In Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” First put to the stage in the 1600s it is made clear that Shakespeare wanted the men in his play to be seen as power hungry and wily. Through a fight over a small child, and multiple fights about the wrongs and rights of marriage and love, men are portrayed as cruel and willing to do anything to gain influence and power. Although at first it may seem like women in the play are stubborn and dramatic, but if you look closer into the situation and happenings you can see that they are driven to do what is right and the fight has only become so intense and crazy because of the Man’s craving for power.Through the portrayal of Oberon, Egeus, and Demetrius and his lover (Helena), the play is indicating …show more content…
In the play Oberon wants possession of a young indian boy currently under the watch of Titania after the boy’s dead mother’s last wish was for her son to be under the care of the kind fairy queen. When Titania refuses to give the boy up instead of giving up and admitting defeat oberon decided to make his wife fall in love with another creature under the influence of a magic flower of cupids nectar. “What thou seest when thou dost wake do it for thy true love take--Be ounce, or cat, or bear, pard, or boar with bristled hair, in thy eye that shall appear, when thou wakest it is thou dear.”(act 2 scene 2 lines 30-39) Oberon simply leaved his poor innocent wife to fall in love with an animal, no guilt. Shakespeare makes it so the audience can interpret that Oberon finds satisfaction in the fact that he has won, he is going to get the boy. Just one of the many examples of a cruel act of a ruthless, power hungry man who is upset because he isn’t getting his
Night's Dream, one will notice an immense difference in the way that a noble woman compared
The time period and setting in which this play is written causes the characters to crave control that affects the fate of others. Shakespeare writes this play during the time period of the mid-1500s to the early 1600s. The hierarchy of power during this time favors men more than women. Similarly, women are strictly valued as property rather than equal counterparts to men. England’s societal pyramid during this time period is evident in A Midsummer’s Night Dream as Egeus threatens to end his daughter’s life unless she complies with his wishes to marry a man she does not love:
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are many traces of lenses. The lens that I chose to explain is the gender lens. Since this is a long time ago, women weren’t treated the same as men. Women were treated as items, as property. Men were the rulers of everything, they made the big choices. Hermia was treated as property that Demetrius wanted, even though Lysander already “owned” and Egeus (Hermia’s father) was lending out to people. It seems like a sexist world back then.
Oberon wanted to get revenge from Titania for not giving him the Indian boy, so Oberon decided to put a potion on Titania, while she was sleeping, which made her fall in love with the first person she sees, “Wake when some vile thing is near” (2.2). After waking up, Titania didn’t care about the Indian boy anymore. This destroyed her knowledge of what is reality and what is a dream. Oberon wanted her to fall in love with an animal, so that she can beg him to remove the potion. He planned to not remove the potion until she gives him the Indian boy,”Titania wakes and straightway loves an ass” (3.2)
There have been strict gender roles set in place for men and women to follow, throughout history. During Shakespearean times, The females were viewed as this weak, emotionally and physically. Women were expected to always listen and obey their husbands, father or male when demanded. Women were never in positions to make the rules. Men on the other hand, were expected to be the head of their households, strong, and wise. In “A Midsummer Night's Dream” written by Shakespeare, you may notice a lot of “gender roles” being played. Oberon and Titania characters are the only couple in the play who have been married for a while in the play. That makes them an important role in “A Midsummer Night's Dream”.The other couples are just starting out
Even his lightest plays have serious undertones to them. Each one depicts life as it once was, complete with the rules and expectations which were common at the time. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare reflects society’s views on love and gender, both in his own time and in ancient Athens.
Similar to other works by Shakespeare, such as The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream embellishes the pressures that arise between genders dealing with complicated family and romantic situations. The plot includes a duke who is going to marry a woman he conquered in battle, the king and queen of the fairies embroiled in a fight so fierce that it unbalances the natural world, and a daughter fighting with her father for her right to marry the man she chooses. The girl’s father selects Demetrius to marry his daughter, but she is in love with another man, Lysander, who loves her in return, and her friend Helena is in love Demetrius, but he wants nothing to do with her. Considering the fact that males were dominant during that era, whereas, men chased women, and women remained submissive, Shakespeare dallies with those traditional roles and there are several possible reasons why. Perhaps he made women a stronger force in his plays because he wanted to give his audience a break fr...
