Illusion and Fairies in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream Essay

Illusion and Fairies in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights day-dream The main theme of love in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights dreaming is explored by four young lovers, who, for the sake of their passions, quit the civilized and sagacious city of Athens, and its laws, and venture into the forest, there to follow the desires of their hearts - or libidos as the case may be. In this wild and unknown wilderness, with the heat and feeling commonly brought on by a midsummer night, they give chase, shekels duels, profess their love and hatred and otherwise become completely broken in and entangled in the realities and perceptions of their own emotions. What better opportunity for Shakespeare to introduce a world of fairies then this? Shakespeares fairies live in this wild forest were they love, fight, capriole and helpfully sort the poor young lovers out before send them off, back to their own civilized world. Like many of the other elements in this play Shakespeare gives his fairies a healthy mix of phantasm and reality. The Fairies use illusion in their exploits and Shakespeare uses them in the Dream in such a steering that one might ask are they even real or are they themselves an illusion?Because of Shakespeares unique portrayal of the fairy world of A Midsummer Nights Dream it is often criticized as being contrary to the usual folk beliefs of fairies at the time. The fairies in the Dream which are described as Diminutive, pleasing and picturesque sprites are thought to present themselves as a new race of fairies, as different from the popular fairies of customs duty as are those fairies from the fays of medieval romances (Latham 180). It is this diminutive stature of the fairies that is brought up the to the highest degree often by critics who b... ...audience, imploring them that if they wish not to believe what they affirm seen, then they might think of it as a dream as well (Epilogue). This from the mouth of their well-known and loved Robin Goodfel low only serves to exchange even more. And Robin has been known as Puck ever since. Bibliography Briggs, K. M. The digit of Puck. London Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1959.Briggs, Katharine M. The Vanishing People. London B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1978.Hunt, Leigh Day By The Fire. Boston Roberts Brothers, 1870.Latham, small(a) White Ph.D. The Elizabethan Fairies. New York Columbia University Press, 1930.Ovid Metamorphoses. Trans. A. D. Melville, Intro and Notes E. J. Kenney. New York Oxford University Press, 1986.Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Nights Dream. The Norton Shakespeare Comedies. Ed. S. Greenblatt et al. New York Norton, 1997.