Similarities Between A Midsummer Night's Dream And Tartuffe

The two plays that will be compared and contrasted are Tartuffe by Jean Baptiste Moliere and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. Both plays will be compared upon their characters and the themes that were demonstrated throughout the play. Along with these discussions, both plays will be compared upon their genres and social context. A brief summary of the plays will also be given in this discussion. The breakdown of Tartuffe and A Midsummer Night’s Dream will give a better understanding of how these plays are similar and different.

The play Tartuffe by Jean Baptiste Moliere is about Tartuffe, a hypocrite, who acquires what he wants by deceiving Orgon. Since Orgon was ignorant to his son Damis, he ends up believing Tartuffe instead of his son. Orgon then disinherits his son’s wealth and gives this to Tartuffe the hypocrite. Although Mariane, Orgon’s

daughter, loves Valere, she is forced to marry Tartuffe because of how great he is as a person according to her father Orgon. Tartuffe would also be able to deceive Orgon’s mother, Madame Pernelle. In the end it just turns out that Orgon would be betrayed by Tartuffe since Tartuffe received what he wanted.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare is about a women named Hermia who is forced to marry someone she does not like by her father Egeus. The consequences for this would be her death or become a nun. She is actually in love with Lysander and not Demetrius. Another person who is involved in this situation is Hermia’s friend, Helena, who is still in love with Demetrius, but Demetrius does not have feelings for her. Later on, a fairy named Puck gives a love potion between Demetrius and Helena in which they fall in love again as well as Lysander and Hermia. Overall in this play all couples love each other where Puck in the end says this was just a dream.
Both plays can be compared by the actions of the characters portray especially Orgon in Tartuffe and Egues in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. These characters are similar in person when both force their daughter get married to someone they like. Orgon wants his daughter Mariane to marry Tartuffe and Egues wants his daughter Hermia to marry. Both daughter also react to the same way because they try to get away. Hermia reacts by going with Lysander to his Aunt’s house to get married. Other characters that would be similar are Tartuffe and Puck. These characters have the power to make things happen in a certain way to achieve what they want. For example, Puck makes the couples Hermia and Lysander in love as well as Helena and Demetrius. Tartuffe has the capability to deceive Orgon to get his riches from Orgon’s son in which Orgon would fall for. These actions that these characters portray show that these characters are similar Even though the character’s actions are very similar between the plays there would also be dissimilarities. In Tartuffe, there are no magical characters unlike the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Puck, Oberon and Titania are fairies. The actions that Puck took also determine that he is magical character when he created love potions to make people in love. On the other hand, Tartuffe deceives people like Orgon and Madame Pernelle using language to acquire what he wants. Another example is that the characters in A Midsummer’s Night Dream have different lovers seeking for them especially when Demetrius seeks out for Hermia and Helena seeks out for Lysander. These characters have different positions on who they like which make the characters confusing to follow on who likes who. The character Mariane in Tartuffe only seeks out for only one person who is Valere. Lastly, the character in A Midsummer’s Night Dream named Orgon gets deceived but the characters in Tartuffe the lovers or the couples get deceived by the magical love potions placed upon them. Although there were similarities among the actions of the characters between the plays there would also be differences among them.
Tartuffe and A Midsummer Night’s Dream have similar and differing themes that are portrayed throughout the play. An example of a theme portrayed in Tartuffe is ignorance in Orgon and Madame Pernelle’s part. Since they were very ignorant about what Tartuffe was really intending to do, they at the end would be betrayed by him. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a theme that is being portrayed is love and not for the play Tartuffe. Love is portrayed in A Midsummer’s Night Dream when there were couples named Lysander and Hermia who would try to escape just to get married. This shows that the power of love can make one do anything bad even though they may get harmed by their own parents. In Tartuffe, the theme of love would be different because there was really none anyways because Mariane did not love Tartuffe at all. The theme of ignorance is not showed in A Midsummer’s Night Dream because although Hermia had ignored his father’s order she got what she wanted which is to be with Lysander and not Demetrius. Another theme that was demonstrated in Tartuffe was that when one is deceitful to another person consequences can backfire back to them. This backfire would finally occur when Orgon finally realized that Tartuffe was trying to steal from him and later on would arrest him.
These plays also have similarities and differences among their social context historically, their type of genre and authors.

The similarities between the both is that Orgon from Tartuffe and Egues from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream is that they live in wealthy lives. This is one reason why Tartuffe wanted Orgon’s riches. Egues on the other hand is showed to have close relations with the duke of Athens named Theseus. Only person of high rank would be able to communicate and have close relations to a duke. The women on both plays were very similar because of how the males had to choose for them on who they needed to love without having them the right to choose. Tartuffe is a comedy play because of the personalities of the characters and also A Midsummer’s Night Dream because of the confusion of the lovers by magic. The differences between the plays is that the authors were from different periods during the time. William Shakespeare would be an Elizabethan playwright and Jean Baptiste Moliere would be from the French Classical. Similarly, these authors were popular producers of plays during their

time.
In conclusion, both plays of Tartuffe and A Midsummer Night’s Dream did in fact have their similarities and differences. First of all, there was the similarities and differences between the characters of the plays as seen upon their action. Both plays also portrayed had similar themes throughout the play. These plays were also compared and contrasted based on social context historically, their type of genre and author. These breakdowns overall convey how these plays were unique and similar in their own ways.