A Midsummer Night's Dream

Characters In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cassius and Oberon share the tendency of allowing their jealous nature to dictate their meddling actions. Both characters long to acquire something from their superiors and are willing to meddle in their lives to receive it. Oberon yearns for a changeling boy that is in his wife’s possession, and he begins to demand that Titiana “give [him] that boy and [he] will go” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2.1.85). Oberon’s jealousy for…

Humanity In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Dalai Lama said “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive”. Many characters in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare show humanity despite being supernatural or seeming heartless. The play teaches us valuable lessons about humanity. Humans are creatures that have many different aspects to them and this concept is shown throughout the play. We learn that humanity is about mistakes, chaos, and…

When interpreting A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, it is undeniably evident that this play was intended to be performed and elucidated in a comical way, and goes about this through the use of one prominent element- Suspension of Natural Laws. As we all know, Shakespeare is known as one of the most influential English writers and poets in history. This claim is supported specifically by his unique and significant plays created during his time, along with his pivotal production…

intertextual link to A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be found in the theme of free will as it opens up discussion as to whether the chaos in the forest was avoidable. The influence of the fairies on the mortal world, as evidenced by how Oberon can affect who loves who, positions the audience to question whether anything they do is done freely. While Romeo and Juliet have explicit references to astrology (“I defy you stars” and “star crossed lovers”) those in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are subtler,…

person negatively affected from the humor. There could be a possibility where a humorous situation ends up causing a person to be offended. Eliza from Pygmalion was treated like an object and Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream were also treated like objects. All these characters were like toys for Henry Higgins and Puck. While Higgins and Puck were messing around,…

daughter's marriage arrangement. It is at this point where the audience sees how females are treated as property in society. This also give us a glimpse of how powerful upper class noblemen were in society. In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, most of the classes of society are defiantly shown, but are characterized into classes of royalty such as the Duke Theseus, Hippolyta, Oberon, and Titania, Nobility such as Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Egeus, and commoners…

In the beginnings of this semester’s readings I find that Shakespeare enjoys writing about love and romance. Shakespeare does not shy away from powerful metaphors and comparisons. We find a constant theme of love represented in many types of ways. The first metaphor I initially picked up on was his varietal use of flowers, and him relating those flowers back to the romance of the story and each one of them has a distinct aspect that is metaphorically different in meaning. He uses different…

second way depended on the region the women lived in, they could be executed if they did not marry these men. Theseus in a Midsummer Night’s Dream tells Hermia the consequences of her decision if she disobeys her father, “You’ll either be executed or you’ll never see another man again” (1.1). Many women answered to laws like the one that is depicted in a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even in marriage men were allowed to do whatever they wanted because they were the patriarch. Men could commit…

Social Rebellion In Browning’s Fifine at the Fair, Surtees’s Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour, and Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream all have different concepts of social rebellion. Social rebellion occurs through opposition between people and authority. In these works you can find a few of examples of social rebellion. Intellectuals use literature to work through social issues. In Fifine at the Fair, a social rebellion can be seen when the man explores the fair. The time this poem was written…

Uniting social classes can be a difficult task; however, the use of comedy in a play can ease the tension, and the divide between the two groups. In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Rude Mechanicals’ production of Pyramus and Thisbe proves to be an effective way to unite two social classes in Act 5, Scene 1 and further the comedy within the play. Although Hippolyta is quite unwilling to watch their play at first, Theseus begs that she gives the Mechanicals an opportunity to…