Robert F. Willson, Jr. (essay date 1981)
SOURCE: “The Chink in the Wall: Anticlimax and Dramatic Illusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream,” in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. 117, 1981, pp. 85-90.
[In the following essay, Willson asserts that Shakespeare uses anticlimax in A Midsummer Night's Dreamas a device that underlies the entire plot of the play.]
The device of anticlimax dominates A Midsummer Night's Dream. A more appropriate word is “undercutting”, since anticlimax is identified so closely with bathos, or the descent...
Source: Shakespearean Criticism, ©2001 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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