Literary Analysis Report

Daniel Silvestre

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English
language. He was born on or around 23 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. There
are no records of William’s education, but he probably went to King’s New School, a
reputable Stratford grammar school where he would have learned Latin, Greek,
theology and rhetoric and may have had a Catholic upbringing. At 18, William
married Anne Hathaway, and the couple had three children over the next few years.
He created several works that led to the world of creative and artistic illusion.
Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and
collaborated on several more. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by
him in 1595/96 and it is a play that to this day is read and remembered.

The title interprets an atmosphere of fantasy, peculiarity, and imagination, which is

an accurate description of the magical life where characters experience events that
seem more like a dream than reality. Shakespeare also knows that, after reading the
book or watching the play, the audience, might also experience some doubts about
the difference between reality and illusion. The title is also an obvious shout-out to
Midsummer's Eve (June 23 and June 24 on Germany), or the summer solstice. In
Shakespeare's day, Midsummer's Eve was all about celebrating fertility. It was an
excuse to party outdoors and the holiday involved dancing, drinking, and collecting
medicinal herbs. For a lot of people, Midsummer's Eve was also supposed to be a
time of mystery and magic, when spirits ran around causing mischief and teenage
girls had dreams about the guys they'd eventually fall in love with and marry.

About the themes of the play you will find Love. Some people argues that the play
represents the dark side of love, the fairies make light of love by mistaking the lovers
and by applying a love potion to Titania's eyes, forcing her to fall in love with an ass.
In the forest, both couples are beset by problems. Hermia and Lysander are both
met by Puck, who provides some comic relief in the play by confounding the four
lovers in the forest.
However, the play also alludes to serious themes. At the end of the play, Hippolyta
and Theseus, happily married, watch the play about the unfortunate lovers, Pyramus
and Thisbe, and can enjoy and laugh at it. Helena and Demetrius are both oblivious
to the dark side of their love, totally unaware of what may have come of the events
in the forest. Other themes of the work are represented by the Lovers' Bliss,
Carnivalesque, Problem with time Loss of individual identity, Ambiguous sexuality
and the Feminism. The point of view varies from scene to scene, but in most narrator
is counting everything in omniscient mode and in third person. At the beginning of
the play, the narrator tells the introduction to a new scene, describing explicitly the
environment (“In the great hall in Theseus’s palace, Hippolyta and Theseus and the
wedding guests take their seats around a stage. The wedding dinner is over, and it
is time for everyone to enjoy themselves…” Chapter 8. Page 50).

Shakespeare uses framing, which is when you start the play and end it in the same
place. The play started in Athens, where Egeus went to speak to the Duke about
Hermia, and it ended in Athens at the lovers wedding. In the play there were two
settings: Athens and the woods. Shakespeare uses the two settings to intertwine all
the different set of characters that overwise would not have met. About the time of
year during which the action of the play is supposed to take place. Like I have said
before, the play's title suggests that things go down sometime around Midsummer's
Eve. When the play begins, the narrator tells us: “Athens, on a summer night. The
air is soft and warm. In the sky the moon shines, throwing its bright silvery light over
the old city and the dark forest beyond…” It is a clear example of the representation
of the work.

