Shakespeare uses a lot of space to describe the beautiful fairy world with fantastic colors, although the gods, elves are full of magical colors, they also have the courage to pursue the happiness and joy. Hermia and Lysander do not give up even with the disagreement of Hermia’s father and the interference of prince of Athens. The most dramatic part of this play is that the magic juice can change people’s feelings to fall in love with another person. The elves’ naughtiness led to a variety of mixed love comedies. Puck puts the juice on the eyes of Lysander, who then falls in love Helena. When Oberon finds this out, he makes Puck apply the juice to Demetrius. Due to Puck’s errors, Hermia’s two lovers temporarily turn against her in favor of Helena. Meanwhile, Nick Bottom, a stage-struck weaver, is spotted by Puck, Who transforms his head into that of an ass. Titania is awoken by Bottom’s singing and she immediately falls in love with him. In this point, we can see that Shakespeare’s hope for all satisfactions in love. There are two same kind and beautiful girls; Now one was driven crazy by sadness, another was blinded by surprise. Then they began to speculate or even maliciously slander each other, and another two spoony teenagers fought for Helena in anger.
Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania and orders puck to remove the ass’s head from Bottom. The magic enchantment is removed. And everyone comes back to normal life, the lovers finally got married, a funny and dreamlike love drama express Shakespeare’s compliment for beautiful, romantic, and happy love.
Besides, the wood in which the fairies lived is the important surroundings to the play’s romantic atmosphere. It makes this story more mysterious. In the story, the writer said that the all the things happened in the midsummer night. In England, there are many fairy tales about midsummer night. So the midsummer night is full of mysterious things. The love adventure of the four young people happened in the romantic and mysterious atmosphere, thus we can see Shakespeare’s pursuit of romantic and free love.
Given the title A Midsummer Night Dream, it is no surprise that one of the main themes of the play is dream, particularly as they relate to darkness and love. When the morning comes, ending the magical night in the forest, the lovers begin to suspect that
their experience in the forest were merely a dream. When the four young people awake with their own lover in their hug, they think they dream a dream. They cannot explain the dream. Dream always has a veil. But it expresses human’s desire, there are three dreams of desire among the lovers.
First, it is Helena’s desire. In the whole story, Helena gets little attention from the audience. She is beautiful but cannot get Demetrius’s love. It is her whom Demetrius shall love to first. However, he loves Hermia later which makes her suffer most. Because Demetrius loves her good friend Hermia, Helena complains about Hermia. She is not as beautiful as Hermia is. Both two men love Hermia not her. Therefore, she is very heartbreaking. After the love potion, it is a very big surprise to her when Demetrius’s heart comes back. And it is a bigger surprise when Hermia’s lover, Lysander, loves her, too. The two things satisfy her desire toward love. On the other hand, it is a good way to take revenge toward Hermia.
Secondly, it is Oberon’s revenge and joking. Oberon and Titania are at quarrel for an Indian young boy. He plays a trick on Titania using the love potion, making her love with an ass-headed. In fact, whomever Titania loves, only he feels satisfied and Titania has little feeling after she recovers. He takes revenge and it satisfies his desire.
Thirdly, it is Hermia’s fear. She chooses to escape with Lysander to resist the Athens law. Though making this decision just for their true love, she must have panic and misgivings as an unmarried woman. And she is not as tall as Helena. She knows that she will lose Lysander in the real world but she really does not want to lose him. She fears to lose him. So in the world of fairy wood, the most terrible thing happens to her. Her favorite Lysander is in love with her good friend Helena. Lysander abandons her in a very short time. It reflects her fear. According to the explanation of Freud, dream is people’s potential consciousness.
The three dreams of desire show us the four lovers’ pursuit of free love, meanwhile, this also express Shakespeare’s desire for wonderful love.
3.2 The realism of love behind the dream
Each maid of Athens was eager to get married. Marriage and motherhood were
their main ambition in their life. However, according to Athenian law, they didn’t have rights to choose their husband and control their marriage. Their father could do that for them, And their brother could do that, if their father was dead. If a woman didn’t obey the law, she would be punished. But the hero and the heroine, Hermia and Lysander decide to elope by escaping through the forest at night. Hermia informs her best friend Helena, But Helena has recently been rejected by Demetrius and decides to win back. Her favor by revealing the plan to him, However, Demetrius, followed doggedly by Helena, chases Hermia. Then the four young people start a love adventure in the wood in which the fairies lived. Faced with many undiscovered difficulties, they are enough brave and blind. At the beginning of the work, Shakespeare decided the irreconcilable contradictions between daughter and father. Because Shakespeare lives in the period of social transformation, many new ideas are constantly forming and changing. The basic rule of the feudal society is being weakening. People are eager to get out of it, to pursue their own happiness. The conflict between them is a real reflection of the British society. It exposes the shackles that the feudal society does for women’s marriage. However, it is very common for the young that parents often interfere in their children’s feelings. So in the present, this setting still attracts people in the thoughts and feelings of sympathy.
There are some difficulties in the relationship between Hermia and Lysander. First, there is a clue law that the daughter cannot disobey her father's will to marry another. Otherwise, she will be punished to death. Since it is a law, everyone should obey this rule. She can not change the law.
Secondly, her father, Egues, insists on that Hermia can marry only to Demetrius , not Lysander. Egues does not allow her to marry Lysander. If she disobeys his will she should face death. It is the difficulty from her father. Egues does not like Lysander to be the husband of his daughter.
