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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 26, 2020 • ( 0 )

Nothing by Shakespeare before A Midsummer Night’s Dream is its equal and in some respects nothing by him afterwards surpasses it. It is his first undoubted masterpiece, with-out flaws, and one of his dozen or so plays of overwhelming originality and power.

—Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is William Shakespeare’s first comic masterpiece and remains one his most beloved and performed plays. It seems reasonable to claim that on any fine night during the summer at an outdoor theater somewhere in the world an audience is being treated to the magic of the play. It is easy, however, to overlook through familiarity what a radically original and experimental play this is. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the triumph of Shakespeare’s early play-writing career, a drama of such marked inventiveness and visionary reach that its first audiences must have only marveled at what could possibly come next from this extraordinary playwright. In it Shakespeare changed the paradigm of stage comedy that he had inherited from the Greeks and the Romans by dizzyingly multiplying his plot lines and by bringing the irrational and absurd illusions of romantic love center stage. He established human passion and gender relations as comedy’s prime subject, transforming such fundamental concepts as love, courtship, and marriage that have persisted in our culture ever since. If that is not enough A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes use of its romantic intrigue, supernatural setting, and rustic foolery to pose essential questions about the relationship between art and life, appearance and reality, truth and illusion, dreams and the waking world that anticipate the self-referential agenda of such avant-garde, metadramatists as Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, and Tom Stoppard. A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents a kind of declaration of liberation for the stage, in which, after its example, nothing seems either off limits or impossible. In the play Theseus, the duke of Athens, after hearing the lovers’ strange story of what happened to them in the forest famously interprets their incredible account by linking the lovers with the lunatic and the poet:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy: Or, in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream similarly gives a “local habitation and a name” on stage for what madness, love, and the poet’s imagination can conjure.

Shakespeare first made his theatrical reputation in the early 1590s with his Henry VI plays, with the historical chronicle genre that he pioneered. His early tragedies— Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet —and comedies— The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, and Love’s Labour’s Lost —all show the playwright working within the dramatic conventions that he inherited from classical, medieval, and English folk sources. With A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare goes beyond imitation to discover a distinctive voice and manner that would add a new dramatic species. After A Midsummer Night’s Dream there was Old Comedy, New Comedy, and now Shakespearean comedy, a synthesis of both. To explain the origin and manner of A Midsummer Night’s Dream scholars have long relied on a speculative story so apt and evocative that it must be believed, even though there is no hard evidence to support it. Thought to have been written in the winter of 1593–94 to be performed at an aristocratic wedding attended by Queen Elizabeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream therefore resembles the Renaissance masque, a fanciful mixture of allegorical and mythological enactments, music, dance, elegant costumes, and elaborate theatrical effects to entertain at banquets celebrating betrothals, weddings, and seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night. In the words of Theseus at his own nuptial fete, the masque served “To wear away this long age of three hours / Between our after-supper and bed-time.” We do know from the title page of its initial publication in the First Quarto of 1600 that the play “hath been sundry times publikely acted” by Shakespeare’s company, but the notion that it had served as a wedding entertainment establishes the delightful fun-house mirroring of an actual wed-ding party first watching a play that included a wedding party watching a play. Such an appropriate scrambling of reality and illusion reflects the source of the humor and wonder of A Midsummer Night’s Dream .

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of just three plays out of Shakespeare’s 39 (the other two are Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Tempest ) for which the play-wright did not rely on a central primary source. Instead Shakespeare assembled elements from classical sources, romantic narratives, and English folk materials, along with details of ordinary Elizabethan life to juggle and juxtapose four different imaginative realms, each with its own distinctive social and literary conventions and language. Each is linked by analogy to the theme of love and its obstacles. The first is the classically derived court world of Theseus, duke of Athens, who has first conquered Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, then won her heart, and now eagerly (and impatiently) anticipates their wedding. Their impending nuptials prompt the arrival of emissaries from the natural world, the king and queen of the fairies—Oberon and Titania—to bless their union, as well as a collection of “rude mechanicals”—Bottom, Quince, Flute, Starveling, Snout, and Snug—to devise a theatrical performance as entertainment at the Duke’s wedding celebration. To the world of the Athenian court, the alternate supernatural court world of the fairies, and the realistic sphere of the Athenian artisans, Shakespeare overlaps a fourth center of interest in the young lovers Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius. Shakespeare mixes the dignified blank verse of Theseus and Hippolyta with the rhymed iambic speeches of the lovers, the rhymed tetrameter of the fairies, and the wonder-fully earthy prose of the rustics into a virtuoso’s performance of polyphonic verbal effects, the greatest Shakespeare, or any other dramatist, had yet sup-plied for the stage.

The complications commence when Hermia’s father, Egeus, objects to his daughter’s unsanctioned preference for Lysander over Demetrius, whom Egeus has selected for her. Egeus invokes Athenian law mandating death or celibacy for a maid’s refusal to abide by parental authority in the choice of a mate. Parental objection to the choice of young lovers was a standard plot device of Greek New Comedy and the Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence that Shakespeare inherited. To the obstacles placed in the lovers’ paths Shakespeare adds his own variation of the earlier Aristophanic Old Comedy’s break with the normalcy of everyday life by having his lovers escape into the forest. Critic Northrup Frye has called this symbolic setting of magical regeneration and vitality the “green world.” Here the lovers are tested and allowed the freedom and new possibilities to gain fulfillment and harmony denied them in the civilized world, in which duty dominates desire and obligation to parental authority and the law overrules self-interest and the heart’s promptings. Critic C. L. Barber has identified in such a departure from the norm a “Saturnalian Pattern” in Shakespearean comedy in which the lovers’ exile from the civilized to the primitive supplies the festive release that characterized the earliest forms of comic drama. Barber argues:

Once Shakespeare finds his own distinctive voice, he is more Aristophanic than any other great English dramatist, despite the fact that the accepted educated models and theories when he started to write were Terentian and Plautine. The Old Comedy cast of his work results from his participation in native saturnalian traditions of the popular theater and the popular holidays. . . . He used the resources of a sophisticated theater to express, in his idyllic comedies and in his clowns’ ironic misrule, the experience of moving to humorous understanding through saturnalian release.

Named for the summer solstice festival, when it was said that a maid could glimpse the man she would marry, A Midsummer Night’s Dream celebrates access to the uncanny and the breakup of all normal rules and social barriers to display human nature in the grips of elemental passions and the subconscious. The lovers in their moonlit, natural setting, at the mercy of the fairies, act out their deepest desires and hostilities in a full display of the power and absurdity of love both to change reality and to redeem it.

Hermia elopes with Lysander, pursued by Demetrius, who in turn is followed by Helena, whom he spurns. They enter a supernatural realm also beset by marital discord, jealousy, and rivalry. Oberon commands his servant Puck to place the juice of a flower once hit by Cupid’s dart in the eyes of the sleeping Titania to cause her to fall in love with the first creature she sees on awakening to help gain for Oberon the changeling boy Titania has refused to yield to him. Oberon, pitying Helena her rejection by Demetrius, also orders Puck to place some of the drops in Demetrius’s eyes so that he will be charmed into love with the woman who dotes on him. Instead Puck comes upon Lysander and Hermia as they sleep, mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, and pours the charm into the wrong eyes so that Lysander falls in love with Helena when she wakes him. Meanwhile Bottom and his companions have retreated to the woods to rehearse a dramatization of the mythological story of Pyramus and Thisbe, another set of star-crossed lovers. Puck gives the exuberant Bottom the head of an ass, and he becomes the first thing the charmed Titania sees on waking. Through the agency of the change of location from court to forest and from daylight to moonlight, with its attendant capacity for magical transformation, the play mounts a witty and uproarious display of the irrationality of love and its victims who see the world through the distorting lens of desire, in which certainty of affection is fleeting and a lover with the head of an ass can cause a queen to forgo her senses and her dignity. As Bottom aptly observes, “reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.” From the perspectives of the fairies the lovers’ absolute claims and earnest rationalizations of such a will-of-the-wisp as love makes them absurd. The tangled mixture of passion, jealousy, rancor, and violence that beset the young lovers after Puck imperfectly corrects his mistake, causing both Lysander and Demetrius to pursue the once spurned Helena, more than justifies Puck’s observation, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

By act 4 day returns, and the disorder of the night proves as fleeting and as insubstantial as a dream. After the four lovers are awakened by Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus, who are hunting in the woods, Lysander again loves Hermia, and Demetrius, still under the power of the potion, gives up his claim to her in favor of Helena. Theseus overrules Egeus’s objections and his own former strict adherence to Athenian law and gives both couples permission to marry that day, along with himself and Hippolyta. Having gained the change-ling boy from Titania, Oberon releases her from her spell. Puck removes the donkey’s head from Bottom, who awakes to wonder at his strange dream:

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. . . . I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be call’d “Bottom’s Dream,” because it hath no bottom.

The only mortal allowed to see the fairies, Bottom is also the only character not threatened or diminished by the alternative fantasy realm he passes through. He freely accepts what he does not understand, considering it more suitable for the delight of art in a future ballad than to be analyzed or reduced by reason. Bottom coexists easily and honestly in the dual world of reality and illusion, maintaining his core identity and integrity even through his trans-formation, from man to ass, to fairy queen’s paramour, to ordinary man again. Called by Harold Bloom “Shakespeare’s most engaging character before Falstaff,” Bottom is the play’s human anchor and affirmation of the joyful acceptance of all the contradictions that the play has sent his way.

With the reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, Bottom’s reunion with his colleagues, and three Athenian weddings, the plot complications are all happily resolved, and act 5 shifts the emphasis from the potentially destructive vagaries of love to a celebration of marriage to crown and contain human desire. Shakespeare’s final sleight of hand and delightful invention, however, is the play within the play, the “tedious and brief” and “very tragical mirth” of the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe by Bottom and his players. In a drama fueled by the complications between appearance and reality this hilariously incompetent burlesque by the play’s rustic clowns impersonating tragic lovers appropriately comments on the play that has preceded it. The drama of Pyramus and Thisbe involves another set of lovers who face parental objections and similarly seek relief in nature, but their adventure goes tragically awry. However, just as Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius avoid through the stage-managing of the fairies a potentially tragic fate from their ordeal in the wood, so is the tragic fate of Pyramus and Thisbe transformed to comedy by the ineptitude of Bottom’s company. The play within the play becomes a pointed microcosm for A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a whole in its conversion of potential tragedy to curative comedy. The newlyweds, who mock the absurdity of Pyramus and Thisbe , fail to make the connection with their own absurd encounter with love and their chance rescue from its anguish, but the actual audience should not. In Shakespeare’s comprehensive comic vision we both laugh at the ridiculousness of others while recognizing ourselves in their dilemmas. Shakespeare’s final point about the inseparability of reality and illusion is scored by having the fairy world coexist with the Athenian court at the play’s conclusion, decreasing the gap between fact and fancy and invading actuality itself by giving the final words to Puck, who addresses the audience directly:

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumb’red here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream.

Like the newlyweds who view a drama that calls attention to its illusion and its “tragical mirth,” the audience is here reminded of the similar blending of reality and dream, the comic and the tragic in the world beyond the stage. Puck serves as Shakespeare’s magician’s assistant, demonstrating that substance and shadow on stage replicate both the illusion of the dramatist’s art and the essence of human life in our own continual interplay of reality, dreams, and desire.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Oxford Lecture by Prof. Emma Smith

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Ebook PDF (5 MB)

Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human PDF (7 MB)

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

William shakespeare.

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Midsummer: Introduction

Midsummer: plot summary, midsummer: detailed summary & analysis, midsummer: themes, midsummer: quotes, midsummer: characters, midsummer: symbols, midsummer: literary devices, midsummer: quizzes, midsummer: theme wheel, brief biography of william shakespeare.

Other Books Related to A Midsummer Night's Dream

• Full Title: A Midsummer Night's Dream
• When Written: Early to mid 1590s
• Where Written: England
• When Published: 1600 (though it was first performed earlier, probably between 1594-96).
• Literary Period: The Renaissance (1500 - 1660)
• Genre: Comic drama
• Setting: The city of Athens and the forest just outside, in some distant, ancient time when it was ruled by the mythological hero Theseus.

Extra Credit for A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare or Not? There are some who believe Shakespeare wasn't educated enough to write the plays attributed to him. The most common anti-Shakespeare theory is that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and used Shakespeare as a front man because aristocrats were not supposed to write plays. Yet the evidence supporting Shakespeare's authorship far outweighs any evidence against. So until further notice, Shakespeare is still the most influential writer in the English language.

A Midsummer Night's Parallel. Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet around the same time he wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream . In A Midsummer Night's Dream , Shakespeare mocks tragic love stories through the escapades of the lovers in the forests and the ridiculous version of Pyramus and Thisbe (a tragic romance from Ovid's Metamorphoses ) that Bottom and his company perform. So at the same time Shakespeare was writing the greatest love story ever told, he was also mocking the conventions of such love stories. It's almost as if Shakespeare was saying, "Yeah, it's tired, it's old, and I can still do it better than anyone else ever could."

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A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The diarist Samuel Pepys wasn’t a fan of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Seeing a performance of the play in 1662, he wrote in his diary that it was ‘the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life’ (though he adds that he liked the dancing, as well as the ‘handsome women’ he saw, ‘which was all my pleasure’).

Despite Pepys’ lack of enthusiasm (for the play itself, anyway), A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains one of Shakespeare’s most enduringly popular comedies. Before we offer some analysis of this play of magic and romance, it might be worth recapping the plot.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream : short plot summary

Theseus, the Duke of Athens, is getting ready to marry Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, the race of female warriors from Greek mythology. Meanwhile, another planned marriage, between Hermia and Demetrius has been upset by the fact that another man, Lysander, has supposedly bewitched Hermia into loving him instead of her betrothed. Because Hermia’s father, Egeus, wants his daughter to marry Demetrius, Theseus (as Duke) orders Hermia to marry Demetrius or else enter a nunnery and take no husband.

Faced with this rather unappealing choice, Hermia decides to elope with her beloved, Lysander. Hermia confides this plan to her friend Helena, but Helena blabs it to Demetrius (whom Helena wants to marry herself).

Meanwhile, a group of manual workers, each with their own trade (Nick Bottom the weaver, Peter Quince the carpenter, Francis Flute the bellows-mender, etc.), meet to rehearse a play, based on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Greek mythology, which they will be performing as the entertainment at Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Oberon, King of the Fairies, tasks the mischievous sprite, Puck or Robin Goodfellow, to go and find the juice of a magic plant which has a peculiar quality: when sprinkled on the eyes of a sleeping person, they will wake up and fall for the first person they see.

Oberon, to convince his wife, Queen Titania to dote on their changeling child, sprinkles the juice on her eyes. Oberon tells Puck to do the same to Demetrius’ eyes so he will wake up and fall for Helena rather than Hermia. However, Puck accidentally sprinkles the plant on the wrong man, administering it to Lysander’s eyes instead of Demetrius’!

To amuse himself, Puck uses his magic to give Bottom the weaver an ass’s head in place of his human head, and when Titania wakes up she sees him and dotes on him, sending for her fairy attendants (Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mustardseed, and Moth) to wait upon Bottom. Oberon has tried to correct Puck’s mix-up with Demetrius and Lysander by sprinkling Demetrius’ eyes with the magic juice, with the result that both men now love the same woman: Helena!

They all, thankfully, fall asleep, and while they snooze, Oberon uses his fairy magic to release them all from their various love-spells, and everyone ends up fancying the right person: Lysander is with Hermia, Demetrius with Helena, and Bottom has his proper head back. They all go to Athens for the royal wedding, and the workers perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream : analysis

As Harold Bloom pointed out in Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human , four worlds essentially come together and interact with each other in A Midsummer Night’s Dream : the world of classical myth (represented by Theseus and Hippolyta), the world of ‘modern’ lovers (Helena, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander), the fairy world (Oberon, Titania, and Puck), and the rustic world of ‘mechanicals’ or labourers (Bottom, Quince, and the others).

But instead of these four worlds being kept distinct, the boundaries between them are transgressed, most famously when Titania, the Fairy Queen (perhaps recalling Queen Elizabeth I herself, whom Edmund Spenser had recently immortalised as such in his 1590s poem The Faerie Queene ) falls for the lowly Bottom, whose head has been replaced by that of an ass.

In Shakespeare’s Language , Frank Kermode analysed A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the comic counterpart to the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet ; both plays date from the mid-1590s, and it may be that Shakespeare intentionally conceived of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a sort of inverse of the other play about ‘the course of true love’ (although that quotation comes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream , it is in Romeo and Juliet that the course of true love fails to run smooth; all is worked out in the end in the Dream ).

Kermode also notes how many eyes there are in A Midsummer Night’s Dream : the words ‘eye’ and ‘eyes’ recur multiple times, and the gulf between illusion and reality is a key theme in the play. Our eyes can trick or deceive us; we can ‘dote’ on someone but that is not the same as loving them in a deeper and more long-lasting way; we create fantasies or, if you will, ‘dreams’ of our lovers which they can never live up to, and which put us at risk of a rude awakening further down the line.

Helena’s famously line, ‘Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind’, sums up the main ‘message’ of the play: that wanton love (lust, passing desire) is not true love, which is about more than superficial attraction or ‘looks’. The fact that the juice which makes people fall in ‘love’ with the next person they see when they wake up is from a flower called ‘love-in-idleness’ is a clue: for ‘idleness’ here, Kermode directs us to ‘wantonness’, which is what ‘idleness’ means in this connection.

