Midsummer and Elizabeth
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedic drama that centers on marriage. Indeed, it is traditionally held that Shakespeare penned the play for a friend's wedding; therefore, it should be no surprise to find that the theme of marriage runs through and through Midsummer, from the young adults to the nobility (and even to the fairy world, where marital strife is encountered). Yet, being penned in an age when the Queen of England herself never married, one may think that Midsummer serves as a kind of critique of Elizabeth. If the medieval view of women (both common and noble) was that they were for two things (either the cloister or the married state), it would appear that Elizabeth had certainly bucked that trend. Yet Elizabethan England itself was on the cusp of bucking the medieval world: it had already abandoned the Church of the old world; and Elizabeth…...

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." MIT. Web. 10 Oct 2011.

He forgives her and order is restored in the fairy world thanks to the proper balance of love between head and heart.
As for the actors who go into the woods to prepare for their play before the king and queen of Athens -- they too show a side of love. Bottom shows what happens when one lacks imagination: he is the most unimaginative actor in the history of theater and thinks that the audience is as equally unimaginative as he is. He believes they will take everything literally and that, for example, when one of them behaves as a lion on stage, the audience will think it is a real lion and run for its life. He does not give the audience the benefit of the doubt (a form of love, charity) and therefore is a foolish actor.

However, Theseus wisely and kindly gives Bottom the benefit of the doubt…...

Even fairies struggle with love and romance. Oberon and Titania bicker; because of Puck's potion, Titania even falls in love with an ass. Puck's potion illustrates the fleeting nature of sexual attraction, too.
At the opening of a Midsummer Night's Dream, Demetrius is in love with Hermia but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Lysander returns the affection. Hermia's best friend Helena, on the other hand, does love Demetrius and the two were once engaged. Demetrius, interestingly, has a thing for Hermia and so Shakespeare creates a farcical array of love triangles that propel the plot of the play.

Demetrius' injured ego and pride is what compels him to enter into the woods, kick-starting the adventures of all four of the young Athenians. Jealousy is not just a human emotion in a Midsummer Night's Dream, as fairy queen Titania is angry that her husband Oberon has become smitten with a young…...

The soul of girl/woman Jenna is returned to normal at the end of the film, and the girl's knowledge about working as an adult editor on a magazine, the true nature of her chief junior high school tormenter, and Matt's worth as an older man make her a more mature thirteen-year-old, thus the delving into fantasy make the real world 'better,' as in "Midsummer," and more moral and thus more orderly than it was before. Jenna's old self is given new insight about what is right, and her thirty-year-old self benefits from her injection of youthful enthusiasm as Jenna as an "awkward 13-year-old who gets her wish and awakens as a 30-year-old" manages to "fix the empty life her shallow adult self has created" (Johns 2004).

Thus in both the film and the play, the intervention of the supernatural improves the world, making it temporarily disorderly in a human way, only…...

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Works Cited

Greenblatt, Stephen. "Resonance and Wonder. "Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 43. 4. Jan. 1990: pp. 11-34

Shakespeare, William. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." MIT Shakespeare Homepage.

19 Apr 2008.  http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/ 

Thirteen Going on Thirty." Directed by Gary Winick. 2004.

However, Titania appears in this scene and so does a fairy who is probably female. The biggest problem for the audience would be Titania, who is supposed to be beautiful and wise, which helps the audience understand why Oberon is so obsessed with gaining her love. If Titania is not believable, the play will not work. This scene also needs to show Oberon's weak will, but not turn him into a buffoon. This scene would need special handling from the director to make sure Titania seems right to the audience. Too strong a male presence will ruin the mood, so the actor must show a hint of femaleness and a hint of seduction to indicate just why Oberon wants her so badly. Too much femaleness would again take away from the entire scene. These characters make poor choices and are emotional, and that needs to come through to the…...

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References

Bloom, Harold. William Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's Dream. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.

Shakespeare, William. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing, Sixth Edition. Ed. Michael Meyer. 1393-1449.

Midsummer Night's Dream
illiam Shakespeare's play, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was written in 1595. A woman's role in her family and community were determined by a patriarchal society. It was during this time, after all, that women were being burned at the stake all across Europe.

