Transformation in a play allows characters to find themselves and covert the person they used to be into someone new. Through A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare portrays various transformations through the love and appearances of his characters. Shakespeare uses his inspiration of Ovid's Metamorphoses in his literary pieces (Whittemore, 1996). He illustrates this through poetic style of his plays. Transformation is displayed through the changes in love, bottom’s transformation and the idea that love has the ability to alter. Shakespeare anticipated displaying the importance of transformation in A Midsummer Nights Dream and how it can impact one’s desires and can be interpreted in a positive or negative manner. Once the reader has begun reading the story they know there are a human world and a fairy world. In the fairy world it is possible to magically make a physical transformation I see their knavery. Puck, a character that enjoys playing around with different magic and potions plays a joke on Bottom. He decided to turn his head into an ass because that is what he feels best represents Bottom. Bottom doesn’t understand why people are humoring him because he does not realize his face is an ass, “This is to make an ass of me, to fright me, if they could”. (III.i.130-31). He knows he is an idiot but he does not realize he is literally an ass; he is oblivious to the subject. This displays that transformation can go without notice as someone changes. Love transformation Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare displays various different kinds of transformations through love. The switching of admiration between characters and the ability love has to transform one can be observed through various aspects of this play. The l... ... middle of paper ... ... relationship will reunite. In conclusion, transformation allows for characters to develop and grow throughout the course of a story. Shakespeares use of transformation throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, concretes the idea that love and transformation can highly impact a person’s ability to make logical decisions. This is first displayed through the inability for Bottom to realize that he has been turned into a donkey. Moreover, love transforms throughout the play when Lysander and Demetrius change their feelings of admiration to the opposite woman they want to be with. Lastly, the ability that love has to transform is a reoccurring theme that is depicted through the characters blindness of the truth. Transformation is used throughout Shakespears A Midsummer Night’s Dream to display to the readers how the actors find themselves by finding the person they love.
In Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream he entices the reader using character development, imagery, and symbolism. These tools help make it a wonderful play for teens, teaching them what a well-written comedy looks like. As well as taking them into a story they won’t soon forget.
Every action made in A Midsummer Night’s Dream revolves around the idea of love. It is a concept which few people can understand because of the extremity a person can go through to go after their love. “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends.” Lovers see the world in a way which everyday people cannot comprehend. The idea of love leads to them making irrational choices which may seem
Fairies, mortals, magic, love, and hate all intertwine to make A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare a very enchanting tale, that takes the reader on a truly dream-like adventure. The action takes place in Athens, Greece in ancient times, but has the atmosphere of a land of fantasy and illusion which could be anywhere. The mischievousness and the emotions exhibited by characters in the play, along with their attempts to double-cross destiny, not only make the tale entertaining, but also help solidify one of the play’s major themes; that true love and it’s cleverly disguised counterparts can drive beings to do seemingly irrational things.
Love is a powerful emotion, capable of turning reasonable people into fools. Out of love, ridiculous emotions arise, like jealousy and desperation. Love can shield us from the truth, narrowing a perspective to solely what the lover wants to see. Though beautiful and inspiring when requited, a love unreturned can be devastating and maddening. In his play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare comically explores the flaws and suffering of lovers. Four young Athenians: Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena, are confronted by love’s challenge, one that becomes increasingly difficult with the interference of the fairy world. Through specific word choice and word order, a struggle between lovers is revealed throughout the play. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses descriptive diction to emphasize the impact love has on reality and one’s own rationality, and how society’s desperate pursuit to find love can turn even strong individuals into fools.
The overriding theme of the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare deals with the nature of love. Though true love seems to be held up as an ideal, false love is mostly what we are shown. Underneath his frantic comedy, Shakespeare seems to be asking the questions all lovers ask in the midst of their confusion: How do we know when love is real? How can we trust ourselves that love is real when we are so easily swayed by passion and romantic conventions? Some readers may sense bitterness behind the comedy, but will probably also recognize the truth behind Shakespeare's satire. Often, love leads us down blind alleys and makes us do things we regret later. The lovers within the scene, especially the men, are made to seem rather shallow. They change the objects of their affections, all the time swearing eternal love to one or the other. In this scene Shakespeare presents the idea that both false love and true love can prevail..
The Theme of Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare In the play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ many aspects of love are explored. In this essay I will be exploring how Shakespeare conveys the theme of love including illusion, confusion, escape, harmony and lust. Historically, it has been suggested that ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was written for a wedding, signifying the importance of love in this play, however there is no real evidence to prove this myth. Rather, the Lord Chamberlain’s men performed ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ on the London stage.
At the beginning of Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick were known to be constantly bickering and using their wit to one-up the other in their arguments. As the story developed, Beatrice’s and Benedick’s friends separately convinced the two that they were in love with the other. This character development represents and embodies the idea of a metamorphosis due to the progression of their relationship. Beatrice’s and Benedick’s metamorphosis affects Beatrice’s ability to open up to someone and Benedick’s recent somewhat complacent tone while talking to others rather than his usual, sarcastic self.
