demetrius. Egeus tells his daughter that she must obey his wishes: if she does not, she can either choose to become a nun, or die. Hermia, much to her father 's dismay, is deeply in a mutual love with a different nobleman, Lysander.
In A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Shakespeare let the readers to explore his imagination and bring them to fantasies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream implies a world of imagination, illusion and unconsciousness through the word ‘dreams’. In the last scene of the play, act V scene I, the audience experience there is different thought of Theseus and Hippolyta in interpreting the love stories of Hermia, Lysander, Helena, Demetrius and the imaginations of many other characters. The scene of Theseus talking to Hippolyta lead to a controversy about the value of imagination and reason. From the play, the audience indeed witnesses magical incidents in the fairies’ forest, where the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, rule over the natural processes.
Have you ever fallen in love with someone who has no interest in you and doesn’t love you back? Did that person suddenly start loving you out of nowhere? In A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, Helena’s hunger for love brings out a desperate side in her and takes her through interesting adventures with love. One can infer that love is hurtful by how Helena reacts to love in a foolish manner and remains skeptical about it even near the end of the play.
The individuals possessed by ideal love are not the only ones who are affected by it. In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Lawrence’s first reaction to Romeo’s drastic change of “love” was shocking : “Holy Saint Francis, what a
Today, men and women have equal rights, but that does not mean life has always been simple for both genders. When Shakespeare writes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are roles, behaviors, and expectations for the dominant men and submissive women. This literature portrays the major changes in the lives of both sexes throughout the years, which shows the advances women gain with time. The gender issue of men being dominant and women being submissive used in the drama, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, shows the differences in the roles, behaviors, and expectations appropriate for each gender and is an example of an outdated stereotype.
The use and misuse of magic are of great importance in the play, A Midsummer Night 's Dream. It is a recurring theme that is mostly seen with Puck. The use of magic by Puck helps in creating conflict, humor, and balance in play. Shakespeare employs this device in his play to mainly build and establish the theme of love. The role of magic in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is seen as an interference with the human world, however it is still separate from the human protagonists (Noone, 2010).
Philosophical approach on the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream Submitted to: Prof. Eliezer V. David Submitted by: Jan MarveManaligod KristianDacara Bryan RonhellTangonan MarckRacell Diego BSME-2C Philosophy is the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience. In every story there is a philosophy. It is the way of the author to show the moral lesson of the play.
Thesis Shakespeare illustrates the fine line between illusion and reality using love, which is a passion-driven combination of the two. The young lovers’ behavior, both in moments of potion induced dreams and wide awake reflection, highlight how close illusion and reality get when love is in the air, and how reason is all but thrown out when lovers reach a dream-like
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.