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

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The diarist Samuel Pepys wasn’t a fan of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Seeing a performance of the play in 1662, he wrote in his diary that it was ‘the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life’ (though he adds that he liked the dancing, as well as the ‘handsome women’ he saw, ‘which was all my pleasure’).

Despite Pepys’ lack of enthusiasm (for the play itself, anyway), A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains one of Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular comedies. Before we offer some analysis of this play of magic and romance, it might be worth recapping the plot.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream : short plot summary

Theseus, the Duke of Athens, is getting ready to marry Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, the race of female warriors from Greek mythology. Meanwhile, another planned marriage, between Hermia and Demetrius has been upset by the fact that another man, Lysander, has supposedly bewitched Hermia into loving him instead of her betrothed. Because Hermia’s father, Egeus, wants his daughter to marry Demetrius, Theseus (as Duke) orders Hermia to marry Demetrius or else enter a nunnery and take no husband.

Faced with this rather unappealing choice, Hermia decides to elope with her beloved, Lysander. Hermia confides this plan to her friend Helena, but Helena blabs it to Demetrius (whom Helena wants to marry herself).

Meanwhile, a group of manual workers, each with their own trade (Nick Bottom the weaver, Peter Quince the carpenter, Francis Flute the bellows-mender, etc.), meet to rehearse a play, based on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Greek mythology, which they will be performing as the entertainment at Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Oberon, King of the Fairies, tasks the mischievous sprite, Puck or Robin Goodfellow, to go and find the juice of a magic plant which has a peculiar quality: when sprinkled on the eyes of a sleeping person, they will wake up and fall for the first person they see.

Oberon, to convince his wife, Queen Titania to dote on their changeling child, sprinkles the juice on her eyes. Oberon tells Puck to do the same to Demetrius’ eyes so he will wake up and fall for Helena rather than Hermia. However, Puck accidentally sprinkles the plant on the wrong man, administering it to Lysander’s eyes instead of Demetrius’!

To amuse himself, Puck uses his magic to give Bottom the weaver an ass’s head in place of his human head, and when Titania wakes up she sees him and dotes on him, sending for her fairy attendants (Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mustardseed, and Moth) to wait upon Bottom. Oberon has tried to correct Puck’s mix-up with Demetrius and Lysander by sprinkling Demetrius’ eyes with the magic juice, with the result that both men now love the same woman: Helena!

They all, thankfully, fall asleep, and while they snooze, Oberon uses his fairy magic to release them all from their various love-spells, and everyone ends up fancying the right person: Lysander is with Hermia, Demetrius with Helena, and Bottom has his proper head back. They all go to Athens for the royal wedding, and the workers perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream : analysis

As Harold Bloom pointed out in Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human , four worlds essentially come together and interact with each other in A Midsummer Night’s Dream : the world of classical myth (represented by Theseus and Hippolyta), the world of ‘modern’ lovers (Helena, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander), the fairy world (Oberon, Titania, and Puck), and the rustic world of ‘mechanicals’ or labourers (Bottom, Quince, and the others).

But instead of these four worlds being kept distinct, the boundaries between them are transgressed, most famously when Titania, the Fairy Queen (perhaps recalling Queen Elizabeth I herself, whom Edmund Spenser had recently immortalised as such in his 1590s poem The Faerie Queene ) falls for the lowly Bottom, whose head has been replaced by that of an ass.

In Shakespeare’s Language , Frank Kermode analysed A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the comic counterpart to the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet ; both plays date from the mid-1590s, and it may be that Shakespeare intentionally conceived of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a sort of inverse of the other play about ‘the course of true love’ (although that quotation comes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream , it is in Romeo and Juliet that the course of true love fails to run smooth; all is worked out in the end in the Dream ).

Kermode also notes how many eyes there are in A Midsummer Night’s Dream : the words ‘eye’ and ‘eyes’ recur multiple times, and the gulf between illusion and reality is a key theme in the play. Our eyes can trick or deceive us; we can ‘dote’ on someone but that is not the same as loving them in a deeper and more long-lasting way; we create fantasies or, if you will, ‘dreams’ of our lovers which they can never live up to, and which put us at risk of a rude awakening further down the line.

