Romeo and Juliet, (R&J), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (AMSND), are two different genres with but have the same basic plot: Two young lovers can’t wed and the girl is to marry another man who is preferred by her father, so the couple meets at night and plans to run away. Both couples have gone against the wishes of their authority figures but it doesn’t end well for Tybalt, Paris, Romeo, or Juliet. R&J is set in Elizabethan times, and the Chain of Being would have been disrupted by their actions.AMSND has fantastical elements that interfere with fate and these elements such as fairies and cupid, would have been understood to be higher on the chain than man by its attendees of the time. Is it the force of celestial bodies that makes R&J a tragedy and AMSND a comedy?
In both R&J and AMSND, the lovers must meet under the guise of darkness. Despite the security the night offers the
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couple, Romeo relates the moon to a jealous past fling and Juliet calls her orbits “inconstant”.
This is in spite of her providing them a safe place to marry and meet. In their love, the two put each other higher up in the chain of being past the moon. “QOUTE ABOUT SUN AND STARS”. Without the darkness however, the sun and stars do not shine. To break the wishes of authorities on earth and rebuke the moon while idolizing a lover as stars and the sun, is to act upon the entire chain rather than a link. A foreshadowing of the lovers’ fate in death can be seen as the heavens are a recurring topic in both Romeo and Juliet’s dialogue. In AMSND, the heavens are mentioned only seven times which happens to be the number of God, maybe this is a positive foreshadowing on the comedy. The moon plays a large role in this play and its power is
acknowledged from early on by holding the days to marry from Theseus. Titania says, “. . . the moon the governess of floods/ Pale in her anger, washes all the air/ That rheumatic diseases do abound”, giving a sense that the moon makes the Earth fresh for a new day (2.1. 106-108). The Rude Mechanicals who perform for the three weddings, rely on the moon to light their play, rejoicing in its presence, and assign a role for the moonshine to Robin Starveling, the tailor. The heavy emphasis on the inner play is a clue to its importance on the larger one because; the moon is respected, the fairies worked at night, the King discovers the lovers at night and has mercy, and the play is at night. Due to its nature in AMSND, it’s likely no coincidence that a tailor was chosen as the moon. Oberon recalls the powers of celestial bodies bending for earthly bodies beyond man when he, “. . . heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back/ Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath/ That the rude sea grew civil at her song/ And certain stars shot madly from their spheres” (2.1.155-58). Friar Lawrence was a man of god, putting him higher on the chain as R&J but, because he is of Earth, he didn’t have the power to help the fated couple. The poison he gave to Juliet was to cause a temporary sleep but, led to Romeo buying real poison and three deaths. Oberon is a fairy and his potion was from cupid, which put his wife into a daze and confused two lovers until he used it again to restore his wives’ wits and make the two couples fall back in love. In both plays, three people are affected (Paris died in the fray caused by Juliet’s condition) by poison or potion between two doses but all ends well in AMSND. FINISH PARAGRAP NEW PARAGRAPH THE HEAVENS AFFECT POWERS ON EARTH? COMPARE R&J WITH AMSND AND USE AT LEAST 2 QUOTES INSERT SOMETHING FROM TILLYARD FINAL THOUGHT: IT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD TOO, THAT THE MOON SHOWS BOTH OF HER SIDES IN ROMEO AND JULIET AS THE DARKNESS IS RELATABLE TO THE FAMILY FUED WHICH PRODUCES THE SITUATION they are IN WHICH THEY MUST MEET AT NIGHT. This is true in AMSND as the potion was used for harm and incorrectly for good at night, and restored order the next night. If the King were the moon in this instance, as he came out at night to find the four lovers, he was QUOTE FROM ROMEO AND JULIT ABOUT THE MOON, and gave forgiveness.
Throughout the course of the play Romeo and Juliet and the novel Lord of the Flies, there is a common motif of light versus dark that affects the way characters grow and view the world. Contrasting sharply between the two written works is the usage of this idea. In Romeo and Juliet the light is treated as a problem that will bring their forbidden love to “light” whereas the darkness provides a covering for their rendezvous. In Lord of the Flies it is the opposite, with the darkness being representative of the boy’s hidden savagery as well as providing fear of the unknown while the fire, a symbol of light, provides safety in warmth and food as well as the ability to see through the dark.
