Adriana Ramirez
Professor Brosamer
English 173
5 December 2015
Paper #2 Draft 2
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It
In many of William Shakespeare’s plays, but particularly in the two comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It, nature plays a highly important role. Different from his other genre plays of tragedies and histories, Shakespeare’s comedy plays will always have a happy ending, usually ending with a marriage. In his comedies, Shakespeare also seems to emphasize the settings of the play more than he does the characters. Though there are many other elements present in a Shakespearean comedy, such as the themes of love and mistaken identity, the setting of the natural world serves as a dynamic environment where characters have an opportunity to thrive in the wilderness and discover their true nature when the city or court environment becomes disorganized and corrupt.
Conversely, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when the natural world is disordered, there can be no order in the world of …show more content…
When waking from his sleep, Bottom describes his experience as a dream beyond human comprehension. But it is through these experiences that the young couples are able to learn how to move past small and trivial happenings. When they discover what has occurred to them, they describe their experience as an awakening from a long and rare dream. Their thoughts afterwards lead them back home where they will be able to practice their responsibility once again. When Duke Theseus arrives in the forest along with Hippolyta to find the lovers, he condemns the imagination of the lovers as pure illusion and untruth:
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some
Professor Brosamer
English 173
5 December 2015
Paper #2 Draft 2
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It
In many of William Shakespeare’s plays, but particularly in the two comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It, nature plays a highly important role. Different from his other genre plays of tragedies and histories, Shakespeare’s comedy plays will always have a happy ending, usually ending with a marriage. In his comedies, Shakespeare also seems to emphasize the settings of the play more than he does the characters. Though there are many other elements present in a Shakespearean comedy, such as the themes of love and mistaken identity, the setting of the natural world serves as a dynamic environment where characters have an opportunity to thrive in the wilderness and discover their true nature when the city or court environment becomes disorganized and corrupt.
Conversely, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when the natural world is disordered, there can be no order in the world of …show more content…
When waking from his sleep, Bottom describes his experience as a dream beyond human comprehension. But it is through these experiences that the young couples are able to learn how to move past small and trivial happenings. When they discover what has occurred to them, they describe their experience as an awakening from a long and rare dream. Their thoughts afterwards lead them back home where they will be able to practice their responsibility once again. When Duke Theseus arrives in the forest along with Hippolyta to find the lovers, he condemns the imagination of the lovers as pure illusion and untruth:
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some