Helena’s famously line, ‘Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind’, sums up the main ‘message’ of the play: that wanton love (lust, passing desire) is not true love, which is about more than superficial attraction or ‘looks’. The fact that the juice which makes people fall in ‘love’ with the next person they see when they wake up is from a flower called ‘love-in-idleness’ is a clue: for ‘idleness’ here, Kermode directs us to ‘wantonness’, which is what ‘idleness’ means in this connection.

From this, we might conclude that A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents the triumph of rational, lasting love over the pleasures of illusory love of attraction. But this overlooks the extent to which Shakespeare, the man of the theatre, loved illusion, and repeatedly vaunted its virtues in his work.

And Bottom’s transformation, whereby he ends up with the head of an ass, complicates any reductive analysis of the play which sees it as calling illusory love ‘bad’ and the other kind ‘good’.

As so often in the work of Shakespeare, this simplistic interpretation just won’t stand up. Bottom’s ‘rare vision’ of Titania invites our laughter, but it is sympathetic laughter: there is a sense that he has been emotionally as well as physically transformed by the night’s events. For Bloom, Bottom, the humble weaver, is the key to the play, and more than just a bit of rustic comic relief.

But Bloom’s assertion that ‘love at first sight, exalted in Romeo and Juliet , is pictured here as calamity’, is only partially true. Whilst the couples ultimately get paired off as we expect them to, Titania and Bottom’s moment together transcends comedic farce, and suggests that they have both been forever altered by the experience – not least because they don’t usually come into contact with each other (workman and queen, mortal and fairy).

For one, it is while she is under the spell of Bottom’s … unconventional looks that Titania agrees to give up the changeling boy to her husband, who wants to make the child his page.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains a popular play, and is often staged. In 1911, Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged a celebrated production which included live rabbits on stage. Indeed, there have been a number of ambitious productions of the play: Charles Kean’s 1856 production at the Princess’s Theatre featured 90 tutu-wearing sprites as part of the finale. Also appearing in the show was an eight-year-old Ellen Terry, playing the role of Puck.

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3 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Great reminder of a great play (sorry Pepys)! Another interesting note about how the 4 worlds connect and disconnect. As I recall, Demetrius never gets the juice removed and hence stays in love with Helena. If so, the enchantment that Demetrius carries is the lynchpin that holds the worlds — and the happy ending — together. The world of imagination may seem like an escape from the world of reality, but as often happens in Shakespeare, that “frivolous” world of imagination effects a crucial transformation of reality.

also hear BBC ‘In their Time’ (Bragg) discussion on ’12th Night’- 40 minutes of interesting discussion by three experts.

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Essay Questions, Thesis Statements and Ideas for A Midsummer Night's Dream

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

21 August 2018

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15 A Midsummer Night’s Dream critical thinking essay question cards, indicative content and marking sheets. Best for A Level or extending GCSE students, or any curriculum ages 14+. All resources are printable and editable. Each has a challenging and engaging central essay question, with the remainder of the page given over to a number of thought provoking and sophisticated thesis statements or ideas which students can extend to form a complete essay. Questions focus on: love, power, characterization, the influence of setting, narrative methods, justice and morality, reality and illusion, the conventions of Shakespearen comedy, argument and conflict, plays and acting roles, rebellion and dissent, transformation and personal identity, the value a society places on free will, the consequences of argument and conflict, the interplay of states of order and chaos. Essay focuses are concerned with enabling comment on the human condition and the structures of the world around us. Samuel Pepys’ Review Essay Task: a highly engaging essay task asking students to respond to a 17th century negative review of the play. The task is presented in a 4 page hand out which provides step by step tuition in how to form sophisticated, convincing response ideas, source textual evidence and write engaging, analytical and perceptive paragraphs. An additional 2 page resource consists of exemplar paragraphs and a short essay are provided with a list of useful vocabulary and perceptive ideas for students to adapt and use. This is available in 2 alternative formats for teacher choice. A graphic organiser to assist students in forming specific, complex ideas is included as are two Marking Rubrics.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

