a midsummer night's dream theme essay

• A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare

• Literature Notes
• Major Themes
• Play Summary
• About A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Act I: Scene 1
• Act I: Scene 2
• Act II: Scene 1
• Act II: Scene 2
• Act III: Scene 1
• Act III: Scene 2
• Act IV: Scene 1
• Act IV: Scene 2
• Act V: Scene 1
• Character Analysis
• Character Map
• William Shakespeare Biography
• Critical Essays
• Major Symbols and Motifs
• Moon Imagery
• Imagining Love
• Movie Review of Michael Hoffman's Adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Famous Quotes
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Critical Essays Major Themes

Explore the different themes within William Shakespeare's comedic play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Themes are central to understanding A Midsummer Night's Dream as a play and identifying Shakespeare's social and political commentary.

The dominant theme in A Midsummer Night's Dream is love, a subject to which Shakespeare returns constantly in his comedies. Shakespeare explores how people tend to fall in love with those who appear beautiful to them. People we think we love at one time in our lives can later seem not only unattractive but even repellent. For a time, this attraction to beauty might appear to be love at its most intense, but one of the ideas of the play is that real love is much more than mere physical attraction.

At one level, the story of the four young Athenians asserts that although "The course of true love never did run smooth," true love triumphs in the end, bringing happiness and harmony. At another level, however, the audience is forced to consider what an apparently irrational and whimsical thing love is, at least when experienced between youngsters.

A Midsummer Night's Dream asserts marriage as the true fulfillment of romantic love. All the damaged relationships have been sorted out at the end of Act IV, and Act V serves to celebrate the whole idea of marriage in a spirit of festive happiness.

The triple wedding at the end of Act IV marks the formal resolution of the romantic problems that have beset the two young couples from the beginning, when Egeus attempted to force his daughter to marry the man he had chosen to be her husband.

The mature and stable love of Theseus and Hippolyta is contrasted with the relationship of Oberon and Titania, whose squabbling has such a negative impact on the world around them. Only when the marriage of the fairy King and Queen is put right can there be peace in their kingdom and the world beyond it.

Appearance and Reality

Another of the play's main themes is one to which Shakespeare returns to again and again in his work: the difference between appearance and reality. The idea that things are not necessarily what they seem to be is at the heart of A Midsummer Night's Dream , and in the very title itself.

A dream is not real, even though it seems so at the time we experience it. Shakespeare consciously creates the plays' dreamlike quality in a number of ways. Characters frequently fall asleep and wake having dreamed ("Methought a serpent ate my heart away"); having had magic worked upon them so that they are in a dreamlike state; or thinking that they have dreamed ("I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was"). Much of the play takes place at night, and there are references to moonlight, which changes the appearance of what it illuminates.

The difference between appearances and reality is also explored through the play-within-a-play, to particularly comic effect. The "rude mechanicals" completely fail to understand the magic of the theatre, which depends upon the audience being allowed to believe (for a time, at least) that what is being acted out in front of them is real.

When Snug the Joiner tells the stage audience that he is not really a lion and that they must not be afraid of him, we (and they) laugh at this stupidity, but we also laugh at ourselves — for we know that he is not just a joiner pretending to be a lion, but an actor pretending to be a joiner pretending to be a lion. Shakespeare seems to be saying, "We all know that this play isn't real, but you're still sitting there and believing it." That is a kind of magic too.

Order and Disorder

A Midsummer Night's Dream also deals with the theme of order and disorder. The order of Egeus' family is threatened because his daughter wishes to marry against his will; the social order to the state demands that a father's will should be enforced. When the city dwellers find themselves in the wood, away from their ordered and hierarchical society, order breaks down and relationships are fragmented. But this is comedy, and relationships are more happily rebuilt in the free atmosphere of the wood before the characters return to society.

Natural order — the order of Nature — is also broken and restored in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The row between the Fairy King and Queen results in the order of the seasons being disrupted:

The spring, the summer, The chiding autumn, angry winter change Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world By their increase knows not which is which.

Only after Oberon and Titania's reconciliation can all this be put right. Without the restoration of natural order, the happiness of the play's ending could not be complete.

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A midsummer night’s dream.

Rotimi Agbabiaka (Oberon), Jacob Ming-Trent (Bottom), and Sabrina Lynne Sawyer (Fairy) in  A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Folger Theatre, 2022. Photo: Brittany Diliberto.

