Pervades The Final Act Of The Play example essay topic

A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay "Discuss the range of comedic devices Shakespeare has used to achieve humour in the play". Today's audience may not see the humour that appealed to the Elizabethan audience Shakespeare was writing for. That doesn't mean that it isn't there and that doesn't mean the play cannot be, or isn't funny. The devices of humour Shakespeare did use include mistaken identity, slapstick comedy, and the sense of the ridiculous in human behaviour. The mistaken identity and misplaced affection among the lovers is a major source of humour throughout the play as gradually Her mia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander lose their dignity and become figures of ridicule. The constant shifting and changing of the relationships within the four of them is confusing and it is this confusion that naturally arises out of their tangled relationships that supports the idea that in the face of love's power individual identity and personality count for little.

Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; wings and no eyes. Act 1, Scene 1. Shakespeare also shows us that in the face of love's difficulties men regularly resort to aggression. Thou seest these lovers seek place to fight. Act 3, Scene 2. It is this that makes us laugh because it is on the same level of seriousness as Titania's infatuation with Bottom.

Titania and Bottom's short love affair is just one of the aspects directly linked to the humour, another is what we have learnt of Puck's sense of fun. Puck is proud of his abilities and by and large the victims of his jokes are not permanently damaged as they tend to have little to no recollection of their dreamlike experiences. I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man ot say what dream it was. Act 4, Scene 1.

Titania, for example, takes the joke involving her (How came these things to pass? Methought I was enamored of an ass. Act 4, Scene 1.) in good humour and appears more concerned about her reconciliation with Oberon. A visual joke also pops up here.

Titania exclaims What angel awakes me from my flower bed? in relation to Nick Bottom who's head becomes that of an ass, a clever anthropomorphism. The mechanicals, though Athenian according to the play, are actually directly transposed from English life. Their names are all amusingly appropriate to their trades; Peter Quince: a carpenter; Francis Flute: a Bellows-mender; Tom Snout: a tinker; Robin Starveling: a carpenter; Sung: a joiner and of course Nick Bottom who is a weaver. The audience of the time would have been able to relate to these characters as many of them were carpenters, tinkers or weavers. Their humour, like Titania's and the four young lovers, arises from their ignorance of the absurdities to which they sink. Some true love-love turned, and not a false turned true.

Act 3, Scene 2 Our amusement also stems from the contrast between Quince and Bottom which ends up working like a comedic duo with a funny man (Bottom) and a straight man (Quince). Quince also has certain dramatic pretensions and the exasperation he has with his leading man is also amusing. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisbe too. Let me play the lion too.

I will roar that I will do any man's heart good to hear me. Act 2, Scene 2. Their enthusiasm for the play they are working on is humorous as we know in real life they would have little chance of being chosen by the king and his guests. The fact that they are selected and, more so, appreciated, points to a darker side to the comedy Shakespeare has included: we are laughing, mostly, at their ignorance and incompetence. The play performed by the tradesmen, The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, the title of which is a contradiction; you can't have a tragic comedy, is ludicrously inappropriate for a wedding reception, of course what makes it such a huge success is the actors comic attempts to produce a serious drama. Textually, technically and technologically it's a spectacular failure, the mechanicals unwittingly produce a masterpiece of burlesque.

A feature of the play is the extent in which the characters are sometimes audience figures, the newlyweds watch the Mechanicals' play in Act 5, Oberon watches Demetrius' discourtesy to Helena in Act 2, Puck watches the mechanicals' rehearse in Act 3 and Oberon and Puck witness Titania's dotage on Bottom in Act 4. By organizing the play so that there is the opportunity for an internal audience Shakespeare is able to give voice, through the characters, to a sense of the ridiculous in human behaviour. We, as the audience, end up not only laughing at what we se, but also what the characters say about what they have seen. A play there is... hard-handed men that work in Athens here, and we will here it.

Act 5, Scene 1. In this form the comic possibilities are greatly increased. The play within a play is essentially funny all in itself, but, when placed in context, with an internal audience, it becomes much funnier. Much of the mood of concord and harmony that pervades the final act of the play derives from the fact that the two audiences, the real one and the dramatic one, are drawn closer because of their shared experience of watching Pyramus and Thisbe. The difference between a comedy and a tragedy is not what happens in the bulk of the play, it is the ending. In both forms of theatre the characters are ridiculed beyond belief, a tragedy ends when all the characters are dead, a comedy ends on the complete opposite end of the scale with everybody getting married and living happily ever after.

Therefore it is shown that Shakespeare used cases of mistaken identity, slapstick comedy and ridicule to achieve humour in the play A Midsummer Might's Dream. By Hannah Limburger-Forte.