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

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play about love. All of its action—from the escapades of Lysander , Demetrius , Hermia , and Helena in the forest, to the argument between Oberon and Titania , to the play about two lovelorn youths that Bottom and his friends perform at Duke Theseus's marriage to Hippolyta—are motivated by love. But A Midsummer Night's Dream is not a romance, in which the audience gets caught up in a passionate love affair between two characters. It's a comedy, and because it's clear from the outset that it's a comedy and that all will turn out happily, rather than try to overcome the audience with the exquisite and overwhelming passion of love, A Midsummer Night's Dream invites the audience to laugh at the way the passion of love can make people blind, foolish, inconstant, and desperate. At various times, the power and passion of love threatens to destroy friendships, turn men against men and women against women, and through the argument between Oberon and Titania throws nature itself into turmoil.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream , love is a force that characters cannot control, a point amplified by workings of the love potion, which literally makes people slaves to love. And yet, A Midsummer Night's Dream ends happily, with three marriages blessed by the reconciled fairy King and Queen. So even as A Midsummer Night's Dream makes fun of love's effects on both men and women and points out that when it comes to love there's nothing really new to say, its happy ending reaffirms loves importance, beauty, and timeless relevance.

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THESIS STATEMENT In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare modeled the relationships between Hermia and Egeus, Titania and Oberon, and Theseus and Hippolyta after the Elizabethan hierarchy, yet challenged the traditional gender roles through his dominant female characters. PURPOSE STATEMENT Through critical analysis, historical reference, and literary interpretation, a comparative study between the Elizabethan era and A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be presented to express Shakespeare’s literary objection to the tradition male hierarchy. INTRODUCTION Representing a large assemblage of social classes, the Elizabethan audience shaped the personalities and ideologies of Shakespeare’s characters. By capturing the human condition of his contemporaries, Shakespeare founded the beliefs and tendencies of his characters on the common man in England. “The synthesizing impulse …show more content…

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Social Order Paradox In Twelfth Night

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Throughout history, men have always dominated. They never let a woman rise to power or have the same rights. This sexism has been ingrained in society for thousands of years, so much so that it has defined some of the most famous works of literature, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This play was written during the Elizabethan Era, an era in which a woman had all the power imaginable (Queen Elizabeth), and yet, women were still severely discriminated against. Women had no say whatsoever in their society; they were not allowed to vote and they had very few legal rights (Papp, Joseph, Kirkland).

Lysander And Hermia's Relationship

Lysander’s unbridled love for Hermia shows obvious respect towards females, making him out to be one of the few characters admired by the audience. In our scene, Lysander’s subtext is an excited yet mannerly teenager who fears Theseus yet still stands up for himself and Hermia. When he saw that his relationship was being threatened he stopped cowering and pushed Egeus and Demetrius away pleading his case to Theseus. Hermia, who has a similar definition of love, trusts the emotion and thinks of it as a driving force in her life. When given the choice between spending the rest of her life as a nun and being forced into a loveless marriage, she decides that staying perpetually celibate would be the superior choice: “‘So will I grow, so live, so die my lord, ere I will yield my virgin patent up unto his lordship, whose unwishèd yoke my soul consents not to give sovereignty’”

Macbeth And Medea Analysis

Paul Vu Dr. Elizabeth C. Ramírez THTR 475A.03 2 May 2017 Macbeth and Medea: Breaking Expectations Macbeth by William Shakespeare and Medea by Euripides are known for their powerful critiques on the social expectations of women. Women during the time of Elizabethan and Greek theatre were often stereotyped and considered the weaker sex. Men were depicted as strong individuals who supported and protected women. However, both Shakespeare and Euripides broke expectations by portraying strong and iconic female characters in their respective plays. The idea of a strong female character was often unheard of during the time of Elizabethan and Greek Theatre.

Analysis Of Lysistrata By Aristophanes

Introduction The purpose of this essay is to investigate the women’s role in Classical Greece society and literature (5th/4th century b.C.). Therefore, I decided to discuss and analyse one of the most controversial comedies of that time, “Lysistrata” by Aristophanes. This text shows how women, sick of their submissive and powerless position in the political scenario of Athens and Sparta, come on the scene and, through a smart stratagem, achieve their expected result.

Justice In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Toba Beta once said: "“Justice could be as blind as love.”   Shakespeare 's play A Midsummer Night 's Dream captures the blind bias of both love and justice.   Egeus, a respected nobleman in Athens, arranged for his daughter, Hermia, to marry nobleman Demetrius.   Egeus tells his daughter that she must obey his wishes: if she does not, she can either choose to become a nun, or die.   Hermia, much to her father 's dismay, is deeply in a mutual love with a different nobleman, Lysander.

