Station Eleven In A Midsummer Night's Dream

1147 Words3 Pages

One of the most significant aspects of Station Eleven is the notion that audiences have a great desire to watch William Shakespeare’s plays. Importantly, Station Eleven centers on a group of traveling actors who perform plays at the audience’s requests. The most compelling feature the audiences want in the play is excellence. Understanding why the audiences call for Shakespeare in order to deliver excellence is vital. Examining and analyzing one of William Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will reveal the reasons why Shakespeare’s work is considered highly skilled and excellent. Significantly, two features of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that are worth examining are his cleverness with language and his appeal to multiple …show more content…

This is ultimately demonstrated in Shakespeare’s use of wit, barbed puns, and elaborate metaphors. Importantly, Shakespeare’s use of wit, barbed puns, and elaborate metaphors is best demonstrated in the characters Lysander and Hermia. Both of these characters incorporate snappy wordplay and clever banter in their dialogue. For example, in Act II, ii, 51-58, both characters banter back and forth about where they are sleeping. Both meanings of the verb ‘to lie’ are defined and discussed at length. Importantly, this reveals Shakespeare’s clever use of language because he is able to successfully keep this particular play lighthearted and fun. The use of wit, puns, and metaphors are not only revealing of his great writing talent, but of his ability to make the audience laugh. Puns and witty language are recognized in all groups, making this play highly transferrable to all audiences across all demographics. His cleverness with language is also shown when Demetrius uses cliched imagery in order to compare Helena’s features to a goddess. According to the play, “O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!/To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?” (III, ii, 137-38). Importantly, this shows Shakespeare’s distinct ability to write in such a way that audiences can recognize his great gift at writing. By having Demetrius focus solely on Helena’s physical beauty and …show more content…

As illuminated, audiences wanted to watch excellence, and this usually meant that the actors would act out Shakespeare’s works. Importantly, understanding why William Shakespeare’s work is considered excellent is pertinent. Analyzing and examining A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare ultimately revealed the reasons why audiences love Shakespeare’s plays and writing. Two features of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that are considered excellent are his cleverness with language and his appeal to multiple audiences including the groundlings, the middle class, and the aristocrats. Through the use of wit, barbed puns, and elaborate metaphors, Shakespeare demonstrated his excellent writing skills. His use of characterization and plot also demonstrated how Shakespeare included snappy wordplay and witty banter in order to entertain audiences. Moreover, this play can be considered excellent because nearly everyone enjoys Shakespeare’s work. His distinct and unique ability to cater to different audiences makes Shakespeare one of the greatest writers in human history. In this way, nearly everyone enjoys his plays, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because audiences can relate to the plot, characters, situations. Moreover, audiences are all entertained by his clever use of language. This illuminates the fact that William

Open Document