Introduction to the play

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, about to marry, are figures from mythology. In the woods outside Theseus’s Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples—but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another.

Also in the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy; Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, whose head is temporarily transformed into that of a donkey by a hobgoblin or “puck,” Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”

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Essays and resources from The Folger Shakespeare

A midsummer night’s dream.

Learn more about the play, its language, and its history from the experts behind our edition.

About Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream An introduction to the plot, themes, and characters in the play

Quotes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Reading Shakespeare’s Language A guide for understanding Shakespeare’s words, sentences, and wordplay

An Introduction to This Text A description of the publishing history of the play and our editors’ approach to this edition

Textual Notes A record of the variants in the early printings of this text

A Modern Perspective An essay by Catherine Belsey

Further Reading Suggestions from our experts on where to learn more

Shakespeare and his world

Learn more about Shakespeare, his theater, and his plays from the experts behind our editions.

Shakespeare’s Life An essay about Shakespeare and the time in which he lived

Shakespeare’s Theater An essay about what theaters were like during Shakespeare’s career

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays An essay about how Shakespeare’s plays were published

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first printed in 1600 as a quarto (Q1). In 1619, a new quarto of the play was published (Q2) based on Q1 but with some additional stage directions and some small corretions to the text. That text, in turn, was the basis for the 1623 First Folio (F1) with, again, some minor changes, including the substitution of Egeus for Philostrate in the final scene of the play. Most modern editions, like the Folger editions, are based on the Q1 text. See more primary sources related to A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Shakespeare Documented

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 26, 2020 • ( 0 )

Nothing by Shakespeare before A Midsummer Night’s Dream is its equal and in some respects nothing by him afterwards surpasses it. It is his first undoubted masterpiece, with-out flaws, and one of his dozen or so plays of overwhelming originality and power.

—Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is William Shakespeare’s first comic masterpiece and remains one his most beloved and performed plays. It seems reasonable to claim that on any fine night during the summer at an outdoor theater somewhere in the world an audience is being treated to the magic of the play. It is easy, however, to overlook through familiarity what a radically original and experimental play this is. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the triumph of Shakespeare’s early play-writing career, a drama of such marked inventiveness and visionary reach that its first audiences must have only marveled at what could possibly come next from this extraordinary playwright. In it Shakespeare changed the paradigm of stage comedy that he had inherited from the Greeks and the Romans by dizzyingly multiplying his plot lines and by bringing the irrational and absurd illusions of romantic love center stage. He established human passion and gender relations as comedy’s prime subject, transforming such fundamental concepts as love, courtship, and marriage that have persisted in our culture ever since. If that is not enough A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes use of its romantic intrigue, supernatural setting, and rustic foolery to pose essential questions about the relationship between art and life, appearance and reality, truth and illusion, dreams and the waking world that anticipate the self-referential agenda of such avant-garde, metadramatists as Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, and Tom Stoppard. A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents a kind of declaration of liberation for the stage, in which, after its example, nothing seems either off limits or impossible. In the play Theseus, the duke of Athens, after hearing the lovers’ strange story of what happened to them in the forest famously interprets their incredible account by linking the lovers with the lunatic and the poet:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. 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 fear, How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream similarly gives a “local habitation and a name” on stage for what madness, love, and the poet’s imagination can conjure.

Shakespeare first made his theatrical reputation in the early 1590s with his Henry VI plays, with the historical chronicle genre that he pioneered. His early tragedies— Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet —and comedies— The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, and Love’s Labour’s Lost —all show the playwright working within the dramatic conventions that he inherited from classical, medieval, and English folk sources. With A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare goes beyond imitation to discover a distinctive voice and manner that would add a new dramatic species. After A Midsummer Night’s Dream there was Old Comedy, New Comedy, and now Shakespearean comedy, a synthesis of both. To explain the origin and manner of A Midsummer Night’s Dream scholars have long relied on a speculative story so apt and evocative that it must be believed, even though there is no hard evidence to support it. Thought to have been written in the winter of 1593–94 to be performed at an aristocratic wedding attended by Queen Elizabeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream therefore resembles the Renaissance masque, a fanciful mixture of allegorical and mythological enactments, music, dance, elegant costumes, and elaborate theatrical effects to entertain at banquets celebrating betrothals, weddings, and seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night. In the words of Theseus at his own nuptial fete, the masque served “To wear away this long age of three hours / Between our after-supper and bed-time.” We do know from the title page of its initial publication in the First Quarto of 1600 that the play “hath been sundry times publikely acted” by Shakespeare’s company, but the notion that it had served as a wedding entertainment establishes the delightful fun-house mirroring of an actual wed-ding party first watching a play that included a wedding party watching a play. Such an appropriate scrambling of reality and illusion reflects the source of the humor and wonder of A Midsummer Night’s Dream .