The Loss of Magic Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, there are multiple analyses that one can follow in order to reach a conclusion about the overall meaning of the play. These conclusions are reached through analyzing the play’s setting, characterization, and tone. However, when one watches the production A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Michael Hoffman, a completely different approach is taken on these aspects, leading to a vastly different analysis of the work. Though there are many similarities between the original written play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and the on-screen production of the aforementioned play which was directed by Michael Hoffman, there are differences in setting and
During the Renaissance, comedies and romances include many of the culture’s best, most remarkable, dramatic achievements. According to A Glossary of Literary Terms, edited by M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, comedies are written to entertain the audience, with the characters and their humiliations engaging our pleasurable attention rather than our thoughtful concern. Moreover, the audience is “made to feel confident that no great disaster will occur, and usually the action turns out happily for the chief characters” (c. 2012). For example, William Shakespeare, after his death, his work was published and classified into the sometimes overlapping genres of tragedy, comedy, romance, and history. One of his plays that have an overlapping genre is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play is a comedy but has some paradigms of romantic comedy. Since the play is a comedy, it's clear from the outset that it will be a comedy and that the ending of the play will be happy, rather than a tragedy ending that will try to make the audience feel sad for the character. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ...
Imagine living a tragic existence, not even two entire decades long. Imagine being controlled by an invisible, yet limitless puppet string conducted by “the stars”. When fate is your enemy and time reveals each unraveling tragedy to your dismay, you understand how it feels to be the protagonist’s of Shakespeare’s most famous love story, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Tradition, heredity, and ancestry symbolize the celestial psychology that is the stars. Controlling every miniscule detail of the play from human behavior to action sequences, to the ultimate climax of the tale. The power that fate has is surprisingly destructible yet inevitable to audiences as they come to realize the given characteristics that cannot be changed, even to avoid death. The moment Romeo and Juliet initially saw one another, they were sure their love was meant to be. This feeling was brought on because their love was the solution of the stars, or forefathers, to cure the rivaling families’ animosity. Fate contributes to the development of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by relating to astrological terms, human behavior, and fate as an agent of destruction.
Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream are both plays written by Shakespeare. Like much of Shakespeare’s work, they contain beautiful language and rhyming patterns. Romeo and Juliet is very similar Midsummer Night’s Dream because in act one both texts discuss daughters with prearranged marriages, in act two Romeo and Lysander jump in and out of love, and in act three both plays contain terrible misconceptions. Clearly the plays contain similar content and ideas, but they are equally entertaining.
Throughout this school year our Honors English class has been spending time reading and analyzing multiple classic books, all of which I find intriguing. This includes "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Odyssey", "Candide", and my personal favorite, "Things Fall Apart." This book emphasizes cultural ideas of both the Europeans and the native Africans as they face conflict. The characters in "TFA" demonstrate two different ways to react to conflict. Out of the many books we've read throughout this year, "TFA" was easily the best.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is, in a way, Romeo and Juliet turned inside out--a tragedy turned farcical. The tragedy both are based on is the story of "Pyramus and Thisbe." In one, Ovid's story is treated as a melodrama (in Romeo and Juliet) and in another, it is fodder for comedy (in A Midsummer Night's Dream).
In Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, the leading female characters have traits that can join them together or separate them. Juliet and Katherine both face having to marry a man they don’t want to wed and face pressure to marry them from their fathers. Both of their personalities come through by the decisions they make, Juliet can be unthoughtful on how she makes decisions and Katherine can be more sassy towards her family and society about marriage. Shakespeare still let some of the characters personalities clash together giving them some of the same qualities. The roles, Katherine and Juliet were different in the fact that Juliet was naive and spoiled unlike Katherine, but they both have stubbornness in common.