Examples Of Patriarchy In The Odyssey

To accomplish this analyzation I have structured this paper into an intro paragraph, four body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. The first body paragraph explains how Penelope’s forced marriage with Odysseus supports the patriarchy. The second paragraph analyzes Penelope’s character, and how the story diminishes her character to make men seem more powerful. The third paragraph dives into the relationship with the suitors and Penelope. I analyze how Penelope uses her situation to her advantage, and how that undermines the patriarchy.

Class System In Twelfth Night

The rigid class system in Middle Age Europe was a primary factor that determined the course of events. In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, there are underlying issues throughout the plot involving classes of the characters, and their roles within their class. While for the time period, it was common for those in lower classes to be looked down upon, Shakespeare uses many mediums to slyly challenge this idea. Throughout the play, Shakespeare makes the class differences obvious, yet creates certain character dynamics which challenge preconceptions. Twelfth Night is centered around a distinct and rigid class system, yet Shakespeare comments on its negative impacts, and yearns for a more fluid system, in order to create a more just and fair world.

How Is Hippolyta Portrayed In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream the sexes are portrayed in many different ways through many different characters. Though the sexes are portrayed in many different ways, there is one view that is repeated twice. This view is that of a dominant male figure. This view is showed through the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta and also through the characters of Hermia and Egeus. Both of these relationships are dynamic, yet they are both still based on the idea of a dominant male figure.

Men And Women In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Today, men and women have equal rights, but that does not mean life has always been simple for both genders. When Shakespeare writes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are roles, behaviors, and expectations for the dominant men and submissive women. This literature portrays the major changes in the lives of both sexes throughout the years, which shows the advances women gain with time. The gender issue of men being dominant and women being submissive used in the drama, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, shows the differences in the roles, behaviors, and expectations appropriate for each gender and is an example of an outdated stereotype.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Philosophical Analysis

Philosophical approach on the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream Submitted to: Prof. Eliezer V. David Submitted by: Jan MarveManaligod KristianDacara Bryan RonhellTangonan MarckRacell Diego BSME-2C Philosophy is the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience. In every story there is a philosophy. It is the way of the author to show the moral lesson of the play.

Patriarchy In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the female characters' desire to question the law of Athens and select their own husbands drives most of the conflict in the play. In a way, Hermia, Helena, and Titania are the protagonists of the play because each of their desires are being thwarted by the patriarchal structure of the society in which they live. The way the women try to overcome such hurdles does not sit well with the men. Accordingly, the men get on edge when their patriarchy is disrupted, so they make strict laws to try and keep the women under their control.

How Did Shakespeare Influence Elizabethan Theatre

In this essay I will discuss the entire life of William Shakespeare, what it was influenced by in terms of spirituality, ideal and social force behind his work (arts). Further, the challenges he faced both personally and professionally in pursuing social relevance in his plays and the historical significance portrayed in his whole work. Also, I will discuss the development and times of the Elizabethan theatre with the Elizabethan ideal of the core and how Shakespeare was influential in that period. Lastly I will reflect on the elements of Macbeth as a genre to illustrate my research findings.

More about Midsummer Night's Dream Thesis

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What Is The Thesis Statement Of A Midsummer Night's Dream

Thesis: In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare demonstrates two opposite worlds: one is world of law, rules and strict hierarchy and another is world of freedom, magic, lawlessness and disorder - which world is correct one? Introduction Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the most popular play. The comedy is famous with fancy weave motifs of ancient mythology, literature and English folklore. It gives the impression of a completely unique combination of real and fantastic, funny and serious, poetry and humor. In this play there are two main lines – real and fantastic. Classical ideals are valued above contemporary folk narratives. Two opposite words in Shakespeare’s play One world is world of order, law and hierarch. …show more content…

Despite magic and freedom there is also a hierarchy commitment, Puck serves to Oberon, Fairies serves to Titania. Oberon used the magic and deception to obtain desired. But he doesn’t like the results of misunderstood between lovers caused with magic, he orders Puck to prevent fight between Lysander and Demetrius “and all things shall be peace”. Classical ideals in the contemporary world Classical ideals of behavior between man and woman are presented in the play. Also Theseus seems to be noble and smart ruler, who cares about his nationals. Our modern world is parallel in some points to the world of Theseus and Hippolyta – the rules of behavior for man and woman, “But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy Lie further off; in human modesty, Such separation as may well be said Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid ”. Female tolerance can be noticed in the next lines, “Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it, Though I alone do feel the injury”. Classical ideals are still appreciated even in the contemporary world.

