More handpicked essays just for you.
Aeneas and Odyssey comparison
Literary Analysis of a Midsummer Night Dream
Themes of a midsummer night's dream
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, by William Shakespeare the contrast between both setting and character are well explained throughout the play. This play is mostly about four young Athenians whose lives become a total disaster because of the fairies in the forest, strange situations in the city of Athens, Greece and mixtures of love potions. The main setting of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is in Athens, Greece. In Athens, the Duke Theseus plans his marriage with Hippolyta. In contrast, the forest is where all the drama happens between all the characters. The four main characters of this play are Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander. In this writing, I will be discussing about the contrast between both Helena and Hermia. Both Helena and Hermia go through serious issues to find love but they both show the theme in different ways. Helena is described as a tall woman but she is unsure of herself. Despite the fact that she’s tall and Hermia is short; Hermia is a woman full of passion and respect. Throughout this play, questions such as; how is love found? What kinds of people find true love?, are clearly answered. To begin with, this play is filled with comedy but also conflicts between characters. Helena is the kind of woman who has no self-esteem. This is because she does everything to be loved back by a man that doesn’t love her and that is Demetrius. Helena represents a character of a woman that is desperate of having love. In other words, Helena is different from Hermia because she’s an insecure woman full of jealousy. Helena tries to do everything to get Lysander away from her old best friend Hermia. She thinks that love can be found by letting the one you love do anything to you. Consequently, Hermia believes that lo... ... middle of paper ... ...treats her well, she disobeyed her father’s order and ran away with Lysander. At the part where the love potion got mixed up and both man loved Helena, Hermia was very jealous but at the end she found her true lover. In final consideration, both Helena and Hermia represent love but in a totally different ways. It’s the evil and the good gap that is between them two. I also say that, I don’t blame Helena for the things she did because it hurts to be not loved back by someone who you love truly. However, it was a happy ending for both ladies because at the end they both married who they loved. The contrast relates to the meaning of work by how every character has something to do love and they all show it differently. Adding funny comedy scenes and conflicts, the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Shakespeare did exactly show what a person goes through to find love.
Undermined by sexual attraction when we discover that Helena is in love with Demetrius, the suitor that Egeus has chosen for his daughter Hermia to marry. All these complexities of the love theme I will have to reveal both as a director and in the performance of the two young women, Hermia and Helena. Hermias’ costume is quite simplistic but very feminine. It is pink Elizabethan linen with purple lining and a gold rim at the bottom. It has puffy sleeves and it cuts across her shoulders with gold lace also around the rim.
The hilarious play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, tells the twisted love story of four Athenians who are caught between love and lust. The main characters: Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius are in a ‘love square’. Hermia and Lysander are true love enthusiasts, and love each other greatly. Demetrius is in love with Hermia, and Helena, Hermia’s best friend, is deeply and madly in love with Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander try to elope in the woods because Egeus, Hermia’s father, disapproves of Lysander.
The “treachery” Hermia “dreams” that occur with Lysander and Helena is amplified through that uncertainty and highlighted with those words in order to establish a sense of urgency and disorientation in the play, that can only be summarized through the end.
Infatuation causes Helena to lose all sense of dignity, as can be seen when in the woods, she desperately pleads with Demetrius to ?but treat me as your spaniel?. Here, Helena also becomes irrational, obsessed with pursuing Demetrius, though it is obvious that Demetrius is fixated on winning Hermia?s hand in marriage. Helena?s infatuation also causes her to see things from a skewed perspective, for she falsely believes that when she divulges Hermia?s plans for eloping with Lysander, Demetrius? love for Helena will rekindle. As the audience, we know that the most probable course of action for Demetrius upon hearing such news is to pursue Lysander and Hermia, or to report them to Theseus or Egeus. Clearly, infatuation has clouded Helena?s ability to think clearly, and she sees things in her own idealistic way.
William Shakespeare’s writings are famous for containing timeless, universal themes. A particular theme that is explored frequently in his writings is the relationship between men and women. A Midsummer Night’s Dream contains a multitude of couplings, which are often attributed to the fairies in the play. Each of these pairings has positive and negative aspects, however, some relationships are more ideal than others. From A Midsummer Night’s Dream the optimal pairings are Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, and Oberon and Titania; while the less desirable pairings are Theseus and Hippolyta, Hermia and Demetrius, Lysander and Helena, and Titania and Bottom. Throughout A Midsummer
Presented with many obstacles and complications to overcome, we know that Hermia is the protagonist in the play. She has relations with almost all the characters in the play. The first and most important relationship is her love, Lysander. From the very beginning we see that Hermia loves Lysander with all her heart and soul and he loved her the same. The only tragic flaw in their relationship was when Puck put the magic juice in Lysander's eyes and he fell in love with Helena. Hermia felt sad and rejected when that happened. But when Puck finally realized that he had made a mistake and corrected it, Hermia and Lysander were in their heavenly bliss of love once again.
