Mnd William Shakespeare's Play a Essay

" Creating this intermediary set of characters is one of the main techniques Shakespeare uses to confound appearance and reality in a Midsummer Night's Dream.

Act II reveals yet another layer of Shakespeare's reality in a Midsummer Night's Dream. In Act II, the central human drama is shifted from the realistic and familiar world of Athenian reality to the world of the woods in which fairies dwell. Even the fairies allude to yet another layer of reality, when Puck recalls the story of Oberon and Titania fighting over the Indian prince: "Oberon is passing fell and wrath, / Because that she as her attendant hath / a lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king," (Act II, scene i). Moreover, it is soon revealed that the alternative forest reality is filled with different laws of physics than the familiar worlds. Shakespeare shows that these two worlds are well-integrated and blend seamlessly because the central human characters like Hermia and Helena, and Demetrius do not seem to suffer from any existential angst about their experiences in the woods.Another technique that Shakespeare uses to converge appearance and reality is to alter the minds of some of the main characters via magic potions. Moreover, the fairies are themselves susceptible to magic potions. Oberon and Puck conspire to offer the potion not just to Demetrius but also on Titania. Puck is also able to confuse the main characters by mimicking voices in Act III, scene iii. The fact that Hermia, Helena, and the other human characters take it for granted that magic potions and fairy kingdoms exist shows that Shakespeare suggests that dreamscapes are interchangeable with daily reality. Dreams and reality merge in a Midsummer Night's Dream.

Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Retrieved online: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/full.html.....