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of just three plays out of Shakespeare’s 39 (the other two are Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Tempest ) for which the play-wright did not rely on a central primary source. Instead Shakespeare assembled elements from classical sources, romantic narratives, and English folk materials, along with details of ordinary Elizabethan life to juggle and juxtapose four different imaginative realms, each with its own distinctive social and literary conventions and language. Each is linked by analogy to the theme of love and its obstacles. The first is the classically derived court world of Theseus, duke of Athens, who has first conquered Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, then won her heart, and now eagerly (and impatiently) anticipates their wedding. Their impending nuptials prompt the arrival of emissaries from the natural world, the king and queen of the fairies—Oberon and Titania—to bless their union, as well as a collection of “rude mechanicals”—Bottom, Quince, Flute, Starveling, Snout, and Snug—to devise a theatrical performance as entertainment at the Duke’s wedding celebration. To the world of the Athenian court, the alternate supernatural court world of the fairies, and the realistic sphere of the Athenian artisans, Shakespeare overlaps a fourth center of interest in the young lovers Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius. Shakespeare mixes the dignified blank verse of Theseus and Hippolyta with the rhymed iambic speeches of the lovers, the rhymed tetrameter of the fairies, and the wonder-fully earthy prose of the rustics into a virtuoso’s performance of polyphonic verbal effects, the greatest Shakespeare, or any other dramatist, had yet sup-plied for the stage.

The complications commence when Hermia’s father, Egeus, objects to his daughter’s unsanctioned preference for Lysander over Demetrius, whom Egeus has selected for her. Egeus invokes Athenian law mandating death or celibacy for a maid’s refusal to abide by parental authority in the choice of a mate. Parental objection to the choice of young lovers was a standard plot device of Greek New Comedy and the Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence that Shakespeare inherited. To the obstacles placed in the lovers’ paths Shakespeare adds his own variation of the earlier Aristophanic Old Comedy’s break with the normalcy of everyday life by having his lovers escape into the forest. Critic Northrup Frye has called this symbolic setting of magical regeneration and vitality the “green world.” Here the lovers are tested and allowed the freedom and new possibilities to gain fulfillment and harmony denied them in the civilized world, in which duty dominates desire and obligation to parental authority and the law overrules self-interest and the heart’s promptings. Critic C. L. Barber has identified in such a departure from the norm a “Saturnalian Pattern” in Shakespearean comedy in which the lovers’ exile from the civilized to the primitive supplies the festive release that characterized the earliest forms of comic drama. Barber argues:

Once Shakespeare finds his own distinctive voice, he is more Aristophanic than any other great English dramatist, despite the fact that the accepted educated models and theories when he started to write were Terentian and Plautine. The Old Comedy cast of his work results from his participation in native saturnalian traditions of the popular theater and the popular holidays. . . . He used the resources of a sophisticated theater to express, in his idyllic comedies and in his clowns’ ironic misrule, the experience of moving to humorous understanding through saturnalian release.

Named for the summer solstice festival, when it was said that a maid could glimpse the man she would marry, A Midsummer Night’s Dream celebrates access to the uncanny and the breakup of all normal rules and social barriers to display human nature in the grips of elemental passions and the subconscious. The lovers in their moonlit, natural setting, at the mercy of the fairies, act out their deepest desires and hostilities in a full display of the power and absurdity of love both to change reality and to redeem it.