Love, lust and infatuation all beguile the senses of the characters in this dreamy and whimsical work of Shakespeare, and leads them to act in outlandish ways, which throughly amuses the reader. True love does prevail in the end for Hermia and Lysander, and the initial charm of infatuation ends up proving to have happy consequence for Helena and Demetrius as well. Even when at first the reader thinks that, in theory, the effects the potion will wear off and Lysander will once again reject Helena, Oberon places a blessings on all the couples that they should live happily ever after.
The dramatic irony created many scenes of humor and tension. So Helena was in love with Demetrius. When Helena found out that Hermia who Demetrius was supposed to marry, was planning to run away with Lysander, the love of her life.
Throughout the events which unfold in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare delivers several messages on love. Through this play, one of the significant ideas he suggests is that love is blind, often defying logic and overriding other emotions and priorities. Helena loves Demetrius unconditionally and pursues him despite knowing that he loathes her; conflict arises between Helena and Hermia, childhood best friends, over Demetrius and Lysander; and because she is in love, Queen Titania is able to see beauty and virtue in the ass-headed Nick Bottom.
Demetrius, Helena, Lysander, and Hermia are the for young teens of the story. At the beginning of the play it is Lysander and Helena who are madly in love, and are planning to to escape from Athens to elope. Helena is in love with Demetrius, and Demetrius cared for Helena and liked her a lot but was not in love with her. As soon as Demetrius sees Hermia he immediately stops having any feelings for Helena whatsoever and is deeply in love with Hermia. Demetrius thought that he had fallen in love at first sight, but Helena was determined to show him differently. Demetrius: ³ Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,/ For I am sick when I do look on thee.² Helena: ³And I am sick when I look not on you.² (Act II, sc. i, lines 218-220) This piece of dialogue shows how much Demetrius is now in love with Hermia from just seeing her, and how disgusted he feels when he looks upon Helena who he used to care about. Helena is simply just expressing how much she is love with Demetrius and how bad she feels that he is treating her in such a manner of hatred.
Hermia was dark haired and smaller than Helena (Hermia’s best friend) which caused her much distress at times when she thought Lysander neglected her for Helena. Hermia began to think that Helena was prettier than her as she was taller and had beautiful hair. However, little did Hermia know, Helena was actually jealous of her and thought she was too perfect,
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," William Shakespeare explains the difficulties of the nature of love. Both false love and true love prevail in the end, leading the reader to come to the conclusion that all types of love can triumph. Hermia and Lysander represent the existence of a "true love", while Helena and Demertrius represent the opposite extreme. Shakespeare presents the idea that love is unpredictable and can cause great confusion. Love is something that cannot be explained, it can only be experienced. Shakespeare challenges us to develop our own idea of what love truly is.
In the book A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare exposes the reality of the difficulties and lies that come with what some people like to call love. Set in Athens, the main characters, Helena, Demetrius, Hermia, and Lysander are involved in a very confusing triangle, on their journey of trying to find out what is truly going on in the world around them. Through these things, Shakespeare shows that everything you thought about true love was incorrect and it is all just a big lie. In the beginning of the story, Hippolyta does not truly love Theseus but is forced to marry him because he defeated her and her people.
In the play,Hermia and Helena are the main female protagonists and 2 of the four lovers. They have some similarities in their personalities as they are both girls that are headstrong people that want things to go their way and won’t give up until it happens. Even though it is inevitable that they share some common personality traits that are interchangeable between them,However, that is not true. While they both do some similar personalities,they actually have very different personalities.
There is an underlying ambiguity in Helena 's character. Spreading the illustration over the four most disputed moments in All's Well, the virginity repartee, the miraculous cure of the King, the accomplishment of conditions and the bed - trick, one can detect the ''different shades'' of in her character - honourable, passionate, discreet, audacious, romantic, rational, tenacious, forgiving ... She can be sampled out to be basically an idiosyncratic person with her good and bad, positioned within the ''clever wench'' tradition and the ''fulfilling of tasks'' folk tales ( W. W. Lawrence ) which necessitates that she should behave with a determination. The whole ambiguity in Helena ensues from unrealistic dramaturgy and realistic conception of women. Throughout the play, one sees Helena jostling ingenuousness with sexuality and at times there seems to be two Helenas, one who is conventionally tame and the other who is actively all out ... a love - sick Juliet that is ready at the end to expose her darling 's ill practices. One could compare Helena with Isabella in Measure for Measure, since the characters are engulfed by different circumstances that demand each of them to act differently. Isabella is a religious figure while Helena is only love-driven.