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, is a play that illustrates a good picture of woman’s lack of freedom. It is a story of several couples, among which there is a fairy king, Oberon, who proves his sovereignty over the queen of the fairies, Titania. The two have an ongoing conflict about who should keep the Indian boy, whose mother had recently died. Titania doesn’t want to give him up because she and the boy’s mother knew each other very good; whereas Oberon has no relations to the boy, but really wants him as a servant. Ultimately, Oberon wins the boy by using a trick of his on Titania, revealing her weakness. Shakespeare uses Oberon to show this power of man over woman and to expose woman’s unheard, meaningless, and feeble opinions through Titania. In several scenes throughout the play, the female character, Titania, struggles to do as she desires; however, Oberon takes things under his control and helps to portray the female as weaker than the male.
Shakespeare’s literature exemplifies creativeness and powerful word use to create bodies of work with strong attributes that grab the reader’s attention. Midsummer’s night dream is an example of some of Shakespeare’s best work. The thesis of this essay is Hermia’s father, Esues wants his daughter to marry someone that he approves of and more importantly he wants someone for her that is respected by the rest of society to admire. This play has love, drama and characters that follow their hearts. Hermia is told she is not allowed to love or marry Lysander by her father. Her father Esues wants her to marry Demetrius. The setting of the play is taken in Athens. Athens is a place of order and royalty and a place where people are supposed to marry
The general public may also have preferred strength in female characters as a reflection of pride for their beloved monarch who was one of the few highly competent English rulers in spite of her gender and the sexism of the time in which she lived. Regardless of his reasoning for scripting women the way he did, Shakespeare was most certainly an advocate for feminism when he wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream. From the feminist perspective, liberal thinking and open-mindedness like William Shakespeare are welcome to invade our modern literature and lives for the next four hundred years. Works Cited Greene, Lenz, Neely, eds., pp. 113-117
Often in literature, parallels are used to accentuate certain things. William Shakespeare utilizes this tool in both The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In both of these comedic plays, there is a set of women who are at odds with each other. These relationships can be compared and contrasted in different aspects.
Some of the characters are fairies, kings, queens, and even lower class people. It is
Oprah Winfrey once said, “The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” But, what actually is a dream and what do dreams really have to do with one’s everyday life? In essence, a dream is a series of mental images and emotions occurring during slumber. Dreams can also deal with one’s personal aspirations, goals, ambitions, and even one’s emotions, such as love and hardship. However, dreams can also give rise to uneasy and terrible emotions; these dreams are essentially known as nightmares. In today’s society, the concept of dreaming and dreams, in general, has been featured in a variety of different mediums, such as literature, film and even music. While the mediums of film and music are both prime examples of this concept, the medium of literature, on the other hand, contains a much more diverse set of examples pertaining to dreams and dreaming. One key example is William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While the portrayal of dreams, in general, plays a prominent role in Shakespeare’s play, the exploration of many aspects of nature, allows readers to believe that dreams are merely connected to somewhat unconventional occurrences.
In Williams Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," many of the play's female characters have strong similarities and differences among one another. Although many of the main female characters in the play come from dissimilar backgrounds, their similarities are brought together by common problems associated with society and love. Of the four main female characters, Hippolyta, Titania, Helena, and Hermia, both Hippolyta and Titania are royalty while Helena and Hermia are commoners. However, a common theme associated with Hippolyta, Titania, Helena, and Hermia, regardless of their social caste, is their similarities and differences in dealing with love in a patriarchal society. Nevertheless, the patriarchal society in which Hippolyta, Titania, Helena, and Hermia live in struggles to hinder the feelings and attitudes which provide them with a distinct conception for love in a male dominated society.
When the lovers awoke in the morning, they thought all of the ridiculous things that had happened or been said the night before had just all been a dream. However, if Oberon had been more specific in his directions to Robin, "a sweet Athenian lady is in love with a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes. thou shalt know the man by the Athenian garments he hath on," all of this could have been avoided, and everything would have been fine (page 53). This gives insight to the thematic nature of the work by setting a magical atmosphere for the lovers to be in.