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أكـاديـمـي نــشـط
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رد: third year english student second term
Influence of dream ?
Oberon expects that it is going to be a nightmare for Titania and Bottom.
The play starts in the morning, then they go to forest at night, and now we are in the morning. Then the wedding of Theseus is going to be at night. So, this is violating the unity of time.
Titania wakes up in the morning. She is in love with Oberon. She recovers. She turns mild; she is back to normal. She loves her husband; King Oberon, again. Oberon tells her that the following night is going to be the weeding of the Duke Theseus and Hippolyta. He said also that there will be two more couples have got married. They are Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena.
Egeus complains to the Duke Theseus. You remember that the last act ends with all the lovers sleeping. So, when Egeus comes with the Duke Theseus in the forest, they found the lovers asleep. So, Egeus complains that his daughter did not ask him and she leaves with those people to the forest. So, Theseus finds an excuse for her. He (the duke) tells Egeus that his daughter is celebrating the May Day. So, he is calming his down.
The lovers start to wake up. Lysander confesses briefly to the duke that he has eloped with Hermia into the forest to escape the law of Athens. He loves her and he wants to marry her and there was no solution for him. Of course, Egeus is very angry and he wants his daughter to marry Demetrius. When Demetrius wakes up, he tells Egeus that he has changed. He loves now Helena and he wants to marry her. Egeus is shocked because he cannot force his daughter to marry somebody who does not like her. Demetrius says something. He says that he has changed to love Helena by some mysterious power. He does not understand how in one moment change from loving and adoring Hermia into loving Helena. He does not understand what has happened to him. And he says that he will love her. He does not look for an explanation. He just finds himself being controlled this power and his hear goes back to his first love Helena, so he says he will marry her.
This shows the influence of Aristotle in the play on characterization (it is a classical element): Demetrius has adopted a deductive way of thinking.Demetrius submits to his fate. He feels some unseen power changes his emotion. So, he takes it for granted and does not resist it.
Duke Theseus is a figure of order in Athens. He tells Egeus that he is not going to fulfill his wish by marrying Demetrius to his daughter because Demetrius has changed. Duke Theseus here is fair. He is figure of order. He agrees to marry Demetrius to Helena and Lysander to Hermia. So, order is reformed. The Athenian law is not applied here. He wants to apply the law at the beginning of the play. You have to explain how fair he is. At the beginning of the play, the law of Athens is applied on Hermia. She has to obey her father and accept the husband he has chosen for her. Now in act IV, the law of Athens is not applied on Hermia because Demetrius has changed and he does not want to marry her. So, she is free to choose whoever she wants.
The young lovers talk together and they tell one another about the dream that they have. They discover that they share the same dream. For them, is it a nightmare or a dream? They were chasing one another; they were fighting, and swearing (talking very badly to one another). It was a nightmare for them.
Then Bottom wakes up. He finds himself in his human shape; he is no more an ass. So, he thought of the dream he got and he said that it was a wonderful dream. Bottom is the only one who enjoyed the dream because he enjoyed sex with Titana. This is the reason. So, for him it was not a nightmare. For Titania, it was a nightmare that she slept with a donkey. For the lovers it was a nightmare. For Bottom it was a wonderful dream. Because he enjoyed the dream very much, he decides to write it in a ballad. So, he says it in a ballad and mentions it in his play “Pyramus and Thisbe”.
The dream is the most important thing in the play. Puck in the epilogue says that the characters make this play only to provide the audience with that dream to think about. It means that the goal of William Shakespeare is to give the audience that dream.
Was there a dream really? No. Are the fairies real in the play? Yes.
William Shakespeare shows the audience that the fairies do exist. All the people believe that the fairies are do not exist; they are just imagination. Shakespeare tells us in this play that there are fairies living with us and sometimes they charm us. Cupid has his own workings on our love stories. The effect of Cupid is there on our love stories. Shakespeare shows us that in our physical world there are supernatural figures like the fairies, angels, jinn, and devils. So, there are supernatural figures living with us in our physical world. This is what Shakespeare makes it clear in the play. What is the significance of the dream? Where is the dream? King Oberon makes the lovers and Titania think that what they have gone through is a dream. So, he makes them imagine that their experince in the forest was a dream. But it was not a dream actually. What is the significance of this?
One interpretation: One of the students in the other section said that the characters’ forest experience can be considered a journey of quest. It is a journey into the unconsciousness. The characters were unconscious. They do not know what they want. They would behave spontaneously. They act in a vulgar way. They were fighting, swearing, and chasing one another by force. So, they show loose morals; they are not governed by reason. And when the characters come to consciousness, they all consider what they have gone through is a nightmare except Bottom. Bottom is the only one who enjoyed what he has gone through. So, this is one of the interpretations.
-Another interpretation: another student said that Shakespeare appeals to the idea of dream to solve certain complicated issue. He wants to teach us that sometimes when there is a complicated problem, it can be solved through imagination not reason. For example, when Demetrius rejects or jilts Helena and he goes to Hermia and follows her and Hermia does not live him; she loves another one, it is a very complicated problem. This problem cannot be solved by reason. So, Oberon uses magic; he puts the magic juice on his eyes. He has corrected him; he makes him go back to his first love Helena. So, this is a lesson to us sometimes. Complicated problem are solved through imagination. Shakespeare also wants to tell us that the scientific approach to life does not work all the time. There are people who are like Sir Francis Bacon, Alexander Pope in the 18th century, they believe in reason as a fact in their lives. They do not accept imagination. Shakespeare wants to tell us that in our physical world there are imaginative things/ unseen powers. Immanuel Kant in the 18th century talks about the power of the spirit in our lives. He talks about spirituality. He says that one can transcend his physical shape or physical reality and go beyond it to a spiritual world. So, Shakespeare wants to say that the world is a mixture of reason and imagination. This is my point of view. Let us say that reason and imagination are two faces of reality.
Are the other supernatural elements? If you check the internet, you will find that some people claim that they see Virgin Merry.
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