Name:Matthew Sabarez Comment by William Donaldson: Checked by me 8/05
WRITE YOUR ESSAY BELOW:
Three words can be used to describe a play such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Hilarious. Romantic. Absurd. A Midsummer night’s dream is a romantic comedic play written by one of the most famous writers of the Renaissance, William Shakespeare. With the play in hand, Shakespeare creates chaotic situations around Athens with magic interwoven to connect them all. Through these scenarios, Shakespeare points out that the concept of dreaming and the world of dreams are heavily implied and significant to the story and its message. As the appearance of magic and the supernatural become the ramifications for the play and the mood of everything being a ‘just a dream’. The appearances of these events become distinguishable yet questionable as our own and the character’s interpretations become uncertain. But behind the scenes and drama, Shakespeare’s own agenda and meaning of the play indicate that dreams aren’t just a mere drama element.
Shakespeare makes magic and the concept of supernatural the focal point of the world of dreams, using it to separate it from reality with its absurdity. Magic and the supernatural have a fundamental role to play in the story, as Shakespeare chooses to use certain elements to create the feel of the dream: absurd and mysterious. The concept of fairies and magic flowers falls right into the ‘dream’ theme of A Midsummer night’s dream as the concept of fairies and magic flowers, could only fit in dreams of the Athenian citizens and the audiences themselves as it would be too weird or even insane to consider it as reality. With characters falling asleep, the magic and supernatural make up an even bigger distinguishment between reality and dreams as when we fall asleep we end up dreaming and dreams can involve magic and mythical creatures such as fairies; making the significance of dreams even stronger within the play. Even some of the context and what the characters say can seem to be unrealistic and hard to believe,” Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew'd thee once: The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid, will make or man or woman madly dote, Upon the next live creature that it sees.” the magic and characters of superstition background can make all of this seem absurd, like a dream would turn out to be. Shakespeare writes this play to share the world of dreaming to his audience by making deliberate choices in the content, characters and setting to make it feel unreal like a dream; this is effective because these elements make the play mysterious and feel like a dream, showing the importance of dreaming.
Shakespeare makes sure that the world of reality and dreaming...
