Drama, Dream, and Life

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, love can transpose to from and dignity: love looks not with the eyes, but with mind. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1.1)

The drama mainly focuses on the mutability of love and the significance of marriage; it reveals the development of romanticism. It is one of the greatest comedies among Shakespeare’ works, and it profusely probes into love with witty and attractive plot. The drama extends the image of dream to commence the displacement of relationship and the recreation of affection. The profound contents draw on brilliant distinction to establish a splendid and romantic “dream.”

Bewildered by illusion, saplings always pursue gratifying but impracticable love. Yet love itself is blind and not rational. Hermia and Helena exchange their positions simply because Puck played a joke on those two young men. The plot tells the variation and frailness of love. Even a drop of flower juice can change the fate, happiness, and hatred. Falling madly in love with the thing which one’s eyes first meet seems insane, but it signifies the absurd aspect of love. I admire the design of the denouement. Lysander and Hermia fell in love with their free will, yet it cannot obstruct the interference of the marvelous flower. As for Demetrius and Helena, their love was based on blindness and delusion. Shakespeare, as a man in the feudal society, he not only extolled the glory of love in the drama, but also mocked the blindness for free love objectively.

No one can deny that the characters in the play were depicted successfully. Hermia, for instance, was a valiant and amicable girl. She stands for the modern women of the time, and strived for her destiny vigorously. There is no doubt that she had some drawbacks and weakness; she mutated to a jealous, wimpish, and hostile girl while realizing that she had been discarded. We can discover the human psychology emerged from the expansion and conversion of the plot.

The setting of the play in the drama can be contrasted to those four couples in the “reality.” The workers rehearsed a drama which lauded the chaste and permanent love with their clumsy acting. In my opinion, it implied the falsism of “True Love,” or true love can only exit in the play. Shakespeare always united abundant image to set up a pondering plot and that sets up his great and unsurpassable position.

Shakespeare set lots of exquisite comparison in the play which strengthened dramatic tension and the images of the characters. The city represents rationality and reality, yet the woods symbolizes subconscious which is veiled. The ruler of Athens, Theseus, venerated the laws. However, the King of the fairy, Oberon, was the one who started the chaos.

A fictitious dream shuttles and connects the world of actuality, myth, and imagination. It goes without saying that the drama is remarkable and profound. I take it for granted that Shakespeare is the greatest screenwriter in history!

Shakespeare demonstrated the fickleness of life and brittleness of humanity in the drama. Even if life itself is illusory and dramatic, we should attempt to communicate with our heart, devote ourselves and love someone. Just as what Shakespeare wrote, “ Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”