Themes, Motifs and Symbols in A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay

Titania is uncertain whether her vision is a dream or reality, because dreams are soon

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare Essay

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A Misummer Night’s Dream is a comedy play written by William Shakespeare. In this play there are multiple themes however the most evident theme is love. Why is love an evident theme? It is an evident theme because the play commences with two Greek mythology characters─ the Duke of Athens, Theseus and Amazon queen Hippolita planning their marriage. However as Theseus plans his marriage he has to help Egeus persuade his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius. Unfortunately both the Duke and Egeus failed to persuade Hermia into marrying Demetrius so the fairies (another set of characters. The fairies in this play consisted of goddess of chastity and Queen of fairies, Titania and King of fairies Oberon and his assistance Robin Goodfellow) decide

Critique Of A Midsummer Night's Dream

If there was no such thing as sympathy, empathy, or love in our world, it would be a hard place to live. If there was no hard law or reason in our world, it would be a crazy place to live. Neither of these worlds would be anybody’s first choice as a home - it's just common sense take away either of these two fundamental aspects of life, and everything is immediately chaos. In fact, it is only in a world such as ours, where legal and human emotion work together, that we are happy. In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare recognizes this truth and uses the two settings to represent the city of Athens as law, order, civility, and judgment, while the woods represent chaos, incivility, dreams, and love.

Analysis A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare Essay

The story of A Midsummer Night's Dream was mainly about love and its abnormal dealings. In the play, Shakespeare tried to show that love is unpredictable, unreasonable, and at times is blind. The theme of love was constantly used during the play and basically everything that was said and done was related to the concept of love and its unpredictable ness. Shakespeare made all of the characters interact their lives to be based on each other’s. At first, everything was very confusing, and the characters were faced with many different problems. In the end, however, they were still able to persevere and win their true love, the love they were searching for in the first place.

Metatheatre in a Midsummer Night's Dream

Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while the story involving Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, Helena, Oberon and Titania is developing, the rustic gentlemen (Bottom and his friends) are shown rehearsing for a play that they will perform in honor of the upcoming wedding of Theseus (the Duke of Athens) and Hippolyta. The play, “Pyramus and Thisby,” is based on a story that was told by the ancient Roman writer Ovid and retold by Chaucer. The “Pyramus and Thisby” play is not performed until the fifth and final act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By then, as Barton points out, the major problems of Lysander, Demetrius and the rest have all been neatly resolved. As such, the “Pyramus and Thisby” play-within-a-play “seems, in effect, to take place beyond the normal, plot-defined boundaries of comedy” (Barton 110).

Hidden Meanings Within Shakespeare 's Midsummer Night 's Dream Essay

In many of Shakespeare’s literary works one can find multiple themes that reflect or question our reality. He accomplishes this by using figurative language such as metaphors and similes. Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream encompasses many themes and apply them to certain characters or through communication between multiple characters. Helena portrays themes of love, betrayal, jealousy, and gender norms in Midsummer Night’s Dream presenting them through her speech and behavior. She depicts the challenges of a woman and also the flaws of human nature. In Act 2 scene 1 and Act 3 scene 2 Helena uses a metaphor twice which emulates these themes presenting us a broader understanding of her representation within the play and the play as a whole. Following are lines from Helena.

The Irresistible Need for Control in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night’s Dream

Furthermore, the lines earlier shows Oberon’s plan to control and submit Titania to his will. His plan to make her fall in love with animals by using a potion indicates that he wants to embarrass Titania. He wants to use his power to manipulate her feelings. He craves the control that he did not have earlier in the play when Titania did what she wanted to do. Therefore, his desire to gain control results in the changing of Titania’s fate. Titania’s actions are based on Oberon’s power. Likewise, Oberon gains satisfaction by executing his plan which empowers him and gives authority. Further, not only does Oberon make plans to control Titania, but he also becomes the cause of the conflict among Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena. Oberon’s decision to meddle in their affairs directly impacts their fate as they become powerless over their situation. Oberon’s overwhelming sense of entitlement for utter control affects the events that transpire in their lives. Specifically, Oberon’s interference changes how two of the main characters, Lysander and Hermia interact with each other. Their mutual attraction to each other is altered as a result of Lysander’s will becoming influenced by Oberon. Thus, Lysander professes his love for Helena. Then, Hermia verbally attacks Helena:

Analysis Of ' A Midsummer Night 's Dream '

Love is a term used daily in one’s life. Many categorize love in many forms. These forms differ from one-another such as the difference between love for food and love for one’s spouse. However, in the play; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, love takes different forms than the ones experienced in reality. One can classify the different types of love used in this play into three different categories; true love, love produced by cupid’s flower, and the state of lust.