From this, we might conclude that A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents the triumph of rational, lasting love over the pleasures of illusory love of attraction. But this overlooks the extent to which Shakespeare, the man of the theatre, loved illusion, and repeatedly vaunted its virtues in his work.

And Bottom’s transformation, whereby he ends up with the head of an ass, complicates any reductive analysis of the play which sees it as calling illusory love ‘bad’ and the other kind ‘good’.

As so often in the work of Shakespeare, this simplistic interpretation just won’t stand up. Bottom’s ‘rare vision’ of Titania invites our laughter, but it is sympathetic laughter: there is a sense that he has been emotionally as well as physically transformed by the night’s events. For Bloom, Bottom, the humble weaver, is the key to the play, and more than just a bit of rustic comic relief.

But Bloom’s assertion that ‘love at first sight, exalted in Romeo and Juliet , is pictured here as calamity’, is only partially true. Whilst the couples ultimately get paired off as we expect them to, Titania and Bottom’s moment together transcends comedic farce, and suggests that they have both been forever altered by the experience – not least because they don’t usually come into contact with each other (workman and queen, mortal and fairy).

For one, it is while she is under the spell of Bottom’s … unconventional looks that Titania agrees to give up the changeling boy to her husband, who wants to make the child his page.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains a popular play, and is often staged. In 1911, Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged a celebrated production which included live rabbits on stage. Indeed, there have been a number of ambitious productions of the play: Charles Kean’s 1856 production at the Princess’s Theatre featured 90 tutu-wearing sprites as part of the finale. Also appearing in the show was an eight-year-old Ellen Terry, playing the role of Puck.

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3 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Great reminder of a great play (sorry Pepys)! Another interesting note about how the 4 worlds connect and disconnect. As I recall, Demetrius never gets the juice removed and hence stays in love with Helena. If so, the enchantment that Demetrius carries is the lynchpin that holds the worlds — and the happy ending — together. The world of imagination may seem like an escape from the world of reality, but as often happens in Shakespeare, that “frivolous” world of imagination effects a crucial transformation of reality.

also hear BBC ‘In their Time’ (Bragg) discussion on ’12th Night’- 40 minutes of interesting discussion by three experts.

• Pingback: Sunday Post – 21st June, 2020 #Brainfluffbookblog #SundayPost | Brainfluff

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A midsummer night’s dream.

Rotimi Agbabiaka (Oberon), Jacob Ming-Trent (Bottom), and Sabrina Lynne Sawyer (Fairy) in  A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Folger Theatre, 2022. Photo: Brittany Diliberto.

Introduction to the play

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Shakespeare stages the workings of love. Theseus and Hippolyta, about to marry, are figures from mythology. In the woods outside Theseus’s Athens, two young men and two young women sort themselves out into couples—but not before they form first one love triangle, and then another.

Also in the woods, the king and queen of fairyland, Oberon and Titania, battle over custody of an orphan boy; Oberon uses magic to make Titania fall in love with a weaver named Bottom, whose head is temporarily transformed into that of a donkey by a hobgoblin or “puck,” Robin Goodfellow. Finally, Bottom and his companions ineptly stage the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”

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Essays and resources from The Folger Shakespeare

A midsummer night’s dream.

Learn more about the play, its language, and its history from the experts behind our edition.

About Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream An introduction to the plot, themes, and characters in the play

Quotes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Reading Shakespeare’s Language A guide for understanding Shakespeare’s words, sentences, and wordplay

An Introduction to This Text A description of the publishing history of the play and our editors’ approach to this edition

Textual Notes A record of the variants in the early printings of this text

A Modern Perspective An essay by Catherine Belsey

Further Reading Suggestions from our experts on where to learn more

Shakespeare and his world

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Shakespeare’s Life An essay about Shakespeare and the time in which he lived

Shakespeare’s Theater An essay about what theaters were like during Shakespeare’s career

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays An essay about how Shakespeare’s plays were published

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first printed in 1600 as a quarto (Q1). In 1619, a new quarto of the play was published (Q2) based on Q1 but with some additional stage directions and some small corretions to the text. That text, in turn, was the basis for the 1623 First Folio (F1) with, again, some minor changes, including the substitution of Egeus for Philostrate in the final scene of the play. Most modern editions, like the Folger editions, are based on the Q1 text. See more primary sources related to A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Shakespeare Documented

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A Midsummer Night's Dream takes place across two settings: the court of Athens and the woods. Every production will have these two settings, but they could be staged in lots of ways. For example, it could be set in the 1930s or at a festival. 

Why do you think it might be helpful for modern audiences to change the world of a play? What worlds can you think of where A Midsummer Night's Dream might be set?

Teacher Notes

On this page students can explore some of the key things that we know about the setting of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by clicking on the pictures.

You can use these pictures, or other images, as a starting point to discuss what they know about the setting of the play and to think about where they would set the play if they were creating their own production. A great way of doing this visually is for students to create a mood board or collage of images that could be used as design inspiration.

The section on design in the Teacher Notes on the Productions page develops on this and asks students to think about the approach they might take to designing a production and what to consider.

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• Annotated Full Text
• Literary Period: Renaissance
• Publication Date: 1595
• Flesch-Kincaid Level: 7
• Approx. Reading Time: 1 hour and 25 minutes

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Possibly composed in around 1596, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most famous and widely recognizable plays. This story of love, mistaken identity, and magic explores the events surrounding the marriage of mythological characters Theseus and Hippolyta. The primary event and focus of this play within a play involves four young lovers and a group of actors practicing their performance for the wedding outside the city walls. The lovers and actors soon fall prey to the machinations of the squabbling fairy couple, Oberon and Titania. Love triangles are formed, magic is used, and comedy ensues in this Shakespearean comedy believed to have been written as entertainment to accompany an actual marriage celebration. Lighter in themes than Romeo and Juliet , this play tests social boundaries and plays with the concept of what it means to love someone.

