Hermia And Lysander Run example essay topic

The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play with in a play, which shows how talented the producer is to pull it off. The audience found it very pleasing to watch. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a comedy combining elements of love, fairies, magic, and dreams.

This play is a comedy about five couples who suffer through love's strange games and the evil behind the practical tricks. This play begins as Theseus, the Duke, is preparing to marry Hippolyta. He impresses her with his sword. Hermia is in love with Lysander. Ege us, Hermia's father, forbids the relationship with Lysander and orders her to marry Demetrius.

Demetrius loves Hermia, but she does not love him. On the other hand, Helena is in love with Demetrius. To settle the confusion, Theseus decides that Hermia must marry Demetrius. In retaliation to her father's command, Hermia and Lysander run away together. Throughout the play there are many references to the gender and sex roles of the characters. The dominating male power and strange sex roles of the characters is going on throughout the play.

The ordering of the fairy, human, and natural worlds is a movement toward satisfying men's psychological needs; but it also disrupts women's bonds with each other. In everyday life, women give up their wants to make their men happy as seen in the play. Male domination not only exists between husband and wife, but also between father and daughter. Theseus will not allow Hermia to marry Lysander.

Theseus wants her to marry Demetrius. In retaliation to his demands, Lysander and Hermia run away together. Male jealousy and need for dominance ruins women's relationships with friends and also turns to brutality. Hermia and Helena were once intimate friends, but Helena is suspicious of Hermia's involvement in the men's "joke against her". Bonds between women are just as important as men's bonds with each other, but jealousy leads to the end of women's happiness.

When Helena pursues Demetrius, his male brutality is revealed when he rejects her for another woman and insults her. Also, when the men fall in love with her, she feels like the "butt of a joke". This stirs female insecurity and pain, again caused by previous abuse from men. The fantasy world and real world exist apart from each other, never meeting at any point.

The inhabitants of the fairy world are unreal in the sense that they lack feelings and intelligence. Oberon's power causes vulnerability in the human world. This fairy kingdom is essentially a dream, which appears whenever reason goes to sleep, and during this time Oberon controls all things. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a play concerned with dreaming. Shakespeare reverses the categories of reality and illusion, sleeping and waking, art and nature, to touch upon the central theme of dreams. Dreams are a part if the world of imagination.

The dreams come true, but are made to appear "invincible". The pattern of the play is controlled and ordered by a series of vital contrasts: the conflict of the sleeping and waking states, the interchange of reality and illusion and reason and imagination. Irony is a large element in the play. Many of the situations are ironic. Instead of attracting and falling in love with a nice gentlewoman, Theseus won Hippolyta with his aggressiveness.

Also, Helena's affection for Demetrius seems to make him hate her, but the hatred eventually turns to love. Helena constantly pursues Demetrius. Demetrius' cruel treatment ironically compels her to love him more. The fantasy world and erotic nature of the play kept the audience laughing and giggling throughout the whole play. The play was very en joyful for me to watch. I have learned much more background on Shakespeare as a result of this course.

I believe I will continue to read up on Shakespeare and continue to attend plays as I continue after Intro to Theatre. Now I can't say that about all my other classes.