Preview

How Does Shakespeare Use Magic In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
807 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does Shakespeare Use Magic In A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream , William Shakespeare's most popular comedy, portrays the adventure of four young Athenian lovers and a group of mechanicals, and their interactions with woodland fairies through the woods. Shakespeare takes this play and portrays various themes, the most notable being magic which is present throughout whether it's visible or not to the reader's eye. The magic in this play is a force that not only causes conflict but, also resolves it.
It is demonstrated throughout the play, that the central aspect is the source of power that motivates, from the inside, magic .Shakespeare uses magic to embody the supernatural power of love by using the romantic realm of lovers and also of words that captivate the reader every time they read it. He attributes this power to the words, through which human beings can be incited to act, in …show more content…
The spell seems to be addressing all the evils of the woods and tries to ward them off through its words.
Shakespeare weaves an ongoing idea all through the vast majority of his comedies, in particular the subject of fantasy versus reality. His utilization of two distinct settings: one implying the cruel, colorless world of duty or commitment , and the other a world of illusion where anything is possible, a place where all problems are magically settled. Taking place, in a forest outside Athens, the landscape is a pastoral trope used in Shakespearean plays, loaded with magic. Where he offers a natural world that is somewhat other-worldly. As it is a place of nature which is towards the side of fantasy , inhabited by fairies along with flora and fauna who are perceived as superhuman. Its human guests leave everlastingly changed by their transgression of its borders, straddling a limit between the natural world and the magical
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Snout A Midsummer Night's Dream Analysis
    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Snout A Midsummer Night's Dream Analysis

    Shakespeare’s most popular play, A Midsummer Night’s dream, is a romantic comedy that features young lovers that fall deeply in and out of love in a brief period of time. This play is unique because it demonstrates tragedy and comedy at the same time. The comedy not only provides amusement and laughter but also helps ease tension between characters. In the play, A “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, William Shakespeare produces a comedy through foolish characters and mistaken identities.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    How Does Shakespeare Use Metaphors In A Midsummer Night's Dream
    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages

    How Does Shakespeare Use Metaphors In A Midsummer Night's Dream

    As the reader follows the Athenian lovers and the fairies on their journeys, various messages are conveyed through symbols and metaphors. The language and messages evokes vivid images in the reader's head. The moon is compared to a woman who is capable of controlling time, controlling the seas, crying, and being fruitless. Flowers are symbols of romance, raw human emotions, and fairy magic. The flowers can metaphorically make people feel compelled to fall in love and are also capable of crying and feeling shame in this play. Cupid is portrayed as a controller of love. Just like love, Cupid is a young boy who is irrational. He is a child with a blindfold and wings, ready to take aim randomly, causing people to be afflicted with love. The moon, flowers, and Cupid are the main themes of metaphors presented in A Midsummer Night's Dream by William…

    • 1711 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Magic In A Midsummer Night's Dream
    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Magic In A Midsummer Night's Dream

    In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare is telling the readers that, love needs no reason to exist; it defies logic and ignores all circumstances. This compelling message is very thoroughly communicated with the connection of the fantasy world and reality. The connection occurs in a forest, where each character of significance is, at one point, present. Here, the characters experience unforeseen events, as a result of the debatable use of magic, from those in power. However, despite the extreme unusualness and complications, the characters challenge the circumstances, and persist in loving the one they feel closest to. In this play, this situation is best represented by three significant relationships. The first exists between a lover and her hater, the next involves a young and rebellious couple, and the last concerns an ill-fated mechanical and the queen of the fairies.…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Unchecked Power in Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear
    • 1448 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Unchecked Power in Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear

    In many of the plays by William Shakespeare, the central character goes through internal and external changes that ultimately shake their foundations to the core. Numerous theories have been put forth to explain the sequence of tragedies Shakespeare wrote during this period by linking it to some experience of melancholy, anger, despair, and the antagonist 's ultimate fall from grace in their lust for power. But such theories overlook the fact that it is in this very same period and in the same tragic works that portray the heights to which human nature can rise and fall in its purest and noblest, if not happiest terms. Surely the creation of so much light alongside the darkness and the perfection of the artistic medium through which Shakespeare gives them expression argues against the idea that the greedy side of human nature is his chief concern. His efforts to portray human life in its rarest form and not only the dark depths, but also the treasure rooms of our being. He tries to pierce beneath the superficial motives and forces of surface behavior, social, and cultural expressions and to the deeper levels of individual character and human nature. Shakespeare then places these aspects of human existence in their true relation to the wider field of universal life. In relation to the tragic hero, there are many similarities between the tragic heroes in Macbeth and King Lear. However, the differences between the two outline the re-occurring themes in both plays. In Shakespeare 's plays the central characters ' own weaknesses and lust for power lead to corruption. The unchecked power in Shakespeare 's Macbeth and King Lear ultimately leads to corruption, tragedy, and the hero 's fall from grace.…

    • 1448 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Patriarchy In A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay
    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Patriarchy In A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare that takes place in Athens, Greece and in the forest where chaos unfolds on four lovers: Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. In these relationships the men are in power, belittling the women. Also, in the forest chaos happens between the fairies, King Oberon and Queen Titania, because he puts a potion on her and other in which the men are in control of the society they are in. An example of patriarchy is in the relationships between Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and Helena when the men take control. Throughout the play the men have power over the women, as…

