Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
2)
Although this may seem prudish, Hermia is wise -- she has just eloped with Lysander, and she needs to make sure that he marries her, to preserve her position in society. And when she mistakenly believes that her beloved, for whom she has risked everything, including her father's affection and her good name, is taken away by her best friend, she is even willing to defend herself physically:
Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto...
But she learns, when her father tries to force her into a loveless marriage, and when she thinks that she has been betrayed by Lysander and Helena, that she must 'stand up' for herself. Unlike Helena, who begs Demetrius to love her and tells him that Lysander and Hermia have fled Athens (betraying her word to Hermia), Hermia does not abase herself before men. She is determined to get what she wants, whether that means speaking aloud, fleeing her home, or even physically fighting for what is rightly hers.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Shakespeare Home Page.
May 4, 2009. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/index.html
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Shakespeare Home Page.
May 4, 2009. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/index.html
Midsummer's Night Dream Acting: Were the actors believable in their roles? I did not find all of the actors particularly believable in their roles. I could not help noticing that several of the members of the cast forgot their lines or misspoke their lines, sometimes saying a line in the wrong place. Knowing the play well, this really threw me off and took me out of the moment of the performance. I
Even fairies struggle with love and romance. Oberon and Titania bicker; because of Puck's potion, Titania even falls in love with an ass. Puck's potion illustrates the fleeting nature of sexual attraction, too. At the opening of a Midsummer Night's Dream, Demetrius is in love with Hermia but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Lysander returns the affection. Hermia's best friend Helena, on the other hand, does love Demetrius and
He forgives her and order is restored in the fairy world thanks to the proper balance of love between head and heart. As for the actors who go into the woods to prepare for their play before the king and queen of Athens -- they too show a side of love. Bottom shows what happens when one lacks imagination: he is the most unimaginative actor in the history of theater
Those who watch the play make comments about how silly the play is and the play becomes more and more ridiculous, adding the parts of a Lion and Moonshine, played by two more rustics. In the play, the principle actors, Thisby and Pyramus kill themselves, as Romeo and Juliet did, then Pyramus rises to sing about his death, slumps into death, and then rises again to ask the audience if
Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare's play, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was written in 1595. A woman's role in her family and community were determined by a patriarchal society. It was during this time, after all, that women were being burned at the stake all across Europe. The play begins in an Athenian palace just before the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, "Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour /
The soul of girl/woman Jenna is returned to normal at the end of the film, and the girl's knowledge about working as an adult editor on a magazine, the true nature of her chief junior high school tormenter, and Matt's worth as an older man make her a more mature thirteen-year-old, thus the delving into fantasy make the real world 'better,' as in "Midsummer," and more moral and thus more