Analysis of A Midsummer Night´s Dream

Once again Shakespeare has beautifully illustrated the bi-polar nature of human emotions. Although the character Puck was an impish fellow, he certainly knew how to develop a study in falling in and out of love.

scene two, at the end of the play, Puck also is desiring for the audience to view the play

When Puck and Bottom meet each other in Act III, scene i, Puck see this as a moment to get at Bottom. Bottom begins this scene the same way as in Act I, scene ii: he is bossy and pretends to know more about acting and staging than he can actually demonstrate, which shows that he has a huge ego. Because of Bottom's foolishness, Puck cannot resist pulling a prank on him—Puck gives Bottom the head of a donkey (ass in the play). Here, Shakespeare drives the irony of this trick with Bottom's reactions to his friends' remarks, again this is mainly for comic relief:

Throughout the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare uses both fate and free will to present his philosophy towards the nature of love. The characters struggle through confusion and conflicts to be with the one they love. Although the course of their love did not go well, love ultimately triumphs over all at the end of the play. The chaos reaches a climax causing great disruption among the lovers. However, the turmoil is eventually resolved by Puck, who fixes his mistake. The confusion then ends and the lovers are with their true love. Throughout the play Shakespeare's philosophy was displayed in various scenes, and his concept still holds true in modern society.

If there was no such thing as sympathy, empathy, or love in our world, it would be a hard place to live. If there was no hard law or reason in our world, it would be a crazy place to live. Neither of these worlds would be anybody’s first choice as a home - it's just common sense take away either of these two fundamental aspects of life, and everything is immediately chaos. In fact, it is only in a world such as ours, where legal and human emotion work together, that we are happy. In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare recognizes this truth and uses the two settings to represent the city of Athens as law, order, civility, and judgment, while the woods represent chaos, incivility, dreams, and love.

Oberon, riddled with jealousy over his queen’s beloved “changeling”, plots to make a fool out of Titania with his magic potion so he may steal away the child. Oberon's love-potion has the same effect of that of the famed Cupid's arrows, it charms the sight of those it is anointed upon, and gets them to fall in “love” with the first creature they see. Oberon anoints the eyes of Titania and she ends up falling in “love” with the first creature she sees, Bottom, an actor who is rehearsing in the woods, who’s head has been turned into that of an ass by Puck. Oberon plan is successful, he is in fact able to steal away the child while his queen dotes upon Bottom, but then things start to get more complicated in the moonlit woods.

The story of A Midsummer Night's Dream was mainly about love and its abnormal dealings. In the play, Shakespeare tried to show that love is unpredictable, unreasonable, and at times is blind. The theme of love was constantly used during the play and basically everything that was said and done was related to the concept of love and its unpredictable ness. Shakespeare made all of the characters interact their lives to be based on each other’s. At first, everything was very confusing, and the characters were faced with many different problems. In the end, however, they were still able to persevere and win their true love, the love they were searching for in the first place.

Puck’s interference with the Athenian citizen’s relationships and the love flower emphasizes the “the difficulties of love, the power of magic, the nature of dreams[,] and the relationships between fantasy and reality” (Bordas del Prado). When Oberon sends Puck to mess with Titania, Puck makes her fall in love with Nick Bottom, a member of the Athenian working class, after giving him the head of a donkey. When Titania professes her newfound love for Bottom, he admits, “Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: and to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays” (Shakespeare). Bottom sees how illogical Titania’s interest in him is, but he goes along with it anyways. Puck creates such a strange relationship out of thin air, between two people that have absolutely nothing in common. The theme of love being completely unpredictable is evident between these two, as well as it is between the four Athenian lovers. Though Puck stirs up trouble, he is a benevolent spirit, and can easily convey the message of love to the audience. Many times in Shakespeare’s play, the main protagonist ends the show with a recap of events and a goodbye blessing. At the end of the play, Puck closes the show with a positive narration, “We will make amends ere long; else the Puck a liar

