A Midsummer Night's Dream

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream: by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564. He had married at the age of eighteen to a twenty-six year old woman named Anne Hathaway in 1582. He had a daughter named Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, his only son, died at age eleven. Shakespeare died in April 1616. Despite the fact that Shakespeare wrote some thirty-seven plays, owned part of his theatrical company, acted in plays, and retired a relatively wealthy man in the city of his birth, there is much we do not know about him (Jacobus, 167-169). One of the plays that Shakespeare wrote was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595-1596) is an early comedy and one of Shakespeare’s most beloved works. It is also one of his most imaginative plays, introducing us to the world of fairies and the realm of dreams. A Midsummer Night’s Dream has attracted many great directors in modern times, although in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the play was adapted essentially as a vehicle for presenting the world of the fairies. It even became an opera in 1692 (Jacobus 169-170). In the fairy world is where everything comes together.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Egeus who is Hermia’s father wants her to marry Demetrius. Hermia is in love with Lysander though and wants to marry him. Both Demetrius and Lysander are in love with Hermia and Helena is in love with Demetrius. Egeus wants Theseus the Duke of Athens to take Hermia far away and kill her because she refuses to marry Demetrius. Instead of killing Hermia, Theseus sent her far away and never to return.

Once in the woods Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena run into Oberon the King of the fairies, Titania Queen of the fai...

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...gentle charm that could not be attached to an omnipotent figure, who must remain as unlovable as an unclimbable cliff. But most importantly, the fairy world represents an ideal because, as many have noted, it symbolizes, like the Homeric world, a union between man and nature (Hutton, 289-305).

Works Cited

Hutton, Virgil. "A Midsummer Night's Dream: Tragedy in Comic Disguise." (2001): 289-305.

Jacobus, Lee A. The Compact Bedford Introduction To Drama. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009.

Kott, Jan. "Shakespeare Our Contemporary." Kehler, Dorothea. A Midsummer Night's Dream Critical Essays. New York & London: Garland Inc., 1998.

Montrose, Louis A. "A Kingdom of Shadows." Kehler, Dorothea. A Midsummer Night's Dream Critical Essays. New York/London: Garland Inc., 1998.

Ormerod, David. "A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Monster in the Labyrinth." (2002): 39-53.

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