    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Figurative Language in Romeo and Juliet
    • 1470 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Figurative Language in Romeo and Juliet

    Initially, similes and metaphors subsist throughout Shakespeare’s tragic play due to his unprecedented ability to formulate effectual direct comparisons, usually concerning love and beauty. “As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so…

    • 1470 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    ‘Comedy, while delights in the events of a topsy-turvy world, is ultimately conservative’ To what extent is this true for the Shakespearean comedy you have studied?
    • 1483 Words
    • 6 Pages

    ‘Comedy, while delights in the events of a topsy-turvy world, is ultimately conservative’ To what extent is this true for the Shakespearean comedy you have studied?

    Comedy in A Midsummer Night's Dream is confined to the conservative oppression of women and contrived by the ironic licensed anarchist figure of Puck which while delights us with donkey kisses and lovers' mishaps, are neatly portioned within a common structure of society, agreeing with the hypothesis. The play is driven by a logical rhythm of conflict to harmony and its comedy remains in the temporary middle state of the 'Green World' preventing chaos from ensuing outside of these boundaries and therefore conserving it to rules and regulations. However, Shakespeare also utilises this simple structure in order for the audience to doubt its seemingly seamless ending as its accessibility allows us to question the events and attitudes of the play, using comedy as a tool to provoke radical thought. The irrational forest trope and lower class fool stereotype appear to be unsurprising but these conservative ideas are extended in giving them crucial roles in the unfolding of events and showing truth between the hypocrisy of others, rather than continuing the trope and just merely being a simple comedic release for the audience. Therefore, comedy's universality allows Shakespeare to convey profound ideas effectively, using the topsy-turvy world to provoke questions in the audience, making 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' truly radical.…

    • 1483 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Man on Top Sexuality and Male Dominance in William Shakespeare’s a Midsummer Night's Dream Essay Example
    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Man on Top Sexuality and Male Dominance in William Shakespeare’s a Midsummer Night's Dream Essay Example

    While I would not agree with some of Garner’s theories in regards to A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garner is correct in the fact that more than any of Shakespeare's comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream serves the purpose, willingly or otherwise, of promoting Heterosexual values, as well as the idea that a woman’s total existence is controlled by men, and finally that the male characters feel the need to dominate women in order to achieve what they want.…

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    How Does Shakespeare Use Imagery In A Midsummer Night's Dream
    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages

    How Does Shakespeare Use Imagery In A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Shakespeare reveals the theme love, real or fake, throughout the play using the main four characters: Hermia,…

    • 899 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Midsummer Night's Dream Motif
    • 1258 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Midsummer Night's Dream Motif

    In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare brilliantly uses the night as a motif which plays a valuable role in the play. He combines this motif with the related symbols of the play to demonstrate the power of night and its correlation with love and vision. He uses symbolism and imagery to develop the motif and makes extensive use of the night forest which, in part, helps the situation of the four young lovers, one of the main plots of the play.…

    • 1258 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    A Midsummer Night's Dream - Bottom and Puck. Who is the protagonist?
    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages

    A Midsummer Night's Dream - Bottom and Puck. Who is the protagonist?

    Though Bottom often steals the show in performance, Puck is usually considered the most important character in A Midsummer Night’s dream.…

    • 1524 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Imaginative Journeys
    • 1188 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Imaginative Journeys

    As the characters each undertake their individual journeys of enlightenment and self-discovery, the reader too, is led into Shakespeare’s magical…

    • 1188 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Manipulation Of Love And
    • 971 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Manipulation Of Love And

    A Midsummer Night's Dream is a tale involving the manipulation of love and the way love works itself out between various sets of people. It tells the story of characters that encounter chaotic situations of real love and also love that was controlled for the benefit of others. The characters caught up in the "love scandal"� are Oberon, Titania, Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena. All these characters were involved in the different triangles of love presented in the story. The main theme in A Midsummer Nights Dream is the manipulation of love and how occasionally it takes time get the path of love on the right track.…

    • 971 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Shakespeare
    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Shakespeare

    Gender roles and relationships have been among the most commonly explored themes in literature for several centuries. William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the earlier examples of this, exploring the malleable nature of these roles and relationships. The play starts in ancient Athens which represents a perfect example of a patriarchal society. However, shortly afterwards, the action is moved to the forest where fairies and magic begin to interfere in the traditional order of Athenian society. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the attempts of men to control women drive the action of the play and gender roles and relationships are changed as magic becomes involved. Furthermore, the dreamlike feeling of the main action of the play is enhanced by a lack of permanent change in the status quo.…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Three Coinciding Worlds of Midsummer Night's Dream
    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Three Coinciding Worlds of Midsummer Night's Dream

    “If we wanted to think about the device in psychological terms, we could see the nested worlds, and double characters as representing the conscious (Theseus and the court), the unconscious (Oberon and the fairies), and the world of art, dream, and fantasy (Peter Quince and the “actors”; “Bottom’s Dream”) that mediates between them.” – Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All, 221-222…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics