Compare And Contrast A Midsummer Night's Dream

Since his first published work in the early sixteenth-century, William Shakespeare has become known as one of the greatest writers in history (Mabillard). Many of his plays and poems are considered to be some of the classics of early literature. One of his renowned plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, has grown from its wildly popular play into a classic movie produced in 1999 (“A Midsummer”). The movie, based on the themes and events of the play, involves a complicated love square. While the movie followed closely to the play, a few minor differences were present, e.g., the number of characters having sex in the movie and a few other minimal Hollywood additions. Despite these few differences, the movie represented the play beautifully. A few minimalistic details were added to the movie in order to make it more dramatic. The most obvious addition is the number of characters having sex throughout the movie. None of the characters in the play had sex until the end (Shakespeare). However, the movie contained six of the characters having sex, including Helena and Demetrius, Hermia and Lysander, and Bottom and Titania (Hoffman). While this in no way affected the plot of the story, it is an obvious difference between
These minute differences placed in order to make the movie more interesting include several sexual scenes between characters, Hippolyta’s judgment on Theseus’ verdict, and other few additions (Hoffman). However, theses differences in no way affected the brilliant adaptation of the poem, and they were overshadowed by the movie’s striking similarities. Examples of these similarities included exact quotes from the poem, the same ABAB rhyme scheme as the play, and obviously the plots and themes (Hoffman, Shakespeare). In the end, the movie is a great representation of the play and illustrates it