A Midsummer Night's Dream Research Paper

The Fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A fairy is a type of spiritual being living in the supernatural or mythical creature in European mythology. Shakespeare’s era influenced the perspective of fairies in his romantic comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Shakespeare’s delineation of these little creatures is one of the most remarkable triumphs of his dramatic art” (Rolfe). The role of the fairies is to generate conflict as well as the resolution in the romantic comedy. They do this by twisting humans in the play while remaining distant from them. Based off their role we can look into the characters of Titania, Oberon, and Puck.
To begin, the quality of Shakespeare’s fairies are much like those described by the Hellenic Greek authors. The background of the fairies shows that they are very miniature, “they creep into acorn cups to hide them there” (2.2.1). They live in command under Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies. Shakespeare’s fairies can move around with intense pace. Oberon jester, Puck says “I go, look how I go, swifter than arrow from Tatar’s bow” (3.2.4). The fairies also have a forceful influence on nature. Along with being influenced by nature, the fairies are night

creatures and leaves the human world before sunrise, hence the midsummer night’s dream.
How the conflict started, while meeting Titania, it seems she was having marriage problems with Oberon.

The have a disagreement over a changeling, a human child stolen by the fairies. Oberon wants the changeling to become one of his servants, but Titania refuse because she agreed to raise the boy after his mother died. Disagreeing about the changeling, Oberon comes up with a plan to swipe the changeling by putting love juice in Titania’s eyes while she sleeping. When she wakes up she will fall in love with the first person she sees. While she’s busy in love, that gives Oberon the chance to get the changeling and use him for his own purposes. While planning, Oberon notices in the woods how Demetrius mistreats Helena, so he decides Demetrius also needs some of the love

juice.
Puck is a troublesome, fun loving spirit who serves under Oberon. He mistakenly creates conflict with the lovers during the play. It starts when Oberon tells Puck to get some of the love juice and is ordered to sprinkle on an “Athenian” man who is in the woods so he will fall in love with Helena. Puck accidently sprinkle Lysander instead of Demetrius, which makes Lysander fall in love with Helena. During the whole controversy, Puck decides to have some fun by harassing bottom by turning him into an ass. It woke up Titania during the whole process, one look at bottom and she fell in love. Meanwhile the love triangle between Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius unfolds, so Puck has to fix things even though he finds this hilarious. Everything goes back to normal and during the epilogue, Puck closes the play by saying “if we shadows offended, think but this, and all is mended- That you have but slumbered here while these visions appear” (5.1.18)