Love can be quite chaotic at times. As much as poets and songwriters promote the idea of idyllic romantic love, the experience in reality is often fraught with emotional turmoil. When people are in love, they tend to make poor decisions, from disobeying authority figures to making rash, poorly thought-out choices. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses various motifs to illustrate how love, irrationality, and disobedience are thematically linked to disorder.
The definition of a transformation is a dramatic change in form or appearance in someone. Shakespeare displayed many transformations throughout his play of various characters, however, Kate the main character, hard her transformation highlighted the most. She started out as a wild and disobedient character and developed into a mild mannered wife. Kate proves that no matter how rough a person may appear to be or act, they always have the potential to transform for the better.
Love plays a very significant role in this Shakespearian comedy, as it is the driving force of the play: Hermia and Lysander’s forbidden love and their choice to flee Athens is what sets the plot into motion. Love is also what drives many of the characters, and through readers’ perspectives, their actions may seem strange, even comical to us: from Helena pursuing Demetrius and risking her reputation, to fairy queen Titania falling in love with Bottom. However, all these things are done out of love. In conclusion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream displays the blindness of love and how it greatly contradicts with reason.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most popular and frequently performed comical plays (Berardinelli). The play transformed into a cinematic production by Michael Hoffman has not changed in its basic plot and dialogue, but the setting and some character traits have. The play setting has been gracefully moved from 16th century Greece to 19th century Tuscany (Berardinelli). The addition of bicycles to the play affects the characters in that they no longer have to chase each other around the woods, but can take chase in a more efficient fashion. As far as characters are concerned, Demetrius is no longer the smug and somewhat rude character we find in act 1, scene 1 (Shakespeare pg. 6, line 91), but rather a seemingly indifferent gentleman placed in an unfortunate circumstance set to delay his wedding to Hermia. Perhaps the most noticeable change in the character set from stage to film occurs in the characters of Puck and Nick Bottom.
By allowing ourselves to posit that impossibilities are at play in our cosmos awakens us to the reality that our world is in fact enchanted. The most unbelievable part of Midsummer Night 's Dream Is not Bottom 's transformation: We laugh and agree to suspend our disbelief of the cockeyed imbalance there . But it is this absurdity that stretches our minds into readiness for the real climax of the story; its resolution. Shakespeare uses our enjoyment in imagining the fanciful to overcome our incredulity over the fortunate. Is it not easier for us to imagine the catastrophic argument of Oberon and titania with all its aftermath, than credit their sudden revival of romance? We are readier for a man to have an ass 's head than a party where every member is content. Because Comedy IS fantasy, it depends on the fantastic. When the plot is itself too good to be true we are distracted by the admittedly unrealistic play of Puck and
King Lear is a Shakespearian tragedy revolving largely around one central theme, personal transformation. Shakespeare shows in King Lear that the main characters of the play experience a transformative phase, where they are greatly changed through their suffering. Through the course of the play Lear is the most transformed of all the characters. He goes through seven major stages of transformation on his way to becoming an omniscient character: resentment, regret, recognition, acceptance and admittance, guilt, redemption, and optimism. Shakespeare identifies King Lear as a contemptuous human being who is purified through his suffering into some sort of god.
The contrasted humor is clearly shown as Titania weaves flowers into the hair of Bottom’s donkey-like head. Titania is a beautiful and delicate creature, while Bottom is completely grotesque. Magic creates an unreal image of Bottom, which in turn creates a comical contrast between Bottom and Titania. As part of the already comical sub-plot, Bottom’s altering through magic adds even more humor to the overall play. Next, the misuse of magic causes conflict among the four Athenian lovers.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often read as a dramatization of the incompatibility of “reason and love” (III.i. 127), yet many critics pay little attention to how Shakespeare manages to draw his audience into meditating on these notions independently (Burke 116). The play is as much about the conflict between passion and reason concerning love, as it is a warning against attempting to understand love rationally. Similarly, trying to understand the play by reason alone results in an impoverished reading of the play as a whole – it is much better suited to the kind of emotive, arbitrary understanding that is characteristic of dreams. Puck apologises directly to us, the audience, in case the play “offend[s]” us, but the primary offence we can take from it is to our rational capacity to understand the narrative, which takes place in a world of inverses and contrasts. The fantastical woods is contrasted to the order of the Athenian law, and Elizabethan values of the time are polarised throughout the narrative, such as Helena’s feeling ugly even though she is tall and fair. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is thus not solely a comedic meditation on the nature of the origin or meaning of love, it also cautions against trying to rationalise the message of the play. Puck, who by his very nature cannot exist in rational society, propels the action of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He is a manifestation of mischief and the unpredictability of nature, which governs not only the fantastical woods outside of Athens, but also the Athenians themselves when it comes to love. Yet, it is Puck, and thus nature, which rectifies the imbalance of the lovers in the beginning of the play. Rationalising, o...