Analysis of A Midsummer Night´s Dream

And, indeed, it does. This is how he comes to hold Oberon’s trust during the play; his love and obedience for his king lead Oberon to choose Puck as his deputy in his plot against Titania. His loyalty are also intricately tied in with his playful nature. He tries not to do anything that would anger or disappoint his king. However, even his kind nature is tested by human antics. Puck does not have a very high opinion of the mortal lovers or of the arrogant Bottom. His famous quote “What fools these mortals be” (III.ii.115) indicates his feelings about the lovers. If Puck were less loving of his King, and more in favor of his own amusement, he very well might leave the lovers as they are in the middle of the play if only for the entertainment value. Puck tells Oberon “And so far am I glad it so did sort, as this their jangling I esteem a sport” (III.ii.352-353). It is likely that he would think the mixed up lovers to be grand entertainment and leave them the way they are for his enjoyment. If Puck were meaner, then he might change Bottom completely into an ass and leave him that way.

William Shakespeare 's A Midsummers Night 's Dream

Love is many things, and is also used as a reference to sight and vision such as blindness. It is much more than aesthetics and wields the power of sight, and can also cause chaos and destruction. Similarly, Shakespeare utilizes two types of blindness by love; the first being physical due to a love potion a fairy king, Oberon orders upon the humans in Shakespeare’s, A Midsummers Night’s Dream. The second, being metaphorical due to Antony’s immense amount of love towards Cleopatra, in which hinders his political motivation in Shakespeare’s, Antony and Cleopatra.

Examples Of Metaphors In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare’s usage of metaphor and simile in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is best understood as an attempt to provide some useful context for relationships and emotions, most often love and friendship, or the lack thereof. One example of such a usage is in Act 3, Scene 2 of the play. Here, the two Athenian couples wake up in the forest and fall under the effects of the flower, thus confusing the romantic relationships between them. Hermia comes to find her Lysander has fallen for Helena. Hermia suspects that the two have both conspired against her in some cruel joke, and begins lashing out against Helena. She says “We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, / Have with our needles created both one flower, / Both one sampler sitting on one cushion, / Both warbling of one song, both in one key; / As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, / Had been incorporate. So we grew together, / Like a double cherry, seeming parted; / But yet a union in partition / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem: / So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; / Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, / Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.” (Shakespeare 2.3.206-13). Shakespeare writes this list of vibrant metaphors to establish the prior relationship between these two characters and to make it evident how affected Helena is by this unexpected turn of events, as well as to add a greater range of emotion to the comedy, thereby lending it more literary and popular appeal.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Literary Analysis

What literary criticism lens is most effective in creating meaning and entertainment throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has several characters involved in a love triangle. Many scenes in the story involves power being used or taken away and use of money. Throughout the play, readers and viewers experiences Hermia’s power is being taken away by her father, Eugues,which is her kindred, not letting her marry the man she truly loves,Lysander. Later throughout the story, Robin, character from the story contains a enthrall love juice that has power and makes another character from the story, Titania, fall in love with a donkey.The marxist literary criticism lens is the most effective in creating meaning and entertaining readers and viewers in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The supernatural world is rather distinct to that of the human world entrenched in societal standards and boundaries. Shakespeare’s play, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, explores this concept, particularly through the use of Puck. In agreement to Harold Bloom’s statement, the following essay will analyse how Puck is significant because, by being so disparate, he is able to show the limitations of the human. This will be done through, first, exploring a definition of the human in relation to the supernatural. Subsequently, the essay will use a Freudian lense to analyse the morality of Puck and, lastly, the essay will focus on Puck’s physical characteristics as well as his ability to span across boundaries in the play and the metatheatrical realm.