The play begins in an Athenian palace just before the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, "Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour / Draws on apace" (I:I:I) Hippolyta is the legendary Queen of the Amazons whom has been conquered and now weds the Duke. Perhaps because of the legends associated with the matriarchal society of the Amazons, Shakespeare portrays Hippolyta as a woman conquered, indicating that the Queen of the Amazons must certainly be conquered before accepting a man in marriage. It is presumed that Theseus and Hippolyta met in combat, and so he promises her that although he wooed her in battle…...

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Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Washington Square

Press. 2004; I:I:I, I:I:12, I:I:19, I:I:36-38, I:I:65-66, 2:I:241-244.

There are many elements of Renaissance England seen in the play as well as some elements that refer to Ancient Greece that suggest a combining of worlds.
The play, from a humanistic perspective, suggests that everyone is out for themselves and for succeeding in their own quest for love -- despite what the object of his or her affection wants. Midsummer also seems to suggest that humans don't have much control over their relationships and that they are merely products of their environment. Oberon reacts out of revenge when he enlists the aid of Puck. From a humanistic perspective, it's also interesting to not that Shakespeare seems to be suggesting how little control humans have over their own lives. Regardless of the fact that the players are in mysterious woods where fairies are up to mischief, Shakespeare seems to be making a point about the capriciousness of humans -- especially…...

Midsummer Night's Dream
The difficulty of love is one of the predominant themes in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. While love itself is not a theme of the play, Shakespeare uses romantic elements, and troubles stemming from romance throughout the play. Shakespeare's characters successfully distance themselves from the emotional side of love to keep the play lighthearted and funny. There is much more fun in poking fun, apparently.

There are internal elements that interfere with the romances in the play - most notably inequalities in the relationship. The prime example of such an imbalance is in the situation between four of the main characters - Hermia who loves Lysander; Lysander who loves Hermia; Helena who loves Demetrius, and Demetrius who loves Hermia. One woman has too few suitors, and one woman has too many. Emotions, and feelings are a predominant source of imbalance, and can be seen in another relationship -…...

2)
Although this may seem prudish, Hermia is wise -- she has just eloped with Lysander, and she needs to make sure that he marries her, to preserve her position in society. And when she mistakenly believes that her beloved, for whom she has risked everything, including her father's affection and her good name, is taken away by her best friend, she is even willing to defend herself physically:

Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.

Now I perceive that she hath made compare

Between our statures; she hath urged her height;

And with her personage, her tall personage,

Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.

And are you grown so high in his esteem;

Because I am so dwarfish and so low?

How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;

How low am I? I am not yet so low

But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes (III.2).

Hermia is not ungenerous towards Helena -- she…...

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Shakespeare Home Page.

May 4, 2009.  http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/ index.html

Midsummer Night's Dream
illiam Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream is ostensibly concerned with heterosexual marriage, but it is seldom noted just how disturbing the play's picture of marriage seems. The subject is seldom raised without mention of death or conquest: even the farcical drama enacted in the play's final act by the rude mechanicals is a story of two lovers who die violently, except the story is played for laughs. I would like to show by an examination of several key motifs in the play -- the relations between fathers and daughters, the friendships between women, and the status of men and women in the play's erotic couplings -- that Shakespeare's real subject in the play is the status of women. A Midsummer Night's Dream stands out for its portrayal of a culture in which women are labeled as inferior and rendered as powerless.

The subjection of women is undeniably central…...

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. MIT Shakespeare. Web. Accessed 17 April 2014 at:  

Farce
Midsummer Night's Dream is the quintessential romantic parody. Involving the use of magic potions and mythical creatures, Shakespeare portrays love as a potentially ridiculous pursuit and one totally devoid of reason. When Bottom states to Titania in Act 3, Scene 1, "reason and love keep little company together nowadays," he sums up one of the main themes of the play. Reason and love usually do not coexist, for emotions take on a life of their own. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare exaggerates this common knowledge with genuine comedy and delightful farce. Throughout the play, three types of beings exemplify the irrationality of love. The noble morals, like Hermia and Lysander; the commoners, like Bottom and Quince; and the mythical creatures, the fairies, all typify this theme. From the very first scene, the audience witnesses the absurdity of romantic pursuits.

Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander, along with Theseus, Hippolyta, and…...

Magic in a Midsummer Night's Dream and the Tempest
By examining the use of magic in illiam Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, one can see not only how magic functions within the context of the plays, but also how the use of magic and enchantment would have been received by their historical audiences. Though instigated with differing motives and applied with differing levels of expertise in either play, magic primarily functions to instigate a farcical confusion on the part of the characters, and even though magic is deployed by central, "good" characters, the use of magic is ultimately repudiated by the end of the play, in both cases with a direct appeal to the audience. The use of magic to confuse and control characters, as well as this direct repudiation present in an appeal to the audience reveals that although magic is a central theme of both plays,…...

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Works Cited

Bryson, B. (2009). Shakespeare. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Shakespeare, William. (2007). A midsummer night's dream. Retrieved from  http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/dream/index.html 

Shakespeare, William. (2008). The tempest. Retrieved from http://www.shakespeare-

navigators.com/tempest/index.html

Shakespeare play a Midsummer Night's Dream. http://s
The setting of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is extremely important to the correct interpretation of this work of literature, as well as to the development of its plot. Although the setting -- which is explicitly the time and place in which actions in a work of literature take place -- are of importance in any drama, it is all the more critical to this play of Shakespeare's due to the central theme. Like many of the bard's works, this play deals with love, its mishaps, and its reconciliation. However, it chiefly does so through the means of magi, a magic which involves the supernatural, spirits, and fairies. A close read of A Midsummer Night's Dream reveals that the author manipulates certain aspects of the setting to provide the proper background for the copious amounts of magic that fuel the play's plot…...

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Bibliography

Falk, Florence. "Dream and Ritual Process in A Midsummer Night's Dream." Comparative Drama. 14(3), 263-279, 1980.

Mebane, John. "Structure, Source and Meaning in A Midsummer Night's Dream." Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 24(3), 255-270, 1982.

Riley, Dick; McAllister, Pam. "Three Couples to Wed At Palace After Night of Strange Happenings in the Woods." In Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Shakespeare. 73-76. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2001.

Shakespeare, William. "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. 1595.

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the social order of both the fairy world and of Athens is disrupted and complicated by a series of mishaps, conflicts, and mistakes. In the fairy world, the trouble starts between Oberon (King of the Fairies) and his wife Titania. They are fighting over a changeling, which Oberon wants in his retinue but which Titania refuses to give up as it belonged to one of her devotees. The squabble causes the fairy king and queen to separate. In Athens, the problems abound as well: two young lovers, Hermia and Lysander, are fleeing Athens because of Egeus (Hermia’s father), who has refused to assent to their marriage (Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius). Hermia does not wish to wed Demetrius; Helena loves Demetrius; but Demetrius wants nothing to do with Helena (he has loved Helena once but now has eyes for Hermia). Demetrius follows after…...

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=midsummer&Scope=entire&pleasewait=1&msg=pl

Theseus reminds Hermia that the person she is, with her beauty as an asset that is so appreciated by Lysander, is because she is the product of her father. She is "but as a form in wax (Shakespeare online), a reproduction of her father, "By him imprinted within his power (Shakespeare online).
Johnnie Patricia Mobley resolves the conflict between the characters of Hermia and Helena (on whose behalf Oberon intercedes with his good intentions of administering the magic potion). Hermia and Lysander do this by sharing with Helena their plan to run away beyond the authority of Hermia's father so that they can be together (Mobley 16). This is Shakespeare's way of addressing the love triangle, which must have often come up in the lives of people whose marriages were arranged. It also looks at the solution for Hermia and Lysander, and Oberon's intervention gives the audience, and Hermia, time…...

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Reference List

Kehler, D. A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Essays, Routledge (1998), London,

UK.

Mobley, J.P. A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Facing Pages Translation Into

Contemporary English, Lorenz Educational Publishing (2000), Chicago, Il.