Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Critical Analysis of a Midsummer Night's Dream
Influence on Shakespeare's writings
Influence on Shakespeare's writings
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Critical Analysis of a Midsummer Night's Dream
One of the most significant aspects of Station Eleven is the notion that audiences have a great desire to watch William Shakespeare’s plays. Importantly, Station Eleven centers on a group of traveling actors who perform plays at the audience’s requests. The most compelling feature the audiences want in the play is excellence. Understanding why the audiences call for Shakespeare in order to deliver excellence is vital. Examining and analyzing one of William Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, will reveal the reasons why Shakespeare’s work is considered highly skilled and excellent. Significantly, two features of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that are worth examining are his cleverness with language and his appeal to multiple …show more content…
This is ultimately demonstrated in Shakespeare’s use of wit, barbed puns, and elaborate metaphors. Importantly, Shakespeare’s use of wit, barbed puns, and elaborate metaphors is best demonstrated in the characters Lysander and Hermia. Both of these characters incorporate snappy wordplay and clever banter in their dialogue. For example, in Act II, ii, 51-58, both characters banter back and forth about where they are sleeping. Both meanings of the verb ‘to lie’ are defined and discussed at length. Importantly, this reveals Shakespeare’s clever use of language because he is able to successfully keep this particular play lighthearted and fun. The use of wit, puns, and metaphors are not only revealing of his great writing talent, but of his ability to make the audience laugh. Puns and witty language are recognized in all groups, making this play highly transferrable to all audiences across all demographics. His cleverness with language is also shown when Demetrius uses cliched imagery in order to compare Helena’s features to a goddess. According to the play, “O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!/To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?” (III, ii, 137-38). Importantly, this shows Shakespeare’s distinct ability to write in such a way that audiences can recognize his great gift at writing. By having Demetrius focus solely on Helena’s physical beauty and …show more content…
As illuminated, audiences wanted to watch excellence, and this usually meant that the actors would act out Shakespeare’s works. Importantly, understanding why William Shakespeare’s work is considered excellent is pertinent. Analyzing and examining A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare ultimately revealed the reasons why audiences love Shakespeare’s plays and writing. Two features of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that are considered excellent are his cleverness with language and his appeal to multiple audiences including the groundlings, the middle class, and the aristocrats. Through the use of wit, barbed puns, and elaborate metaphors, Shakespeare demonstrated his excellent writing skills. His use of characterization and plot also demonstrated how Shakespeare included snappy wordplay and witty banter in order to entertain audiences. Moreover, this play can be considered excellent because nearly everyone enjoys Shakespeare’s work. His distinct and unique ability to cater to different audiences makes Shakespeare one of the greatest writers in human history. In this way, nearly everyone enjoys his plays, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because audiences can relate to the plot, characters, situations. Moreover, audiences are all entertained by his clever use of language. This illuminates the fact that William
Shakespeare’s development of characters allows the reader to better understand, and be able to associate with occurring situations in the text. When Titania is forced to explain to her husband why she has a child, she recalls the tale of her old friend. Who “sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands, marking the embarked traders on the flood, when we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind” (2.1.130-3). When Titania
Clark, W.G., and W. Aldis Wirhgt, eds. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Vol 2. USA: Nd. 2 vols.
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. ” (Pg. 18). By creating a comedy using both dramatic and situational irony, Shakespeare was able to get the true meaning of A Midsummer Night’s Dream across to his audience: “love is blind”. When using situational irony, the readers were often tricked into believing in different outcomes to certain events in the story. With dramatic irony, on the other hand, it was used mainly for a comedic effect, rather than creating a plot twist for the audience. By creating a comedy using these two types of irony, Shakespeare was able to deliver his message of the true meaning of love.
Shakespeare starts the play with a lot of humour, with. the conversation between Sampson and Gregory, both of them using a lot of puns. I'm a snob. This type of punning, for example, on the words "coals," "collier," "
Hamlet is one of the greatest literature pieces of all time, there is no doubt. But what makes Hamlet such a well known play? The main reason so many people read Hamlet is because of Shakespeare’s great use of literary techniques. The two main literary techniques that turn the play into a work of art are the use of character foils and irony. Shakespeare’s use of the literary techniques foils and irony turn Hamlet into a work of art.