Essay on A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Analysis

Mandy Conway Mrs. Guynes English 12 16 March 2000 A Critical Analysis of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is "A Midsummer Night's Dream." They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare's comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play-with-in-a-play, which master writers only write successfully. Shakespeare proves here to be a master writer. Critics find it a task to explain the intricateness of the play, audiences find it very pleasing to read and watch. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay

Throughout history literature has changed into many different forms and styles, it has also stayed the same in many different ways, literary techniques and elements are key to a good piece of writing, a perfect example that shows us just this is in, A Midsummer Nights Dream, where we will further explore the different literary elements that were used most notably the plot. The plot of a story lays out the foundation and the background for the entire play to come, we'll compare and contrast this element and look at the different sub elements which are produced. We will define similarities and difference in these elements form both the play o the film. Taking a look at things such as climax, play incidents, and the conflict will all give us

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Carnival in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Essay

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Introduction

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the carnival elements in the play are widely discussed topics in the literary world. One of the notable writers who did a deep evaluation on the carnival elements in Shakespeare is Bakhtin. Critics observe that it is this element, which makes the play distinct from other plays of Shakespeare. The play can be said to fall in the category of light comedy. It colorfully portrays an episode from the adventurous night of romantic lovers in a forest ruled by fairies.

The tragic and the comic elements in the play have also been subjected to severe criticism in the same manner as the carnival elements. One can see the play moving in between a tragedy and a comedy and this can be regarded as the cause for modern critical scrutiny. It was the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin who coined the term ‘carnival’.

Historically, the carnival is a festival related to the Feast of the Circumcision. Bakhtin attributes some special significance to the carnival when he regards it as a symbol of collectivity. He considers it as the unity of the people which is different from the unity found in political or socioeconomic organizations. One of the main features of the carnival as Bakhtin sees it is its equality, that is, there is all-around unity, though the participants belong to different social, political, and racial classes. One can find a kind of free and familiar contact that exists among the people who are united in the carnival.

As there are no class barriers between the people, Bakhtin finds that the lower section of the society rises on par with the higher. When one attends a carnival, one is aware of the space and time which brings to them the thought of collectivity. While analyzing the opinion of Bakhtin, one feels that when people get together in the carnival, they are united not only in dress and appearance but also they are renewed both mentally and physically. Simultaneously, one’s mental, sensual, and material, unities too go up. The paper is an attempt to evaluate the carnival elements in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Bakhtin introduces the term carnival which denotes not merely a mass of people but who have gathered in such a way that confronts the political or socio-economic systems. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play with the characteristics of a romantic comedy. At the end of the play, Shakespeare introduces a new form of political authority. Here one can see that the dramatist portrays the term as an inevitable part of ancient culture.

Various critics point out that even when the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy they have identified the shadows of a darker undertone in it. Here Shakespeare portrays the interlude between Bottom and Titania in a new way, which, contradicts the conventional pattern. In his book entitled ‘ Power on Display’, Leonard Tennenhouse shares his views about the social system in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The author remarks, “This form of an authority constitutes an improvement over the punitive power he threatened to exercise at the play’s opening.” (Tennenhouse 1986, p. 74).

When analyzing the gradual development of the plot of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream one can see the elements of carnival. The association of judicial law and patriarchal power pave the way for a new political atmosphere.

Various critical studies prove that ambiguous sexuality is an important theme in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The love affair between Tatiana and Bottom leads the audience into the world of a new aesthetic experience. The crisis of young lovers in the second and third acts of the play gives a new form of storyline. The performance of young lovers in this play provides a sign of revolution against the existing system of authority. Here Shakespeare portrays his characters as the exponents of carnival culture. One of the major social changes reported in the time of carnival and festival is the deterioration of male domination in society. Looking at Bakhtin’s concepts about carnival one can find the love scenes in the woods and Bottom’s dream are the finest examples.

A sense of collectivity can be seen in these scenes. Readers can find appropriate examples of social change in the play. The life of four lovers in the woods and Bottom’s dreams gives a world of social chaos and that is entirely different from Theseus’ authority. The ending part of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents the mood of carnival. Through the characters of Theseus, Hermia, and Lysander the dramatist shows the gradual change of woman’s status and consummation of marriage in society. Julie Sanders’ book named Novel Shakespeares contains some salient information. The author shares his view like “These elements of carnival provide their intersections, structural and stylistic, with the paradigms of Shakespearean comedy and criticism, as we shall see later.” (Sanders 2001, p. 21).