Table of Contents

• Dramatis Personae
• Act I - Scene I
• Act I - Scene II
• Act II - Scene I
• Act II - Scene II
• Act III - Scene I
• Act III - Scene II
• Act IV - Scene I
• Act IV - Scene II
• Character Analysis
• Historical Context
• Literary Devices
• Quote Analysis

Study Guide

• William Shakespeare Biography

Shakespeare's Staging

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A Midsummer Night's Dream

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This play is considered one of Shakespeare's most flawless achievements, unique in being almost without precedent. The blending of the different plots and groups is masterful: the tension between the supernatural icons of male and female, Oberon and Titania, matches the premarital strains hinted between Theseus and his battlefield captive Hippolyta, partly resulting from her negative reaction to the analogous tension between Hermia and her father over his patriarchal choice of her spouse, which is in conflict with her own preference. The intervention of Puck as a kind of cosmic agent of confusion merely objectifies the volatility of the lovers, whose ominous behavior is parodied in the climactic performance of Pyramus and Thisbe staged by the amateurish workmen to celebrate the final happy weddings. The vagaries of human aspiration are epitomized by the bizarre experiences of the egotistical Bottom, transformed to an ass during his attempt at enacting romantic love, yet briefly becoming the paramour of a fairy queen. The lightness and charm of the piece have made it a favorite introduction to Shakespeare, as in our modernized version , but it has been visualized in a wide variety of ways, sometimes quite traditionally (see RSC 1962 ), sometimes extravagantly (see RSC 1970 ), but recently often with quite provocative sexual explicitness, as Jan Kott has proposed (see Romantic-influenced imaginings of the play of Henry Fuseli and Joseph Noel Paton ). However, it is almost impossible not to captivate audiences by the happy incompetence of the workmen's staging of Pyramus and Thisbe .

Barbour, Charles M. "Up against a Symbolic Painted Cloth: A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Savoy, 1914." Theatre Journal 27 (1975): 521-28.

Berney, Chuck. " Midsummer Night's Dream on Film: From Hollywood Extravaganza to British Opera." Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter 37, no. 1 (2001): 17, 23-24.

Buhler, Stephen. "Textual and Sexual Anxieties in Michael Hoffman's Film of A Midsummer Night's Dream ." Shakespeare Bulletin 22, no. 3 (2004): 49-64.

Burnett, Mark Thornton. "Impressions of Fantasy: Adrian Noble's A Midsummer Night's Dream ." In Shakespeare, Film, Fin ee Siècle, edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray, 89-101. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

Clayton, Thomas. "The Guthrie Theater Production of A Midsummer Night's Dream ." Shakespeare Quarterly 36 (1986): 229-37. Reprinted in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Essays , edited by Dorothea Kehler, 472-90. New York and London: Garland, 1998.

Collins, David G. "Beyond Reason in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Stratford, 1981." Iowa State Journal of Research 57, no. 2 (1982): 131-4

Faust, Richard and Charles Kadushin. Shakespeare in the Neighborhood: Audience Reaction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, as Produced by Joseph Papp for the Delacorte Mobile Theater. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, for the Bureau of Applied Social Research of Columbia University, 1965.

Foulkes, Richard. "Samuel Phelps's A Midsummer Night's Dream: Sadler's Wells—October 8th, 1853." Theater Notebook 23 (1968-69): 55-60.

Griffiths, Trevor R., ed. A Midsummer Night's Dream . Shakespeare in Production. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Griffiths, Trevor R. "A Neglected Pioneer Production: Madame Vestris' A Midsummer Night's Dream at Covent Garden, 1840." Shakespeare Quarterly 30 (1979): 386-96.

Griffiths, Trevor R. "Tradition and Innovation in Harley Granville-Barker's A Midsummer Night's Dream ." Theatre Notebook 30 (1976): 78-87.

Halio, Jay L. A Midsummer Night's Dream . Shakespeare in Performance. Manchester University Press, 1994.

Hall, Edward and Roger Warren, eds. A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Performing Edition . London: Oberon, 2003.

Hayes, Elliott and Michal Schonberg, eds. A Midsummer Night's Dream . Stratford, Ontario: CBC Enterprises, 1984.

Hoffman, Michael. William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." London: Harper-Collins, 1999.

Homan, Sidney. "'What do I do now?' Directing A Midsummer Night's Dream ." In Shakespearean Illuminations: Essays in Honor of Marvin Rosenberg, edited by Jay L. Halio and Hugh M. Richmond, 279-96. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998.

Jensen, Michael P. "Fragments of a Dream: Photos of Three Scenes Missing from the Reinhardt-Dieterle Dream ." Shakespeare Bulletin 18, no. 4 (2000): 37-39.

Kehler, Dorothea. "Marion McClinton's A Midsummer Night's Dream at La Jolla Playhouse, 1995: Appropriation Through Performance." In A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Essays , edited by Dorothea Kehler, 472-90. New York and London: Garland, 1998; New York and London: Routledge, 2001.

Knowles, Richard Paul. "From Dream to Machine: Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, and the Contemporary Shakespearean Director as (Post) Modernist." Theatre Journal 50 (1998): 189-206.

Kott, Jan. "Titania and the Ass's Head." In Shakespeare, Our Contemporary , translated by Boleslaw Taborski, 213-36. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.

Loney, Glenn, ed. Peter Brook's Production of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for the Royal Shakespeare Company: Complete and Authorized Acting Edition. Stratford-upon-Avon: Royal Shakespeare Company; Chicago: Dramatic Publications, 1974.

McCullough, Christopher J. "Inner Stages: Levels of Illusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream. " In A Midsummer Night's Dream , edited by Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, 107-15. Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1991.

Mitchell, Ronald E. "Diary of a Dream." On-Stage Studies 4 (1980): 1-19.

Mullin, Michael and David McGuire. "A 'Purge on Prettiness': Motley's Costumes for A Midsummer Night's Dream , Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1954." Shakespeare Studies (Shakespeare Society of Japan) 27 (1988-89): 65-77.

Obayashi, Noriko. "Production Analysis of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Max Reinhardt in 1905." Bigaku 52, no. 2 (2001): 71-83.

Page, Malcolm. "Shakespeare in Vancouver: Guy Sprung's Midsummer Night's Dream ." Canadian Theatre Review 54 (Spring 1988): 24-28.

Quinton, Everett, adapter. William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." New York: French, 1995.

Richmond, Hugh M. "The Centrality of A Midsummer Night's Dream ." In Teaching Shakespeare Today , edited by James E. Davis and Ronald E. Salomone, 254-62. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

Scorer, Mischa. " A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1962." In To Nevill Coghill from Friends , edited by John Lawlor and W. H. Auden, 103-8. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.

Selbourne, David. The Making of "A Midsummer Night's Dream": an Eye-Witness Account of Peter Brook's Production from First Rehearsal to First Night. London: Methuen, 1982.

Shelburne, Steven. "The Filmic Tradition of A Midsummer Night's Dream: Reinhardt, Bergman, Hall, and Allen." In Screen Shakespeare , edited by Michael Skovmand, 13-24. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1994.

Sprung, Guy. Hot Ice: Shakespeare in Moscow: a Director's Diary . Winnipeg: Blizzard Publishing, 1991.

A Midsummer Night's Dream at Talkin' Broadway .

Watkins, Ronald and Jeremy Lemmon. In Shakespeare's Playhouse: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles, 1974.

Wells, Stanley. " A Midsummer Night's Dream Revisited." Critical Survey 3 (1991): 14-29.

Williams, Gary Jay. "Madame Vestris' A Midsummer Night's Dream and the Web of Victorian Tradition." Theatre Survey 18, no. 2 (1977): 1-22.

Williams, Gary Jay. Our Moonlight Revels: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream Essay

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Introduction

Oppressive laws, women’s position, works cited.

William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a comedy of Athenian origin. The entire set up consisting of a captivating atmosphere makes the tale to be a remarkable one. This set up is suitable for romantic adventures as it provides the right atmosphere as well as favorable scenes for love escapades. Nonetheless, Shakespeare’s works are never to be judged from their face value. For instance, in the case of this romantic tale, he hypothesizes a very contemptuous understanding about love.

The book, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” ends up being an interpretation of the secrets of adoration. It further reveals how the lovers are ashamed because of their actions, particularly in the incidences that involve the youthful characters. In this tale, a lover is brought out as an indecisive individual who constantly alters his or her decisions (Shakespeare 34).

It also highlights love as a sensation that never lasts forever. Consequently, the tale proposes that love is not a deep and compassionate feeling but rather a harsh sentiment that brings pain to those who get into it. This notion is highlighted throughout the tale and in the long run, the conception of real affection is stained with uncertainty. It is seen as something that can change from its intended course. Generally, love is brought out as a terrifying and harsh sentiment.

According to the laws set in Athens, a woman is not entitled to posses anything, including her body. However, she was expected to listen, and adhere to whatever their male counterparts directed them to do. With regard to Athenian laws, a father was given the mandate to choose a husband for his daughter. Consequently, a girl was expected to marry the selected man without questioning. In case she declined his father’s choice, the consequences were very severe as death was part of it.

In this society, a woman could not contribute to anything that affected the society. Furthermore, they could not even decide anything for themselves. Men dominated the society while women were used as objects of love and procreation. Even though the women married the men their father’s chose for them, their situation never improved in any way.

The women were hopeless as they could not even make choices that would improve their lives. The lack of voice among the women made their men to be fully in charge of everything, including their lives. Athenian regulations empowered a father to sentence his child to death in case she refused to adhere to whatever he directed her to do.

The daughter of Theseus, Herima, declines to marry Demterius, his father’s choice as her groom. As a reaction to her decision, Herima’s father threatens to exterminate her if she did not accept his choice. This whole idea is ridiculous since it is out of this world that a father would kill his daughter for refusing to marry a man he had chosen for her (Shakespeare 67). This episode substantiates how these Athenian laws oppressed women in this society.

The women in this tale play ‘second-fiddle’ roles. For instance, Oberon and Titania, King and Queen respectively, were thought to be wielding similar powers. Nonetheless, Oberon manages to accomplish his desires and emerges as the ultimate ruler of the Kingdom. There existed no equal treatment of the sexes in this tale.

In addition, women were never given leadership roles. In fact, women were manipulated into marriages. For instance, Puck puts a love concoction in Demetreuis’ as well as Lysander’s eyes in order to compel them to fall in love with each other. He does this with full knowledge about Helena’s intentions. Helena loved Demetrious but he did not care about her.

Helena puts a lot of effort to make him think about her love for him. She utilizes convincing words and constantly praises him. However, Demetrius is not bothered by this and he persistently drives her away. This is shown in the manner in which he addresses her. He advices her, “Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; for I am sick when I do look on thee” (Shakespeare 82). This statement emphasizes on the women’s inability to choose their own husbands.

From the tale, it is evident that Hermia and Lysander, as a couple, are much better and smarter as compared to the union of Demetrius and Helena as a couple. I believe that Hermia is more conservative and has a conformist character as compared to Helena. This is because Helena is not presented in a similar way as Hermia. At various instances, Helena was totally out of control. This brings out her masculinity character that makes her to stand out from the rest of the women in this tale, particularly Hermia.

The author has evidently managed to express the themes of oppression and inequality in this tale. As much as the tale is thought to a comic one, the events that place in this tale are not funny. The manner in which women are treated is not amusing at all. The existing laws were intended to oppress the women and the less fortunate in this tale. Generally, the tale addresses the injustices that existed in this society.

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream . New York, NY: Norton & Company, 2002. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2018, November 6). A Midsummer Night’s Dream. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-midsummer-nights-dream/

"A Midsummer Night’s Dream." IvyPanda , 6 Nov. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/a-midsummer-nights-dream/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'. 6 November.

IvyPanda . 2018. "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." November 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-midsummer-nights-dream/.

1. IvyPanda . "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." November 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-midsummer-nights-dream/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." November 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-midsummer-nights-dream/.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Tickets

About A Midsummer Night's Dream

Athens Pride is going to be the hottest, gaggiest, best Pride in the history of Pride, especially with Theseus and Hippolyta, literal queer icons, closing the festival with their nuptials- the wedding of the century! Anyone who is anyone is going to be there. But, when the lovers' feud of King and Queen of the Fairies, Oberon and Titania, spills over, things are going to get real messy. Using the original text of Shakespeare's most legendary comedy, this story is getting a queer, fabulous twist that only Tier5 could do!

• The role of Helenus will be played by Neely Golightly for our August 10th, 7pm; August 18th, 2pm; and August 22nd, 7pm performances. James Cougar Canfield will not perform at these shows.
• The role of Titania will be played by Da'Mar Levi and Mistress Quince will be played by Emily Cordes at our August 22nd, 2pm performance. Amanda Thomas will not perform at this show.

2hr 30min. Incl. intermission.

August 8th, 2024

August 25th, 2024

Plays , Holiday , Off Broadway , Romance , Comedy , Classic , Revival

El Barrio's ArtSpace PS109

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A Midsummer Night's Dream runs for 2hr 30min. Incl. intermission.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream is at New York's El Barrio's ArtSpace PS109, which is located at 215 E 99th St, New York, 10029.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream tickets start at $23.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream , is one his most popular and performed works. It's exact date of completion unknown but generally assumed to be between 1590 and 1597. The play documents the series of events that surround the marriage of Duke of Athens, Theseus, to Hippolya. Other characters include four youthful Athenian lovers and a set of six novice actors who are nicknamed 'The Mechanicals.' These beings are entirely controlled and their actions manipulated by fairies that rule the forest in which the play is set. The play begins with a Hermia, who has been ordered by her father Egeus to marry Demetrius though she is in love with Lysander. Egeus is so irritated by his daughter's defiance that he puts into place an ancient Athenian law under the Duke Theseus. The law forces a daughter to wed whatever suitor her father selects for her or face death. Duke Theseus offers Hermia the choice of becoming a nun instead, and living in lifelong chastity. Peter Quince, a player who plans on performing at the Duke and Queen's wedding, creates a production of "Pyramus and Thisbe," along with four other fellow players. The other players, Francis Flute, Nick Bottom, Robin Starveling, Tom Snout, and Snug, and annoyed by Nick Bottom's over-enthusiasm and don't agree with him that he should play multiple characters. Peter Quince worries that the performance will scare the Duke and Queen into hanging them all. Meanwhile, Oberon, the king of the fairies has come to the forest outside Athens with his queen Titania. The couple is estranged after a disagreement wherein Titania refuses to hand over her Indian fairy child to Oberon for use as his watchman. Oberon is dismayed by Titania's disobedience and asks Robin Goodfellow, better known as "Puck," to help him create a love potion. The concoction will be able to be applied to the eyelids and when the person anointed awakes they will be in love with the first person they see. Oberon's plan imagines that Titania will fall in love with an animal she encounters, which will give him a reason to shame her and persuade her to give up her Indian changeling. Hermia and Lysander also find themselves in the same forest, hoping to elope. Helena, trying to please Demetrius and regain his love, tells him about the plan hoping he'll kill Lysander. Helena continues to pursue Demetrius but he insults her. Oberon sees this action and orders love potion put upon Demetrius, but his servant Puck accidentally anoints Lysander instead. Helena happens upon him and he falls in love with her upon awakening. Oberon is enraged to find Demetrius still trailing Hermia. He fetches Puck as soon as Demetrius falls asleep to treat his eyes with love potion, and then to fetch Helena to be there upon his awakening. Helena is suddenly pursed by both Lysander and Demetrius and yet she doesn't believe their affections to be sincere. Hermia is upset and blames Helena for her lost love, and the two men duel over Helena. Oberon intervenes and removes the charm from Lysander which brings him back to loving Hermia. While the players recite their lines, Titania has received Oberon's love potion and has awoken by the song of the jackass Bottom's song. She falls madly in love and Oberon seizes control of her changeling, then releases her from her spell and also orders Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander to be put to sleep and believing they have been dreaming upon awakening. After all the fairies disperse, Theseus and Hippolyta arrive and wake the lovers, who all concur they've had quite a dream. While watching the mechanicals perform Pyramus and Thisbe, everyone laughs and retires to bed. Puck end the play by suggesting that everyone, including the audience, has just experienced a dream.

A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare

Midsummer Night's Dream literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Midsummer Night's Dream.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Material

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream Essays

Doubt and uncertainty in relation to theatricality in hamlet and a midsummer night's dream emaleigh doley, a midsummer night's dream.

In the tragedy Hamlet and the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare presents two plays that are very different in context but quite similar in foundation. Both plays examine reality throughout the narrative structure. In Hamlet, reality is...

To See or Not To See: Vision, Night and Day in A Midsummer Night's Dream Eddie Borey

A Midsummer Night's Dream begins in the city that was, to the Renaissance imagination, the center of ancient Greek civilization. (Romanticized) Athens stands as a testament to what human beings know and are able to know. But throughout this play,...

Character Analysis of Puck Ambre Smith

Considered one of William Shakespeare's greatest plays, A Midsummer Nights Dream reads like a fantastical, imaginative tale; however, its poetic lines contain a message of love, reality, and chance that are not usually present in works of such...

Phases in the Play Nicole Encin

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a journey through the three phases of a Shakespearean festive comedy. The audience is taken from unhappiness to confusion to finally reunion. Anything is possible in this story and the reader must...

Dream Within a Dream: Freud, Phonics, and Fathomlessness in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Theoderek Wayne

Shakespeare anticipates the Freudian concept of the dream as egoistic wish-fulfillment through the chaotic and mimetic desires of his characters in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The play also utilizes a secondary meaning of the word "dream" -...

Puck and Bottom: The Artist as Interpreter in A Midsummer Night's Dream Willie Davis

When James Joyce was a teenager, a friend asked him if he had ever been in love. He answered, "How would I write the most perfect love songs of our time if I were in love - A poet must always write about a past or a future emotion, never about a...

The Theater as Irrational Distillate in A Midsummer Night's Dream Michael Yank

By the time A Midsummer Night's Dream reaches its final act, the major conflicts of the play have already more or less been resolved. Thus, instead of serving its usual function, this comedy's Act V offers the audience a chance to reflect on what...

Hippolyta's Function in A Midsummer Night's Dream Brook Weeks

In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the minor character Hippolyta functions in three ways. Her first role in the play is as an example of mature love in juxtaposition to the two immature Athenian couples. Her second purpose in the...

Seeing Without Reason: Vision in A Midsummer Night's Dream Natasha Rosow

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare plays with ideas of sight and reality. Sight, eyes, and the gaze become crucial themes in this seemingly light-hearted play. They appear constantly in the language of all of the characters, beyond...

Puck, as the Dark Middle Man Catherine McCormick

The character Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is most often associated with the mischievous little hobgoblin fairy in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Even before Shakespeare's interpretation of Puck though, the little imp had been one of the...

The Light and Dark Sides of the Supernatural Mark Parsons

As critic Ronald Miller so eloquently declared, "The complex and subtle intellectuality of Shakespeare's comic art was never better illustrated than by A Midsummer Night's Dream and, in particular, by Shakespeare's employment of the fairies in...

Feminine Homoeroticism in A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It Julie Kim

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It, feminine homoeroticism emerges as an interplay of passive and aggressive opposition. Women take the sphere of romantic love -- one sphere to which they have access in the midst of an...

Play Within a Play in a Midsummer Night's Dream Terilynn Salazar

William Shakespeare frequently used his literary works to make statements on social issues. A Midsummer Night's Dream obviously addresses the conflict between men and women by portraying several relationships, father and daughter, husband and...

Myth, Magic and Midsummer Madness Jonet Mackenzie

In a fine example of Shakespearean irony, scholars have suggested that A Midsummer Night's Dream was originally written as entertainment for an aristocratic wedding. The Lord Chamberlain's Players provided the noble bride and groom, the ultimate...

A Hel-en-a Woman Kelli Purcell-O'Brien

In William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia seems to be the strong woman, while Helena is seen as weak and easily dominated. In Gohlke's article, for example, she describes the "exaggerated submission of Helena to Demetrius" (151),...

It is Theater Virginia Brannon

Theatre began as a presentation of stories and ideas, mostly revolving around festival times in the calendar of the church year. This concept was carried on in Shakespeare's times and is exemplified in his plays Twelfth Night, or What You Will and...

Explore the ways in which Shakespeare uses metatheatre in his plays Anonymous

Explore the ways in which Shakespeare uses metatheatre in his plays

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts

~ Jacques, As You Like It, Act II,...

A Lover's Embrace Anonymous

Can the ocean be considered a lover? Is it possible for someone to find a strong infatuation with the rolling waves and the smell of salt water? Does the sea have the capacity to love someone? Looking out into the waters, the female character in...

Bottom’s Dream Dusty Carter

Bottom’s speech at the end of Act 4, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream marks a transition from a dream world to reality. In it, Bottom struggles to make his dream of an encounter with Titania the fairy queen into something concrete. Bottom’s...

Puck and Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Anonymous

What motivates Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Also known as Robin Goodfellow, the spirit Puck is based on legend contemporary to Shakespeare (OED). His origins are as curious as his character: the Oxford English Dictionary traces the origin of...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Sisterhood versus Male Inconstancy Anonymous

In his comedies, Shakespeare critically examines the nature of female and male friendships as they relate to sexual desire. Specifically, Shakespeare contrasts the strong, faithful bonds of female sisterhood with the chaotic, contentious...

A Critical Analysis of Egeus, Hippolyta and Shylock in Filmic Shakespeare Tyler Fuller

In ‘The Motives of Eloquence’, Lantham describes Shakespearean drama as the art of “superposition”. One arc of action is performed over others so that “[d]ramatic motive is stronger than ‘real’, serious motive”. The justification of a characters...

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Exploring the Existence of Love Anonymous

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of an imagination all compact" (Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 7-8). This quote by Theseus encompasses the notion of love as being an illusion, a product of the imagination. Love is equated with lunacy and poetry,...

Women's Confirmity in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Othello Anonymous College

Emilia from Othello and Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream both experience a constant battle against the institutions of men, such as marriage and courting. These institutions have the implications of turning these women against their own sex...

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How an Instagram-Perfect Life in the Hamptons Ended in Tragedy

Candice and Brandon Miller showed the public a world of glittering parties and vacations. The money to sustain it did not exist.

Candice and Brandon Miller. In photographs shared online, their lives were full of parties and luxurious vacations. Credit... Joe Schildhorn/BFA.com, via Shutterstock

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By Katherine Rosman

• Published Aug. 8, 2024 Updated Aug. 9, 2024

In the modern Gilded Age of New York, where Instagram is awash in unrestrained displays of wealth, Brandon and Candice Miller were royalty.

At their 10th wedding anniversary “Midsummer Night’s Dream” party, they celebrated with a few dozen friends in the backyard of their 5,500-square-foot vacation home in the Hamptons.

Beautiful women in gowns watched with their handsome husbands as the couple renewed their vows near a swimming pool strewn with peonies and rose petals beneath a canopy of lights.

It was a grand public display of their perfect life and marriage. Ms. Miller told a lifestyle blogger who wrote about the party that her husband’s speech “made me cry by the end with his authentic, raw emotion and romantic words.”

It all culminated in the kind of envy-inducing images anticipated by the roughly 80,000 followers of “Mama and Tata,” Ms. Miller’s popular Instagram feed, which featured a near-constant stream of photographs and videos of her glittering life.

The Midsummer Night party was in 2019. Five years later, the glamorous image that Ms. Miller cultivated and promoted has disappeared, replaced with heartbreak, anger and a mountain of once-secret debt.

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