In the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the plethora of comedic styles used by Shakespeare illustrate his intention to poke fun at love throughout the play. The play is notorious for its intricate and irrational plotline, mainly due to the constantly shifting love triangles. Once the powerful fairies become involved with the fate of the naive lovers – Demetrius, Helena, Lysander and Hermia – matters are further complicated. The complication inflicted by the fairies is credited to the powerful love potion that Oberon, King of the Fairies, hands over to Puck, a mischievous fairy, to use on his wife Titania, with intentions to embarrass and distract her. This spiteful attitude is due to Oberon and Titania’s argument over the custody of an

     In the movie version of A Midsummer Nights Dream, Puck has a more overt sense of humor. Although the dialogue is purely Shakespeare, the actions and direction of Puck’s character bring a new perspective to the story. When we are first introduced to Puck in the tree, he plays some jokes, such as vanishing, and turning up in a goblet of wine. He is speaking the same lines as in the play, but the addition of visual humor adds to the appeal of the original play. One is again exposed to this when Oberon and Puck discuss the flower while lying in the forest. Puck imitates Oberon’s position, adjusting himself in a friendly mocking manner towards his master. One also gets the impression from Puck’s body language that, although he

After observing the senseless behavior of the Athenian lovers, Puck exclaims to Oberon, “Lord, what fools these mortals be” (III.ii.115)! This line, aimed at Lysander’s foolish behavior is meant to be humorous, but it also cleverly addresses the prominent theme of the story: that love is not under human control. Puck is clearly referring to the foolishness and exaggerated emotions of the four lovers in the play; however, Shakespeare also intends to target the audience members by emphasizing that humans in general have the tendency to do and say crazy things because of love’s powerful grasp on their emotions. Therefore, a character such as Puck, according to Robert Diyanni, “may remind us in some ways of ourselves; they may appeal to us because they differ from us” (Diyanni 1270). Although the Athenian lovers neglect to realize the extent of their ludicrous behavior, their unbalanced emotions are very noticeable to the fairies, who replace the audience’s role in this scene. Moreover, it signifies the contrast between both the human lovers, who become so entangled in a disarray of emotion, and the enchanting fairies, always playful and rascally in

That you should here repent you’. After his silly prologue the court start to make comments about his punctuation he puts the full stops in the wrong places Hipployta says that he is like a child on a recorder act 5 scene 1 lines 122-123. All of this adds to the humour.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often read as a dramatization of the incompatibility of “reason and love” (III.i. 127), yet many critics pay little attention to how Shakespeare manages to draw his audience into meditating on these notions independently (Burke 116). The play is as much about the conflict between passion and reason concerning love, as it is a warning against attempting to understand love rationally. Similarly, trying to understand the play by reason alone results in an impoverished reading of the play as a whole – it is much better suited to the kind of emotive, arbitrary understanding that is characteristic of dreams. Puck apologises directly to us, the audience,

What literary criticism lens is most effective in creating meaning and entertainment throughout Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has several characters involved in a love triangle. Many scenes in the story involves power being used or taken away and use of money. Throughout the play, readers and viewers experiences Hermia’s power is being taken away by her father, Eugues,which is her kindred, not letting her marry the man she truly loves,Lysander. Later throughout the story, Robin, character from the story contains a enthrall love juice that has power and makes another character from the story, Titania, fall in love with a donkey.The marxist literary criticism lens is the most effective in creating meaning and entertaining readers and viewers in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The supernatural world is rather distinct to that of the human world entrenched in societal standards and boundaries. Shakespeare’s play, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, explores this concept, particularly through the use of Puck. In agreement to Harold Bloom’s statement, the following essay will analyse how Puck is significant because, by being so disparate, he is able to show the limitations of the human. This will be done through, first, exploring a definition of the human in relation to the supernatural. Subsequently, the essay will use a Freudian lense to analyse the morality of Puck and, lastly, the essay will focus on Puck’s physical characteristics as well as his ability to span across boundaries in the play and the metatheatrical realm.