Hermia elopes with Lysander, pursued by Demetrius, who in turn is followed by Helena, whom he spurns. They enter a supernatural realm also beset by marital discord, jealousy, and rivalry. Oberon commands his servant Puck to place the juice of a flower once hit by Cupid’s dart in the eyes of the sleeping Titania to cause her to fall in love with the first creature she sees on awakening to help gain for Oberon the changeling boy Titania has refused to yield to him. Oberon, pitying Helena her rejection by Demetrius, also orders Puck to place some of the drops in Demetrius’s eyes so that he will be charmed into love with the woman who dotes on him. Instead Puck comes upon Lysander and Hermia as they sleep, mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, and pours the charm into the wrong eyes so that Lysander falls in love with Helena when she wakes him. Meanwhile Bottom and his companions have retreated to the woods to rehearse a dramatization of the mythological story of Pyramus and Thisbe, another set of star-crossed lovers. Puck gives the exuberant Bottom the head of an ass, and he becomes the first thing the charmed Titania sees on waking. Through the agency of the change of location from court to forest and from daylight to moonlight, with its attendant capacity for magical transformation, the play mounts a witty and uproarious display of the irrationality of love and its victims who see the world through the distorting lens of desire, in which certainty of affection is fleeting and a lover with the head of an ass can cause a queen to forgo her senses and her dignity. As Bottom aptly observes, “reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.” From the perspectives of the fairies the lovers’ absolute claims and earnest rationalizations of such a will-of-the-wisp as love makes them absurd. The tangled mixture of passion, jealousy, rancor, and violence that beset the young lovers after Puck imperfectly corrects his mistake, causing both Lysander and Demetrius to pursue the once spurned Helena, more than justifies Puck’s observation, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

By act 4 day returns, and the disorder of the night proves as fleeting and as insubstantial as a dream. After the four lovers are awakened by Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus, who are hunting in the woods, Lysander again loves Hermia, and Demetrius, still under the power of the potion, gives up his claim to her in favor of Helena. Theseus overrules Egeus’s objections and his own former strict adherence to Athenian law and gives both couples permission to marry that day, along with himself and Hippolyta. Having gained the change-ling boy from Titania, Oberon releases her from her spell. Puck removes the donkey’s head from Bottom, who awakes to wonder at his strange dream:

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. . . . I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be call’d “Bottom’s Dream,” because it hath no bottom.

The only mortal allowed to see the fairies, Bottom is also the only character not threatened or diminished by the alternative fantasy realm he passes through. He freely accepts what he does not understand, considering it more suitable for the delight of art in a future ballad than to be analyzed or reduced by reason. Bottom coexists easily and honestly in the dual world of reality and illusion, maintaining his core identity and integrity even through his trans-formation, from man to ass, to fairy queen’s paramour, to ordinary man again. Called by Harold Bloom “Shakespeare’s most engaging character before Falstaff,” Bottom is the play’s human anchor and affirmation of the joyful acceptance of all the contradictions that the play has sent his way.

With the reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, Bottom’s reunion with his colleagues, and three Athenian weddings, the plot complications are all happily resolved, and act 5 shifts the emphasis from the potentially destructive vagaries of love to a celebration of marriage to crown and contain human desire. Shakespeare’s final sleight of hand and delightful invention, however, is the play within the play, the “tedious and brief” and “very tragical mirth” of the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe by Bottom and his players. In a drama fueled by the complications between appearance and reality this hilariously incompetent burlesque by the play’s rustic clowns impersonating tragic lovers appropriately comments on the play that has preceded it. The drama of Pyramus and Thisbe involves another set of lovers who face parental objections and similarly seek relief in nature, but their adventure goes tragically awry. However, just as Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius avoid through the stage-managing of the fairies a potentially tragic fate from their ordeal in the wood, so is the tragic fate of Pyramus and Thisbe transformed to comedy by the ineptitude of Bottom’s company. The play within the play becomes a pointed microcosm for A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a whole in its conversion of potential tragedy to curative comedy. The newlyweds, who mock the absurdity of Pyramus and Thisbe , fail to make the connection with their own absurd encounter with love and their chance rescue from its anguish, but the actual audience should not. In Shakespeare’s comprehensive comic vision we both laugh at the ridiculousness of others while recognizing ourselves in their dilemmas. Shakespeare’s final point about the inseparability of reality and illusion is scored by having the fairy world coexist with the Athenian court at the play’s conclusion, decreasing the gap between fact and fancy and invading actuality itself by giving the final words to Puck, who addresses the audience directly:

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumb’red here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream.

Like the newlyweds who view a drama that calls attention to its illusion and its “tragical mirth,” the audience is here reminded of the similar blending of reality and dream, the comic and the tragic in the world beyond the stage. Puck serves as Shakespeare’s magician’s assistant, demonstrating that substance and shadow on stage replicate both the illusion of the dramatist’s art and the essence of human life in our own continual interplay of reality, dreams, and desire.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Oxford Lecture by Prof. Emma Smith

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Ebook PDF (5 MB)

Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human PDF (7 MB)

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

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86 A Midsummer Night’s Dream Essay Topics & Examples

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

By william shakespeare, a midsummer night's dream essay questions.

