Gender can manifest itself in many ways in the theatre. In many of Shakespeare’s plays gender is shown through marriage or love and often not the love people think is acceptable or that ends the way the characters would like. The plays Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream written by William Shakespeare both end with the main characters paired off into couples. In these relationships Shakespeare has created couples that will ultimately be unhappy due to longing for a person they can’t have or being trapped in a marriage to a person they don’t love or trust.
Hermia and Lysander are perhaps the only couple in either of these plays that actually ends up one hundred percent happy. Technically they are under a spell to forget the night before and Lysander has been placed under the flower magic twice. Once to make him fall in love with Helena and the second time to restore his love to Hermia. However, they are the couple that was completely in love from the beginning of the play, so much so that they planned to run away together. Unlike Helena and Demetrius who only ended up in the forrest because they were attempting to stop them.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is riddled with longing for people that are in love with another person. …show more content…
Viola first meets Orsino as a man, and starts to work for him. Viola falls in love with Orsino, so it is convenient that she is revealed to be a woman and is able to marry Orsino. This would leave the audience assuming that everything is ending perfectly. However it is not Viola but Orsino who is going to be unhappy in this marriage. There is heavy hinting throughout the play that Orsino favors Cesario, culminating in “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times thou never shouldst love woman like to me” (5.1.260-261) and “Give me thy hand, and let me see thee in they woman’s weeds” (5.1.265-266). In the first quote Orsino
Hermia and Lysander are perhaps the only couple in either of these plays that actually ends up one hundred percent happy. Technically they are under a spell to forget the night before and Lysander has been placed under the flower magic twice. Once to make him fall in love with Helena and the second time to restore his love to Hermia. However, they are the couple that was completely in love from the beginning of the play, so much so that they planned to run away together. Unlike Helena and Demetrius who only ended up in the forrest because they were attempting to stop them.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is riddled with longing for people that are in love with another person. …show more content…
Viola first meets Orsino as a man, and starts to work for him. Viola falls in love with Orsino, so it is convenient that she is revealed to be a woman and is able to marry Orsino. This would leave the audience assuming that everything is ending perfectly. However it is not Viola but Orsino who is going to be unhappy in this marriage. There is heavy hinting throughout the play that Orsino favors Cesario, culminating in “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times thou never shouldst love woman like to me” (5.1.260-261) and “Give me thy hand, and let me see thee in they woman’s weeds” (5.1.265-266). In the first quote Orsino