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Plot of Midsummer Night`s Dream by William Shakespeare

Plot of A Midsummer Night`s Dream by William Shakespeare

2006

The plot of A Midsummer Night 's Dream by William Shakespeare is an intricate contraption that embraces series of love stories and loving couples exchanging their strange amorous preferences which was built in to bewilder the readers by revealing the true nature of love and the power of imagination . All events take place in Athens , ancient Greece , and in a mysterious fairyland woods . Actually there are two sets of young couples (Hermia and Lysander , and Helena and Demetrius ) whose tangled relationships

(Hermia and Lysander are in love with each other while Hermia , according to the will of her father Egeus , is obliged to marry Demetrius who loves her passionately and rejects Helena 's wooing are accompanied by a subplot of Oberon-Titania-Bottom love triangle These loves are mixed and ruined due to the intervention of Puck (or Robin Goodfellow , a tricky fairy . Meanwhile Oberon , king of the fairies , having argued with his wife Titania , queen of the fairyland asks Puck to get a magic love-juice from India to remedy their relationship . However that potion causes such problems and misunderstandings as the wrong men loving the wrong women and vice versa . As a result of Puck 's mistakes , both Lysander and Demetrius woo Helena while Hermia unexpectedly stays off-side , almost at the same scene , on awakening , Titania sees Bottom and falls in love with him quite of a sudden . After all these hilarious sequences we see Bottom and his company of craftsmen-players (Shakespeare 's irony upon amateur theatres is very stinging ) in the Act five to play the tragic mythical history of Pyramus and Thisbe (here we have a play-within-a play or a plot-within-a plot ) which actually turns into a ridiculous play of symbols such as Wall , Moonshine , Lion ( HIPPOLYTA : This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard (Act V , scene 1 . Finally Puck , well-known as a great liar , declares that those who didn 't like the play had simply dreamed it out

HYPERLINK "http /www .pathguy .com /midsummerpic .jpg " \t "_blank " A Midsummer Night 's Dream is remarkable among other Shakespeare 's plays for the lack of sources for its plot . As a matter of fact , the story of the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta , the queen of Amazons , was described in Chaucer 's Knight 's Tale (Philostrate , master of the revels is also must have been taken from Chaucer ) as well as in the works of his numerous predecessors . The motive of a daughter choosing her lover in spite of her father 's will was a common place in Roman comedy and in later Boccaccio 's Decameron . Bottom and his crew is a parody on amateur players . Moreover , the richness of the fairy world is taken from folklore and interpreted in an unusual manner by the author

Exploring the level of the characters , it is easy to see that Theseus-Hippolyta and Oberon-Titania lines are parallel . Besides usually the same actor who plays Theseus plays Oberon as well . And...

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