The Supernatural in a Midsummer Night’s Dream
Liu Wanqian Mr. Mitchell Papish English and American literature 16 December, 2010
The supernatural in A Midsummer Night’s Dream “A midsummer night’s dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, who are manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. ”(Wikipedia, A midsummer night’s dream) Many of the main characters are magical and mythical creatures called fairies. These characters include Puck, Titania, Oberon, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, etc. After going through this play, I realized that this play is full of supernatural power, distinguished from many other plays written by Shakespeare. Since Oberon and Titania appear in ActⅡSceneⅠ, the fairies are added to this play. Due to the argument between Oberon and Titania, Oberon ordered his servant Punk to use the love juice on his wife. Except that, Punk was instructed to use love juice in order to fix the love entanglement between the Athenian lovers who also happened to be running about in the forest. As far as I concerned, the love juice is the key to this magic play. The love stories among these four Athenians are bonded with love juice, which is exactly the presentation of the supernatural. The love juice, at first, is misused, and then Punk said to Oberon that “Then fate o’er-rules, that, one man holding troth, a million fail, confounding oath on oath.”,(ActⅢ SceneⅡ) which, as I can tell, is a sarcasm of the fact in the reality that people do not follow their promise or oath to love. Through a series of mistakes and efforts to straighten it out, the power from fairies control the whole story. In my view, the reason why Shakespeare applied the supernatural to this play is at least to strengthen the
The supernatural in A Midsummer Night’s Dream “A midsummer night’s dream is a comedy by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, who are manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. ”(Wikipedia, A midsummer night’s dream) Many of the main characters are magical and mythical creatures called fairies. These characters include Puck, Titania, Oberon, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, etc. After going through this play, I realized that this play is full of supernatural power, distinguished from many other plays written by Shakespeare. Since Oberon and Titania appear in ActⅡSceneⅠ, the fairies are added to this play. Due to the argument between Oberon and Titania, Oberon ordered his servant Punk to use the love juice on his wife. Except that, Punk was instructed to use love juice in order to fix the love entanglement between the Athenian lovers who also happened to be running about in the forest. As far as I concerned, the love juice is the key to this magic play. The love stories among these four Athenians are bonded with love juice, which is exactly the presentation of the supernatural. The love juice, at first, is misused, and then Punk said to Oberon that “Then fate o’er-rules, that, one man holding troth, a million fail, confounding oath on oath.”,(ActⅢ SceneⅡ) which, as I can tell, is a sarcasm of the fact in the reality that people do not follow their promise or oath to love. Through a series of mistakes and efforts to straighten it out, the power from fairies control the whole story. In my view, the reason why Shakespeare applied the supernatural to this play is at least to strengthen the