Describe the structure of the play. How does this structure reflect the play's major themes?

The play is demarcated by a shift in setting: in Act One, the characters are all living in Athens, and Hermia expresses her desire to marry Lysander instead of Demetrius. Theseus, a symbol of order and control, tells her that this is impossible, as she must obey her father. This declaration causes Hermia, Lysander, and other characters to venture into the surrounding woods around Athens, therein dismantling the order established in the first act of the play. By the end of the play, however, order returns in the form of two marriages, but not before having been challenged in the mysterious landscape of the woods.

What makes A Midsummer Night's Dream a comedy?

In early modern theater, a comedy was considered any play that concluded with a relatively "happy" ending. The genre traditionally featured at least one marriage at the end, and certainly no deaths as was common in tragedy. A Midsummer Night's Dream is classified as a comedy because it ends with two marriages, and is in general a fairly lighthearted play. In conventional comedy fashion, the play also features a chaotic cast of characters and events that are meant to entertain the audience with slapstick humor, silly antics, and harmless trickery.

What role does the supernatural have in the events of the play?

Once the human characters enter the woods surrounding Athens they encounter (without their knowledge) a host of woodland fairies who have magic powers. These fairies ultimately wield control over the mortals with their ability to manipulate the senses and the emotions. The fairies are able to make people fall in love, a skill that ultimately showcases the play's perspective on the chaotic nature of love and desire.

How does the play craft a dream-like atmosphere throughout?

True to its title, the play attempts to portray its entire plot as a type of dream. The setting is pivotal to this dreamy atmosphere, as the majority of the play takes place under the cover of darkness in the mysterious woods surrounding Athens. The presence of fairies and supernatural creatures also contributes to the dream-like climate, as the characters (and the audience) must encounter a landscape that is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, real and surreal, while navigating their mortal relationships and human concerns.

Why is Puck the most-quoted character in the play?

Puck is a member of the fairy clan, and he serves as the liaison between the fairies (Titania and Oberon) and the mortals. As such, Puck often offers commentary on the nature of humanity and mortal life, the most famous of which is the exclamation, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" (3.2). Puck has become the most-quoted character from the play because he serves as a pseudo-narrator to the events of the performance while offering ironic and humorous takes on the petty or foolish concerns of human life.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

what is The anomisity between hermia and helena

Hermia and Helena have been close friends friend since they were young, but recently their friendship has come under strain because of the men they are courting.

Doubling--Pyramus and Thisbe vs. Lysander and Hermia; Oberon and Titania vs. Theseus and Hippolyta (often played by the same actors in stage productions). In what ways are the couples similar?

Many of the marriages in the play parallel one another, as love and its tribulations is the central theme of the performance. The marriage between Theseus and Hippolyta represents order and control, while that between Hermia and Lysander showcases...

How does the language in the scene contrast with the language in the opening scene? Why?

I'm sorry, you will need to provide the Act and Scene in question.

Study Guide for A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Midsummer Night's Dream study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About A Midsummer Night's Dream
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Essays for A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Midsummer Night's Dream literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Midsummer Night's Dream.

• Doubt and Uncertainty in Relation to Theatricality in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream
• To See or Not To See: Vision, Night and Day in A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Character Analysis of Puck
• Phases in the Play
• Dream Within a Dream: Freud, Phonics, and Fathomlessness in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Lesson Plan for A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
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E-Text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Midsummer Night's Dream E-Text contains the full text of Midsummer Night's Dream

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

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A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

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Discussion Questions

A Midsummer Night’s Dream questions the relationship between dreams and reality. To what extent do the characters willfully embrace the idea that everything is a dream? Why do they do so?

Bottom’s arrogance and self-importance make him a prime target for Puck’s mischief. How does Bottom’s physical transformation act as a reflection of his character?

Oberon uses his magical powers to entertain himself and win an argument against his wife. To what extent does Oberon act in a moral fashion? To what extent does he care about morality?