Julie Sanders says that the elements of carnival in Shakespearean plays have their intersections, structural and stylistic features and these are highly related to the characteristics of typical Shakespearean comedies. Shakespeare presents the character Oberon in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The way Shakespeare portrays carnival elements in the play “ A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

As a romantic comedy, Shakespeare is A midsummer Night’s Dream constitutes different features of comedy. Carnival provides celebrations and gatherings. Colorful costumes and masks are essential features of a carnival. The character of Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a supernatural figure with the head of a donkey. Shakespeare introduces the elements of carnival in his play in a way of revolution. The role of Titania as an unruly woman, Puck’s dealings that contribute to the disorder, feelings, and responses of the young lovers are the violating forces. The play begins with an atmosphere that constitutes the patriarchal authority but it ends with a revolution. Shakespeare introduces the character Oberon as a symbol of an alternation. Through the dialogues of Oberon, a reader can understand a sign of questioning or a sound of revolution. Act III of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream gives Oberon’s words:

Oberon: “This is thy negligence: still thou mistakes,

Or else commit thy knaveries willfully.” (Shakespeare, Richardson & Messel 1957, p.81).

The revolution against the Athenian authority is revealed here in the words of Oberon. Another aspect of this revolution is the attitude of two suitors Demetrius and Lysander. The fight between these two people creates striking scenes in the play. The female characters of the play Hermia, Heena, and Titania succeed in finding their own identity in a patriarchal society. The disobedience of Hermia and Titania provides signs of revolution and both of them face the after-effects courageously. Studies prove that Bakhtin introduces carnival as a symbol of change. The mask is related to the pleasure of change and recreation.

In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a reader can see Bottom’s metamorphoses, disobedience of the female characters like Titania, and the dream world of young lovers presented as the violation of existing boundaries and conservative ideologies. The elements of carnival in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream provide a particular interface of reality and romance. Egeus’s silence in Act IV, scene I of the play presents the way that indicates consent or a kind of withdrawal from Athenian norms and regulations. Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich Bakhtin says: “Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal.” (Bakhtin, & Iswolsky1984, p.10).

In Bakhtin’s views about carnival, the characters of young lovers, fairy queen Titania and the mythical character Bottom stand for the establishment of a new custom.

When concluding, one can infer that the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is expressive of the carnival elements at a higher degree. Rival elements in the play intensify its actions and the same causes for the dramatic appeal of the play. A close analysis of the play reveals that the carnival in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is revolutionary than conservative or subversive. One feels the revolutionary aspects in the play when one looks at the brave or the revolutionary attempts of Hermia to cross the command of his father as well as the law of Athens.

Hermia’s decision to marry according to her wishes and her elopement shake the keystone of the existing belief of the Athenians and Theseus as a father and a conservative king. One can evaluate the play following the principles of feminism as it best suits with the stubborn mentality of Titania when she bravely faces the threat from her husband. Both Titania and Hermia express their boldness in questioning the male chauvinism and select their own way, disregarding all other aspects like the existing social customs, which deny the moral and the legal rights of women, and builds up a magnificent world as their own. Titania-Bottom episode is the other example that challenges the existing social conventions.

Titania’s decision to follow Bottom and the respect that she shows to him, more than the one shown to her husband, are self revelatory of her attempt to affirm the feminist view of life. It is a revolution in the sense that a total change is visible in the attitude of the women characters of the play who disobey their male counterparts and select their own way which they think as befitting their status as women. An overall change is also visible in the appearance of the characters, especially their costumes and mask.

The changing of the mask and costume are symbolic of the imminent change in the cultural and socio-economic traditions of Athens. When the play ends, one feels the changing face of Athenian social atmosphere with the advent of a new political system. The new phase marks the consummation of women after realizing the bitterness of the male chauvinist society. To conclude, one can say that the carnival element mentioned the play is revolutionary and it helps to raise the play to a level that challenges the male dominated society.

Bakhtin, M M & Iswolsky, H 1984, Rabelais and his world , Indian University Press. Web.

Sanders, J 2001, Novel Shakespeares: twentieth-century women novelists and appropriation . Web.

Shakespeare, W, Richardson, R & Messel, O 1957, A midsummer night’s dreams: Oberon , Plain Label Books. Web.

Tennenhouse, L 1986, Power on display , Routledge. Web.

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