I am going to discuss the way Shakespeare uses language and the effects he creates by comparing two of Oberon's speeches. The first passage I will be focusing on will be from Act three scene two

Authors Avatar

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

William Shakespeare was born in the 1564 and died in 1616. He lived in the Elizabethan era and Elizabethan society was very different to the society of today and this difference was very visible in the theatre. In Elizabethan times, theatre was more communal and accessible to the masses than it is today, where theatre is seen as more formal and elitist. Shakespeare’s plays appealed to and attracted a wide audience: Queen Elizabeth herself watched some of his plays. In the Globe Theatre, where the majority of his plays were performed, the less affluent theatre goers stood around the stage (and were known as the groundlings), whereas those better off would be in the seats and boxes which were arranged in an upwards curve. This mass appeal would manifest itself in the wide variety of characters in his plays. For example, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there are many different types of characters for the audience to relate to, ranging from the Duke and Duchess to the “rude mechanicals”. This play is about the meeting of different groups of people and what happens when their worlds collide. In this essay…  [A midsummer night’s dream is set in Athens and the part of the play I will be focusing on in this essay occurs in the woods.]

Join now!

Four Athenian youths are roaming the woods on midsummer’s night. Lysander and Hermia are trying to elope but Demetrius has followed them because he also wants to marry Hermia. Hermia’s father Egeus has promised her to Demetrius and says if she refuses to marry him she should be put to death or become a nun. Hermia and Lysander have run away to get married and escape this fate, but told Hermia’s friend Helena who then told Demetrius where they ran to because she is in love with him. She also followed Demetrius into the woods despite his protestations that ...

This is a preview of the whole essay