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

William shakespeare, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

After their surreal night of magic and mayhem in the forest, both the lovers and Bottom describe what happened to them as a "dream." They use the word "dream" to describe their experiences, because they wouldn't otherwise be able to understand the bizarre and irrational things that they remember happening to them in the forest. By calling their experiences dreams, Bottom and the lovers allow those experiences to exist as they are, without need for explanation or understanding. As Bottom says: "I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what / dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about t'expound this dream"(IV.i.200-201). In a famous speech near the end of the play, Duke Theseus brushes off the lovers' tale of their night in the forest, and goes so far as to condemn the imagination of all lovers, madmen, and poets as full of illusion and untruths. But Theseus's argument overlooks that it is reason, as set down in the law of Athens, that caused all the problems to begin with. And it was the "dream" within the forest that solved those problems. Through this contrast, the play seems to be suggesting that dreams and imagination are as useful as reason, and can sometimes create truths that transcend reason's limits.

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Dreams Quotes in A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Theme Essay

The overriding theme of the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare is love. The play follows the story of four young lovers, Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius, who are torn between their feelings for one another and the expectations of their parents.

In addition to the young lovers, the play also focuses on the love story between Titania and Oberon, the king and queen of the fairies. Throughout the play, Shakespeare explores different aspects of love, from first love to forbidden love to mature love. Ultimately, the play shows that love is a powerful force that can overcome any obstacle.

This theme of love is most clearly illustrated in the character of Puck. Puck is a mischievous fairy who loves to play jokes on people. However, at the end of the play, Puck reveals that he has always been loyal to Oberon and Titania and that his tricks were meant to help them reconcile their differences. Puck’s actions show that love can sometimes do things that are not rational or logical, but that it still ultimately succeeds.

The theme of love is also reflected in the setting of the play. A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place in the forest near Athens. The forest is a place where anything can happen, and it is a perfect setting for a story about love. The forest represents the natural world, which is often unpredictable and chaotic. In the context of the play, the forest represents a place where the rules of society do not apply and where people can be themselves. This is why the characters are able to act out their feelings for each other without fear of judgement.

The theme of love is further developed by Shakespeare’s use of comedy. Comedy is often used to explore serious topics in a light-hearted way, and this is certainly true of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By using comedy, Shakespeare allows the audience to approach the topic of love in a less serious manner. This makes it easier for the audience to understand and appreciate all of the different aspects of love that are explored in the play.

Love is a complicated business and we never quite know what to expect from it. This is one of the reasons why the play has remained popular for centuries. It touches on universal truths that continue to resonate with audiences. No matter how much time passes, love remains a mystery. And that is part of what makes it so magical.

If you are interested in reading more about the overriding theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are plenty of articles and essays available online. Just do a quick search and you will find plenty of resources to explore.

Occasionally, love drives us down blind alleys and makes us do things we later regret. The lovers in the drama, especially the men, are painted as shallow. They alter their infatuations frequently, swearing eternal devotion to one or the other. Shakespeare contends that both fake love and genuine love may endure in Act III Scene II. Many conflicts erupt throughout Act III Scene II, although the main conflict is the perplexity caused by altered perceptions among the pair.

The love potion Oberon gave Titania makes her fall in love with Bottom, and Puck’s mistake makes Lysander believe he is in love with Hermia again. This confusion could be interpreted as a metaphor for the spiritual confusion that plagues humans.

Many parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be seen as metaphors for spiritual truths. The play is set in the middle of a forest, which can be seen as a symbol for the spiritual realm. The characters within the play often go on wild adventures and have strange experiences that can be interpreted as representing the journey of the soul. For example, when Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, Lysander runs away into the forest and falls asleep.

He has a dream in which he is pulled down into a dark abyss. This can be interpreted as representing the journey of the soul down into the depths of darkness and despair. However, Lysander eventually wakes up and finds his way back to the light. This can be seen as representing the fact that no matter how far we may fall, we always have the potential to find our way back home.

The overriding theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that love can take many different forms, and it is not always easy to tell what is true love and what is false love. The characters within the play are constantly changing their minds about who they love and who they want to be with. Shakespeare presents the idea that both true love and false love can prevail.

In the end, the characters all come to a realization that love is not always easy, but it is worth fighting for. This theme is especially relevant in today’s society, where there is so much confusion about what love really is. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a reminder that love is ultimately a mystery, and we should never give up on it.

