Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Use of magic and fairies in a midsummer nights dream
Use of magic and fairies in a midsummer nights dream
Annotated bibliography fairy tales
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Use of magic and fairies in a midsummer nights dream
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 …show more content…
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
There are several events in the play which at one point or the other take a tragic turn which constantly undercut back into the play by speeches. What is set out in the play is a festive mood where people were engaged in activities of ‘Maying’ where people get together to sing and dance in the woods, activities that led to the maids’ belief that the pursuit if true love can be scored only through divination dreams (Barber 18). The fairy’s existence is conceptualized from the act of fusing pageantry together with popular games in a menacing way bring out their actual image of a relaxed
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.
Shakespeare’s use of magic is extensive; it can be noticed in all the play of the Midsummer Night’s Dream. Did you notice all the types of magic the fairies used? They use the magic to manipulate humans or to control the weather. It is amazing all the magic that they used and its effects on humans. In this essay we will describe all the types of magic along this play.
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Oberon is the Root of All Problems in the Play “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein Oberon is one of the most important characters in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare and is the answer to the question of why there are so many problems in the play. Not only is Oberon the King of the Fairies, but he is the husband of Titania and the master of Puck. Oberon’s character is multifaceted, although it is evident that he will do anything for a good laugh. At times, Oberon is extraordinarily nice, generous, and compassionate.
A very old Shakespeare’s play “A Midsummers Night Dream” believed to be written in 1590 and 1596 was a classical idea of fantasy. It portrays the journey of four young lovers and their interactions with fairies. They story takes place in a mythical city called Athens with an enchanted forest, where a fairy king misguides the star-crossed lovers and plays tricks on his fairy queen by transforming a poor actor into a half-donkey. This work focuses on human interactions with falling in love.
He is ordered to sprinkle the magic love juice in the “Athenian man’s” eyes to fix the main characters’ love problem by Oberon. Through miscommunication and unclearness of the direction, Puck accidently puts the love juice into a different Athenian man’s eyes making the love relationship more complicated. He finds this out through Oberon when he comments, “What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite, and laid the love juice on some true love’s sight. Of thy misprision must perforce ensue some true love turned, and not a false turned true” (III.ii.90-94). When the fate of the lovers completely changes, he creates the main conflict in the story because without him, the plot would have ended with one single drop of love juice fixing the star-crossed-ness between the lovers. However, with the mistake that Puck makes while trying to achieve the solution it develops the conflict continuing the story line. Thus, making Puck an important character because he is the one who expands the major
In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses various instances of language to distinguish between certain classes of the various characters. While fairies and mortals are vaguely similar in decision-making, they differ through speech. Typically, mortals speak more literally, while fairies speak with rhyme and rhythm. In addition, the nobles in this play speak with a rich vocabulary and dense sentence structure, while the rustics speak with simple phrases. Shakespeare utilized the language to create varying social situations similarly to how we utilize language with different tones of voice or pauses in speech.
Titania is a fairy who happens to be married to the king of the fairies. She has mixed views on love, however throughout the story her love interests are often changed.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the King of the Fairies is a powerful man named Oberon. Oberon is married to Titania, Queen of the Fairies, who received an Indian boy from her dear friend who passed away. Oberon desperately wants the Indian boy to be one of his followers, but the boy is one of Titania followers and she will not give him up. This is when Oberon decides to use magic, in an attempt to win the Indian boy. Oberon uses the magic of a flower, to make his wife, Titania fall in love with the next creature she sees. Oberon says, “Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew'd thee once: / The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid / Will make or man or woman madly dote / Upon the next live creature that it sees” (2.1.175-178). Oberon then black mails Titania and tells her that she will love the donkey forever unless she gives over the Indian boy. Although many would consider this bad, Oberon uses his magic because he can and he feels he needs to.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, Oberon is the king of the fairies. He does and gets what he wants, no matter what he has to do to get it. During the thick of the play, Oberon hears two of the major characters, Demetrius and Helena, arguing. Helena wants Demetrius to love her, but he loves her best friend Hermia. He feels bad for Helena and orders his servant, Puck, to use a magic potion to enchant Demetrius into loving her. Titania, the queen of fairies, is in possession of a young Indian boy, and Oberon wants custody of him. He puts her under the same magic potion, causing her to fall in love with the first thing she sees and forget about the fight over the Indian boy. Shakespeare ultimately makes the case that trying
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
In order to understand the title I have given this literary analysis we must first revisit what J.R.R. Tolkien considers a Faerie story. He viewed most fantasy stories or even worse “fairy” stories written as stories that attempted to trick the audience into this other world, a world filled with illusions, created by a magician who manipulates the primary world that we live in. In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” he attempts to distinguish and defend the genre of fairy stories from what most understand as fantasy writing or quite literally a story about fairies. He structures his essay in a manner that distinguishes itself from other genres such as “traveller’s tales,” science fiction (i.e. Star Wars – more on that later), beast tales and dream stories.
To emphasize, in Act III, the reader is presented with the play’s most extraordinary contrast, the relationship between Titania and Bottom. “What wakes me from my flow’ry bed?” (III.i.131). Titania is awoken by the so-called melodic singing of Bottom. In the present scene, both characters are under some particular sort of spell. Titania’s eyes were anointed with the nectar of the love flower, thus causing her to fall in love with the next living thing she encounters. In the meantime, Puck pulled a prank on Bottom, turning his head into that of an ass. Both characters of the play are interpreted as complete opposites. Titania, characterized as the beautiful, graceful fairy queen; Bottom is portrayed as overdramatic, self centered, and as of now, not keen on the eyes. However, the love nectar never fails and seems to bring the two into a state of lust. The contrast between the two is overwhelming. An important scene in the pl...
When we hear the word “dream,” we often think about the world we escape to in our sleep; however when we awake, the dream is nothing more than a distant memory. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, dreams are more than just a memory. They continue to impact the characters, affecting their decisions and perspective long after they wake up. Dreams are used throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream to strengthen points and reveal important aspects of both the play and the characters within that often link different time periods throughout the play. Dreams are an important aspect of the play that often reveal important plot points and events. Shakespeare shows his readers the thin line between dreams and reality. He does this by
Fairies and the remaining fairies of the play, Puck does not seem to fit in as