Thirdly, Demetrius loves her very much. He wants her to be his wife very much though Hermia loves Lysander not him. If he just gives up or loves Helena who loves him very much, the love's difficulty of Hermia will be reduced. However, Demetrius wants to compete with Lysander.
Fourthly, the fairy wood is set at night and in a dark forest. It gives people a kind of dimness. At night, people cannot see clearly and think carefully. The darkness has controlled them. So in the play, the difficulty of the love becomes more difficult.
Shakespeare uses a lot of space to describe the beautiful and fantastic fairy world, so as to put their artistic space wings. Although there are many magical gods and elves in the forest, they are full of feelings which people have. They have the courage to pursue happiness and joy. These elves are always flying in the forest, but they are closely related to people’s lives. In Shakespeare’s view, the gods’ thought is same with people’s. Their attitude towards marriage is the pursuit of liberation of personality and the happiness. So these fairies and elves in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are the embodiment of human beings from real life.
3.3. The view of love from reality but also higher than the reality of love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
In this comedy drama, Shakespeare gives the good performance of the women. They have a noble moral character and the independent personality. They believe everyone cannot chop and change in love. The most admired thing is they have the courage to pursue their own love, commitment and loyalty of love at that time. Hermia's father wants her to marry Demetrius, but she loses her heart to another young aristocrat Lysander. And Egeus feels very angry when he knows that they share a mutual affinity. He talks about the thing with the Duke of Athens and hopes that Hermia will bow to him under the law of Athens, but it not works. There is another female image Helena, Hermia's good friend. She is very clever, pursuing her love and not giving up. Although she loved Demetrius deeply, Demetrius was infatuated with her good friend Hermia. When she learned that Hermia and Lysander will get away from here together, she said, \herein mean I to enrich my pain, to have his sight thither and back again.\Demetrius the news about Hermia, just for gaining a little reward to comfort herself. She is also to pursue love, but her heart is covered all over with cuts and bruises. Viola who is the role of the \
deeply a person who doesn't love herself, but there is also a difference between Helena and Viola. Duck don't know Viola loves him, while Demetrius still don't care about her feeling even knowing Helena loved him very much. However, whatever Demetrius do to her, which may humiliate and hurt her, she still insists on pursuing her love. Just what she expresses let Demetrius be in the wrong and Oberon have a compassion on her, so that her image is very impressive. The most magic dream, however, the most beautiful, but love. Just as in life, it is a tragedy and also a comedy, and the dream comes across the emotion. \the one hand, let me feel like being in the forest, mountain flowers brilliant, beautiful scenery could not bear. On the other hand, it touches my heart deeply by the women's courage and resolution to pursue freedom love.
\your love\Shakespeare, is to eulogize mostly love, full of hope and optimism . A midsummer night's dream of a romantic comedy drama, the praise of love freedom and freedom of marriage, is of great significance in the progress of the time. He advocates free love, loyalty to love, loyalty，His works are full of humanity, he opposed asceticism, certainly people's feelings, this is he to Medieval asceticism the most incisive criticism. The heroine Hermia is brave and stubborn, she is always fighting with unreasonable feudal opinion. And she runs away with Lysander to fight for the success. She is regardless of the limits of feudal ethical code to struggle for love which shows her extraordinary courage and aggressive personality. She uses actions to ask for the freedom from the authority of the husband and paternity to break the limits from traditional custom. Her pursuit of personality liberation and happiness of love shows her courage and intelligence. Her self-esteem and self-respect quality shines in the middle ages of the dark society. In that society, the quality between men and women is not allowed to be mentioned, but Shakespeare gives people dawn, although is short, but he is a forerunner. In this way, his impact is inestimable. And it shows Shakespeare's compliment for humanism love. Another female image in the play is Helena, Hermia's good friend, she is clever and acute. She never gives up searching for his love. She is deeply in love with Demetrius but Demetrius is a crush
on her good friend Hermia. When she learns that Hermia and Lysander are going to escape into the forest, she tells Demetrius only to get a little reward to comfort her. She follows Demetrius to the forest, she is always pursuing her love. She is also a vivid female character in Shakespeare's play to show his view of humanism love.
We know that the British feudal color is very strong in the reign of the queen of England, the author excavated material of the script from the life. In reality, the daughter's marriage has always been controlled by the father. The daughter is unable to decide their own marriage. But in the script, she can escape from bondage of law, and never yield to the reality. Finally, Hermia fight for free love by means of going out of home. Her behavior was so unexpected that British woman would not dare to think about it. But she proves his declaration of love in this way , and this is also her first step to get her love. In spite of a lot of waves happen in the process of the adventure, she eventually dispels all difficulties with sincerity, the loyalty of love, and is happy with her lover. That not only highlights the character of Hermia, but also embodies the author's idea on marriage that is more higher than real marriage.
Love and marriage, as one of the most sensitive nerves in society, is bound to be obvious that resembles with its influence. With the thoughts of art, Shakespeare, a giant of the European renaissance, let the audience and readers identify the nature of love by his dramas and poems. Shakespeare's ideas of love, completely abandoned the cold face of medieval asceticism and the repair of the afterlife dream of lying; at the same time, also laughed at the \spirit of love, a kind of spiritual love between man and man named after the western philosopher, Plato. the pursuit of spiritual communication, rejection of lust, the rational spirit of pure love. He opposed asceticism and made sure the rationality of human desires, advocated freedom of love and marriage.
论文资料