This conflation adds to the play’s main theme of genuine love versus false love. There are lots of themes in the play that touch on this core topic, but it is most visible here. The turmoil reaches a climax, causing significant upheaval among the couples. Eventually, the individual who started off the mess resolves it: Puck is like a raucous, wild member of the fairy race. Puck causes mayhem by interrupting the lovers’ affair; Jester and jester-in-residence known as Robin Goodfellow – he resembles a mischievous sprite.

He is not bound by the rules that govern the other fairies and because of this, he is often a source of comic relief in the play. However, Puck is also a wise figure. He understands what is happening with the lovers and he helps to resolve the situation in a way that is beneficial to all. In the end, Puck’s interventions teach the young lovers an important lesson about true love.

The central theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is true love versus false love. This theme is most prevalent in act 3, scene 1 when Puck causes chaos among the lovers. The turmoil reaches a climax causing great disruption among the lovers. However, the chaos is eventually resolved by Puck. In the end, Puck’s interventions teach the young lovers an important lesson about true love.

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Theme Of Power In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Essay

A Midsummer Nights Dream In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream love was a main concept. However, in order for the emotions of love to take their place, there is a need of power to generate it. Only through power is love really made evident. The power of authority, the power to transform perceptions and the power of infatuation and romantic desire all contribute to the theme of love. Almost every character possessed a unique power that led way for much desire. Authority, magic, and complete emotion all were driving forces in contributing to the role of power.

Power was not only exemplified through authority, but was shown in many different aspects. Here we will take a look at the authoritative aspects along with the powers of perception and desire . The concept of authoritative power was surfaced quite early in the play . From here we were introduced to the relationship between Thesius and Hippolyta. In the play, the supreme ruler of Athens, Thesius ends up marring Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. However, during the whole play, Hippolyta never throughly discusses her feeling and ideas about her recent marriage.

She acts as if she had no choice but to marry Thesius. This is where, by examining Hippolyta’s position in the relationship, we see the authoritative power. Hippolyta was captured by Thesius during battle and Thesius intimidates her into marring him due to his supreme status and the fact that he has battled over her once high authority. Thesius speaks upon their ‘profound marriage and the bases to their love: “I woo’d thee by my sword / And won thy love doing thee injuries (1:1 16-20).

These couple of lines and the fact that Hippolyta never discusses her feelings about the wedding leads to the reader to believe that she doesn’t really love him but was forced into marriage due to his supremacy. Thesius’ authority is the higher power, and Hippolyta’s love (in marriage) is controlled by the duke’s selfish authority in forcing her to marry. Thesius badly displays his power here, no one should be forced into such a influential situation in their life. Another example of badly presented authoritative behavior isin the relationship between Egeus and his daughter Hermia.

In Act one, Hermia confesses her love for Lysander to her father which creates great anger on Egeus’ part. Egeus is very upset because Hermia is defying his wishes for her to marry the man that he has chose, Demetrius. When Hermia objects to her fathers wishes, Egeus threatens to continue her lasting virginity for the rest of her life and even sends the treat of death; “As she is mine I may dispose of her / which shall be either to this gentlemen / or to her death according to our law / Immediately provided in that case” (1:1 43-46).

We clearly see that the positional authoritative power is held by Egeus, who is furious at his daughters disobedience. Egeus controls the basis of the future of his beloved daughter, he has the power to direct the remains of her young life. The complete control of Hermia’s emotion toward love is in the harmful authoritative hands of Egeus. This is yet another example of how the power of authority can direct actions of people which they dictate. Not only was the power distributed through authority, but it was also distributed through the power of transforming erceptions of love.

Only the fairies possess such a abilty of power through their magic. After escaping to the woods, Lysander had gained fatigue and decided to rest. During this rest, Lysander had been approached by Oberon, the King of the Fairies. Love-juice was spilt from a little purple flower on Lysanders eyes from the hands of Oberon which would completely change his perception of love. This perception changing drug was such a powerful love charm, all of Lysanders love for Hermia vanished away, and he had a sudden deep love for Helena.

Upon the awakening of Lysander he immediately started addressing Helena in terms of extravagant love and admiration; telling her she as much excelled Hermia in beauty as a dove does a raven, and that he would run through fire for her sweet sake. Lysanders emotions toward his one true love, Hermia, had evacuated his heart and now was spilled upon Helena. This sudden, irrational passage of love was all caused by the irresponsibility of the fairies and their special powers. The love-juice had circled the perception of love onto Helena, changing from the perception of love that was originally intertwined between Hermia and Lysander.

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