The play presents varied characters, from beautiful Athenian girls to magical fairies.
Like the duke of Athens. Theseus is a hero from Greek mythology, his presence
signals to the reader that the play takes place in a mythical Greek past. At the
beginning of the play, Theseus has recently returned from conquering the Amazons,
a race of warrior women, and is about to marry the conquered Amazon queen,
Hippolyta.
Egeus is another character in the play, he´s a respected nobleman in Theseus’s
court. Egeus complains to Theseus that his daughter, Hermia, refuses to marry
Demetrius, Egeus’s choice for her. Egeus’s wish to control his daughter is quite
severe. Hermia, his daughter, is a beautiful young woman of Athens, and both
Demetrius and Lysander are in love with her. Hermia defies her father’s wish that
she marries Demetrius because she is in love with Lysander. Lysander is a young
nobleman of Athens in love with Hermia. As said previously, Hermia’s father refuses
to let her marry Lysander. Demetrius is a young nobleman of Athens. In the past,
Demetrius acted as if he loved Helena, but after Helena fell in love with him, he
changed his mind and pursued Hermia. Emboldened by Egeus’s approval of him,
Demetrius is undeterred by the fact that Hermia does not want him. Helena is a
young woman of Athens in love with Demetrius. She puts herself in dangerous and
humiliating situations, running through the forest at night after Demetrius even
though Demetrius wants nothing to do with her. One of the fairies’ servant is Puck
he delights in playing pranks on mortals. He’s Oberon’s jester, and his antics are
responsible for many of the complications that propel the play. At Oberon’s bidding,
Robin sprinkles “love juice” in the eyes of various characters to change who they
love, but he makes mistakes in his application that create conflicts Oberon never
intended. The king of the fairies is Oberon, he begins the play at odds with his wife,
Titania, because she refuses to relinquish control of a young Indian prince whom
she has kidnapped, but whom Oberon wants for a knight. Oberon’s desire for
revenge on Titania, the beautiful queen of the fairies. She is less upset by the fact
that she and Oberon are apart than by the fact that Oberon has been disrupting her
and her followers' magic fairy dances. In the play are the workmen, Peter Quince is
the leader and he attempt to put on a play for Theseus’s marriage celebration. During
the craftsmen’s play, Quince plays the Prologue. Nick Bottom is the overconfident
weaver chosen to play Pyramus in a play that a group of craftsmen have decided to
put on for Theseus’s wedding celebration. Bottom is full of advice and self-
confidence but frequently makes silly mistakes and misuses language. The other
workers are secondary characters of his group: Francis Flute, forced to play a young
girl in love, the bearded craftsman determines to speak his lines in a high, squeaky
voice. Robin Starveling, he ends up playing the part of Moonshine. Tom Snout, he
ends up playing the part of Wall, dividing the two lovers. Snug, he is the lion and he
worry that his roaring will frighten the ladies in the audience. And there are the fairy
servants: Peaseblossom and Cobweb.

The plot of the work is very varied, start with Theseus, the Duke of Athens, is
preparing for his marriage to Hippolyta. Egeus, a courtier, seek the Duke’s
intervention because his daughter, Hermia, will not agree to his choice of Demetrius
as a husband: she’s in love with Lysander. Theseus tells Hermia to obey her father,
or either die or accept a life as a nun in Diana’s temple. Lysander and Hermia plan
to elope, and they tell Helena, who is in love with Demetrius, but he hates her and
loves Hermia. The lovers run away from Athens but get lost in the woods. They are
followed by Demetrius, and then by Helena, who has told him of their intentions. In
parallel to this conflict, some workmen are rehearsing a play about the tragic love-
story of Pyramus and Thisbe. In the woods, Oberon, king of the fairies, who lives in
the woods, has quarreled with his queen, Titania. Oberon overhears Helena and
Demetrius arguing and sends his mischievous servant, Puck, to get a flower whose
juice has the power to make people fall in love with the first creature they see when
the juice is placed on their eyelids while asleep. He instructs Puck to put some drops
on Demetrius’ eyes. Mistaking the Athenian, he seeks, Puck puts the flower juice on
the eyes of the sleeping Lysander so that when he is woken by Helena he
immediately falls in love with her and rejects Hermia. After that conflict, Puck
overhears their rehearsals in the wood and he plays a trick on them by giving Bottom
an ass’s head which frightens the others away. Bottom is lured towards the sleeping
Titania whom Oberon has treated with the flower juice. On waking, she falls in love
with the ass and entertains him with her fairies, but when Bottom falls asleep beside
her, Oberon restores Titania’s sight and wakes her. She is appalled at the sight of
what she has been in love with and is reunited with Oberon. At the end of the plot,
Puck removes the ass’s head and Bottom returns to Athens and rejoins his friends
as they prepare to perform their play. Meanwhile the lovers’ arguments tire them out
as they chase one another through the woods and when Demetrius rests, Oberon
puts magic juice on his eyes so that both he and Lysander pursue Helena until the
four lovers fall asleep, exhausted. Puck puts juice on Lysander’s eyes before the
lovers are woken by Theseus and Hippolyta and their dawn hunting party. Happily
reunited to each other, Lysander with Hermia, Demetrius with Helena, they agree to
share the Duke’s wedding day. The rustics perform the play of Pyramus and Thisbe
before the wedding guests. As the three couples retire Puck and the fairies return to
bless the palace and its people.

The type of conflict is external and while the conflict in A Midsummer Night's
Dream is mainly of the person vs. person type, there is one serious person vs.
society conflict, where Hermia comes up against the rules of her nation. This lesson
will focus on this conflict in the play. There is also the Hermia’s dilemma Hermia is
in love with a man named Lysander, and he loves her back. For while Hermia and
Lysander are happy together, Hermia's father has picked out another man for her,
Demetrius. And under Athenian law, a father has the right to decide who his daughter
marries or else send her to her death. So, her father has brought Hermia (and
Lysander) to the Duke, Theseus. He does tell Hermia that he cannot change the law,
but he offers her a third choice: she can also go into a nunnery and give up the
company of men forever. Hermia is facing both person vs. person (with her father
and Demetrius) and person vs. society (against the law of Athens) conflicts. In the
forest, another conflict is brewing between Oberon, the King of the Fairies, and his
estranged lover, Titania. Titania has adopted a changeling boy and isn't paying
enough attention to Oberon, who enlists his servant Puck to play a trick on Titania.
Puck is to place magic drops into Titania's eyes, which will make her fall in love with
the first thing she sees, Oberon is hiding and waiting. Meanwhile, Puck is up to more
mischief. He sees an actor named Bottom practicing his lines, and decides he is the
perfect person for Titania to fall in love with “one modification”. He changes Bottom's
head into that of a donkey’s and makes Titania fall in love with a monster. They are
facing person vs. nature.
Argument about a conflict

I will consider a conflict about the story that is still visible today. Hermia's father
refuses the love that she has with Lysander, what he wants is for his daughter to
marry Demetrius. Hermia doesn't want to marry Demetrius because she's true to her
love. Hermia is no fool, and though she realizes that men break promises, she's
willing to take a chance and run off with Lysander anyway. Hermia knows love
sometimes seems doomed, even if it's not actually doomed. Consequently, Hermia
holds onto her love no matter the circumstances or consequences. Even after
Lysander has deserted her, Hermia's final thoughts before going to sleep in the forest
are of Lysander; she prays for his safety rather than cursing him. Sometimes love is
not allowed by parents, but what really counts is the love one feels towards another
person, true love. Like Hermia, it does not matter the cost of what the direct
consequence of true love will be worth but, what really counts is how happy that
person makes you, no matter what will come. For all these reasons, Hermia
approaches love as though it were something easily threatened, but not easily lost.
At all points, Hermia's relentless, you must hustle if you're going to hold on to your
lover, and it's worth the hustle if that love is true. Hermia thus provides a contrast to
the self-doubting and flippant love around her. She may seem fierce and shrewd,
but sometimes that's just the way love goes, unless you're willing to let it go all
together.

Historical Context

Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the strangest and most delightful creations of
Shakespeare, and it marks a departure from his earlier works and from others of the
English Renaissance. The play demonstrates both the extent of Shakespeare’s
learning and the expansiveness of his imagination. The range of references in the
play is among its most extraordinary attributes: Shakespeare draws on sources as
various as Greek mythology. One of his main characters, Puck, was a popular figure
in sixteenth-century stories, an English country fairy lore. Further, many of the
characters are drawn from diverse texts. Unlike the plots of many of Shakespeare’s
plays, however, the story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems not to have been
drawn from any particular source but rather to be the original product of the
playwright’s imagination. During the time of this play, marriages were often forced
upon young women. Shakespeare no doubt witnessed many of these marriages
born out of obligation and gain rather than happiness. It was not unusual for women
to be given away marriage with no regard to their feelings. Often, women were sent
to abbeys if they refused to marry or failed in their wifely duties. In A Midsummer
Night's Dream, this situation, as said previously, is mirrored by Hermia's dilemma in
being forced to marry Demetrius because her true love, Lysander, is 'beneath' her.