Dec 23, 2009

A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Overviews

Wolfgang Clemens, in the first excerpt, provides a general introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, identifying and analyzing the play's historical background, language, themes, dramatic structure, characterization, and literary significance. In the second excerpt, Jack Vaughn characterizes the comedy as an eminently poetic work, discussing Shakespeare's language, with particular attention to eye imagery, such as the blindness of love.

Wolfgang Clemen
[Clemen provides a general introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, identifying and analyzing the play's historical background, language, themes, dramatic structure, characterization, and literary significance. Remarking that the transitory nature of love is the principal theme of the play, this critic praises Shakespeare's masterful use of language, particularly images representing the contrast of light and darkness, to suggest the atmosphere of a fantastic dream world. Shakespeare's language, Clemen maintains, is not only remarkably visual but...