Midsummer Night's Dream Fairies

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Recommended: Shakespeare's use of language

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. The four plot levels in William’s Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream coincide with each other throughout …show more content…

The real world of Athens is where the beginning of the play takes place, as a group of mortals are gathered and discussing the young, Athenian lovers. Shakespeare manipulates the use of the forest to contrast Athens to the dream world of the fairies. As more characters are under the spell of love, the characters of the varying plot levels begin to congregate to the forest. Both settings prove to powerful in varying aspects. The king and queen of Athens are in the process of getting married, which brings a powerful feeling of emotion and joy to Athens, while Titania and Oberon, the king and queen of the fairies, are also dealing with conflict that leaves those in the forest susceptible to the magical pranks of the …show more content…

Bottom obviously has the most literal transformation from man to a man with the head of a donkey. The pranks of the fairies negatively impact Bottom, but he does experience love for a short time before he transformed back into a complete human. Helena and Demetrius both experience the transformation from a quarrelsome pair to a married couple. Helena experiences less transformation since she begins the play infatuated with Demetrius, while Demetrius initially hates Helena but loves her eventually. This validity of this transformation is questioned since it was heavily influenced by magic. Helena is a worthy woman, but Demetrius may only love her because of the flower. Finally, Titania and Oberon experience a similar transformation to the previously mentioned couple. The relationship between the two at the beginning of the play transforms into an intense romance once the magic of the play takes it’s

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