JULIET: Take Romeo and cut him out into little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. 3.2.23-6. Here Romeo, transformed into a shimmering star forever, becomes the very definition of light, outshining even the sun. One of the more important instances of this motif is Romeo’s lengthy meditation on the sun and the moon during the balcony scene, in which Juliet, metaphorically described as the sun, is seen as “banishing the envious moon” and transforming the night into day (II.i.46). This symbolizes that the love of Romeo and Juliet will banish all darkness and turn the darkness into light.
A heart felt tragedy and a whimsical comedy looking past the fictional of fairies and extreme use of over melodramatic language, both works are held by a factual anchor. Both Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream take place during the Renaissance era, written by William Shakespeare. His writings have also been known to reflect the culture of the time era. Both Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are historically accurate to a large extent because of the settings, the allusions to history, and the realistic characters that Shakespeare incorporates into his plays.
Two of Shakespeare’s most famous works include Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Romeo and Juliet is about two lovers from feuding families that end with their tragic deaths. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comical story about a complicated journey where two couples run into a forest and get manipulated by mythical creatures. Both feature a fight scene where the main characters fight. Both plays also feature death scenes where two lovers die, though one is portrayed as a performance and is fiction. Though the two may share overlapping scenes, Shakespeare uses the literary tools diction, situation, and sentence structure to set the plays’ genres, comedy and tragedy, apart.
Many authors believe that music is “the language of emotions(Juslin).” Romeo and Juliet is a play written by William Shakespeare and is about a young man and woman from rivaling families that fall in love. Unsteady is a song written by X-Ambassadors that is about falling in love and fearing the idea of losing their loved one. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, though written in the 1500’s, share similar themes, tones, and voices with the 2015 song, Unsteady, by X-Ambassadors.
Throughout the story, the representations of light and dark change on several occasions. First, in the beginning, Romeo is referring to Juliet as an angel and the sun. This light is used to show her beauty and his desire. He also refers to the moon and darkness as unwanted due to its lack of romance (2.2.4). The characters, in the beginning of the story, make light seem desirable and have a positive connotation, where darkness is negative. However, as the story continues, this changes. Shakespeare writes the middle of the story where Romeo and Juliet are falling in love differently. They meet at night because of their secret love. Darkness is shown as being opportunistic and romantic. Light is viewed as a negative aspect due to the problems it brings to the surface. Romeo and Juliet highlights this change, but the transformations do not stop there. The end of the story is where Romeo and Juliet are in the tomb and are then found dead. Light, again, means beauty and pleasantness, whereas dark represents sorrow and gloom. Shakespeare uses this technique of switching to highlight the power of love and the outcomes of the feud. Before Romeo and Juliet were together, the world was as it is usually. When they are together, their worlds are, in a sense, flipped upside down. They have to make what they can out of their relationship, even if it is the
William Shakespeare has provided some of the most brilliant plays to ever be performed on the stage. He is also the author of numerous sonnets and poems, but he is best known for his plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. In this essay I would like to discuss the play and movie, "Romeo and Juliet", and also the movie, Shakespeare in Love.
To Romeo, Juliet shines brighter than any other girl: “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. / Arise, fair sun and kill the envious moon” (2. 2. 3-4). This powerful comparison to light shows the magnitude of Romeo’s love for Juliet. Throughout the play, Romeo continues to praise Juliet for her beauty and brilliance. These continued comparisons emphasize the intensity of their love. Additionally, Romeo’s fixation with Juliet being his light demonstrates how his whole life revolves around her, similar to how planets revolve around the sun or moths swarm to a light. Light, however, does not just demonstrate the intensity of Romeo and Juliet’s love, but also the severity and importance of keeping their relationship a secret. Unlike darkness, with light comes to the ability to see the truth. Romeo and Juliet know that they themselves are in peril when the world is light: “Your lady mother is coming to your chamber. / The day is broke, be wary, look about. / Then, window, let day in, and let life out” (3. 4. 39-41). In the case of Romeo in Juliet’s bedroom, light coming through the window directly correlates with the risk of them being discovered. As it gets lighter, the sooner Romeo has to leave. By it not being night, the cover for Romeo and Juliet’s love is no longer there, leaving their love transparent and visible. Therefore, as night disappears, Romeo must