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, playwright William Shakespeare creates in Bottom, Oberon, and Puck unique characters that represent different aspects of him. Like Bottom, Shakespeare aspires to rise socially; Bottom has high aims and, however slightly, interacts with a queen. Through Bottom, Shakespeare mocks these pretensions within himself. Shakespeare also resembles King Oberon, controlling the magic we see on the stage. Unseen, he and Oberon pull the strings that control what the characters act and say. Finally, Shakespeare is like Puck, standing back from the other characters, acutely aware of their weaknesses and mocks them, relishing in mischief at their expense. With these three characters and some play-within-a-play enchantment, Shakespeare mocks himself and his plays as much as he does the young lovers and the mechanicals onstage. This genius playwright who is capable of writing serious dramas such as Hamlet and Julius Caesar is still able to laugh at himself just as he does at his characters. With the help of Bottom, Oberon, and Puck, Shakespeare shows us that theatre, and even life itself, are illusions that one should remember to laugh at.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream may come off as a simple comedy but is a complex play with many interesting aspects. Passion, a significant characteristic, is often expressed through the play. Characters in the play show passion for different reasons; Puck passions for mischief, Helena for Demetrius’ love and Bottom for theatrics, are a few of the many examples. Passion shows much significance, being the most important characteristic in the play.
Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Andrew Gurr. The Norton Shakespeare. Second ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. Print.
William Shakespeare, poet and playwright, utilized humor and irony as he developed specific language for his plays, thereby influencing literature forever. “Shakespeare became popular in the eighteenth century” (Epstein 8). He was the best all around. “Shakespeare was a classic” (8). William Shakespeare is a very known and popular man that has many works, techniques and ways. Shakespeare is the writer of many famous works of literature. His comedies include humor while his plays and poems include irony. Shakespeare sets himself apart by using his own language and word choice. Shakespeare uses certain types of allusions that people always remember, as in the phrase from Romeo and Juliet, “star-crossed lovers”.
The common aim of playwrights of any time or location is to capture and hold the attention of their audience. It is an irrefutable fact that in order for a play to be successful, the playwright must maintain the interest of the audience. The tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, is one of Shakespeare's most renowned plays, and has been capturing the interest of its audiences for many hundreds of years. The success of Othello is largely due to Shakespeare's phenomenal ability to secure the unwavering attention of an audience. Various techniques were employed by Shakespeare in order to achieve this crucial feat. Through construction of intriguing characters, exploration of universal themes, use of comic relief and a well-written script featuring a compelling plot, Shakespeare ensured the tragedy of Othello would hold the interest of the audience.
At least six or seven years pass after the writing of Midsummer Night’s Dream before we find Shakespeare engaged in Hamlet, the second of the great plays with an important Supernatural element, and, in the opinion of many, the greatest tragedy ever penned. (99) There is no more exalted ranking than the above. Richard A. Lanham in the essay “Superposed Plays” maintains that no other English tragedy has generated the literary comment which this play has produced: “Hamlet is one of the great tragedies. It has generated more comment than any other written document in English literature, one would guess, reverent, serious comment on it as a serious play” (91).
Shakespeare’s plays are a product of the Elizabethan theatrical context in which they were first performed. A lot of pressure was put on Shakespeare as he wrote his plays because he was not allowed to upset the royal family. His style would have been different than others in those times and a lot more thought has gone into his writing than people listening would think. Usually, the audience take for granted the cleverness and thought of Shakespeare’s writing, however, now we have studied and gone into great detail about Shakespeare’s writing, we can appreciate it more than they did:
Overall, one would prove false to defy Shakespeare’s brilliance. Shakespeare had the power to employ the right words in order to express his thoughts to their full extent. He presented each theme in his own original fashion, thus increasing the amazement of his readers. Shakespeare was, is and will always be an idol in English literature.
The impeccable style and craft of Shakespeare’s writing has always been looked upon with great respect, and it continues to serve as an inspiration to writers and thinkers today even as it did when it was being first performed in London. Shakespeare’s modern audience, however, is far less diverse than the one for which he originally wrote. Due to the antiquity of his language, Shakespeare’s modern readership consists mostly of students and intellectuals, whereas in Shakespeare’s own time, his plays were performed in playhouses packed with everyone from royalty to peasants. Because of this, Shakespeare was forced to write on many different levels, the most sophisticated of which appealed to his more elite audience members, while the more straightforward and often more crude of which appealed to his less educated viewers, and the most universal of which still appeals to us.
Shakespeare’s plays are written in dramatic verse and his use of imagery is very effective, as it engages the audiences’ attention, to give them a deeper meaning and reality to each and every character.