A Midsummer Night's Dream

A malapropism is the incorrect use of a word, often in an idiomatic expression, whereby the incorrect word sounds very similar to the intended, correct word. For example, in Shakespeare's Much Ado...

In act 1, the central conflict involves Hermia, who is expected by her father, Egeus, to marry Demetrius. The problem is Hermia is in love with Lysander. Because of their love, she vows that she...

eNotes editors can only answer one question at a time; others must be posted separately. In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus comments that love and imagination are similar. He...

An epilogue is a speech and it almost like a PS (postscript) to the main body of, in this case a play. It can serve to bring closure to events or answer questions which may still confuse the...

Puck doesn't explain precisely why he changes Bottom's head into an ass's head, but he does seem to resent that the uncouth mechanicals or "homespuns" are so near his queen, saying: What hempen...

Because it is a comedy, this play doesn't weigh as heavily as some of Shakespeare's other works in a consideration of deep moral lessons. It is quite entertaining in a light and farcical way. The...

The theme of love always raises many questions and in A Midsummer Night's Dream there are many instances which reveal that love can be fickle, unfair, intense, contradictory, irrational, painful...

The line is spoken by Bottom in William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Act III Scene 1. The full quotation is: [Bottom:] Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that. And...

In act 2, scene 1 of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon, King of the Fairies, is having a disagreement with Titania, Queen of the Fairies, about a young Indian prince who...

Personification is a literary device that gives human qualities or characteristics to inanimate objects, ideas, animals, or abstractions. It's a popular form of figurative language, and so it...

The climax of A Midsummer Night's Dream is act 3, scene 2. The climax is the point at which all of the tension in a story culminates—when the drama gets most intense. In act 3, scene 2 of this...

In the first scene of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia's father, Egeus, appeals to Theseus, the duke of Athens, to order Hermia to marry Demetrius, who Hermia refuses to marry. Egeus...

In Puck's speech at the end of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, just as in the "parabasis" of ancient Greek Old Comedy, a character breaks the "fourth wall" and speaks directly to the...

Before beginning a search for puns in William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, consider providing a definition of pun, so that one knows what one is looking for. A pun occurs when...

In one of the most well-known lines from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the mischievous sprite Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, says to the fairy king, Oberon, "Lord, what fools these...

There are only nine scenes in A Midsummer Night's Dream, very few by the standards of a Shakespeare play. The most important of them is act 5, scene 1. This is the only scene in act 5, and it...

The main conflict in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that people want to make decisions for others. A conflict is a struggle between two characters, or between a character and an outside force. In...

The literary devices used by Shakespeare throughout A Midsummer Night's Dream includes notable examples of witty, clever wordplay in the form of puns, malapropisms, and oxymorons. The "rude...

The forest is a perfect setting for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The words midsummer and night in the title suggest a story in which nature plays an important role. Midsummer is a time of...

Shakespeare's comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, tells the story of young lovers and a troupe of actors, caught in the woods after dark, at the mercy of mischievous fairies who turn the humans'...

Helena awakens in this scene to find Lysander and Demetrius both madly in love with her. Helena has no way of knowing this is due to Puck having dropped a love potion into their eyes, so she...

At first glance, Lysander and Demetrius appear to be fairly interchangeable characters in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. They both fall in love with the wrong woman. Lysander falls in...

Critics have frequently remarked upon the "profusion of poetic imagery" with which Shakespeare's bountiful imagination endows the fairy world in A Midsummer Night's Dream. This delightful...

Theseus kindly overrides Egeus to allow Lysander and Hermia to marry, but primarily he is bemused by love's irrationality and thus sees all four of the lovers' adventures as a form of madness or...

In act three, scene one, Titania wakes up and instantly falls in love with Bottom. She falls in love with him because Oberon, her disgruntled husband, has sprinkled a love juice on her eyelids as...

In Act III Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the craftsmen enter the woods in order to rehearse their play. After Bottom warns Quince that he will need two separate prologues, one for the men...

Everything in A Midsummer Night's Dream hinges on the relationship of Hermia and Lysander. Without them, there would only be a partial play. These two are star crossed lovers feel they are burdened...

Of all Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream is the most magical. Magic is an element of the supernatural, as it's traditionally believed to come from outside the natural world. In other...

This play seems to celebrate the power of imagination to alleviate the human errors that come from misuse of power. At the beginning of the play, everyone seems to be chafing under the constraints...

Helena is very obviously a desperate woman. Having once given herself to Demetrius, she cannot get over the fact that he no longer loves her and does whatever she can to rectify the situation. She...

The relationship between Titania and Bottom is supposed to be visually humorous to the audience, for obvious reasons. Titania, as the Queen of the Fairies, is supposed to represent something...

In act 4 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania, Nick Bottom, Helena, Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius wake from their slumbers. All are surprised and confused by recent events. Before Titania wakes,...

On the eve of his wedding to Hippolyta, Theseus is confronted with Hermia's disobedience. She wants to marry Lysander, the man she loves, but her father, Egeus, has decided she must marry...

The main role of the mechanicals in A Midsummer's Night Dream is to provide comic relief, which is often the case with lower class characters in Shakespeare's plays. The mechanicals are six working...

One reason the forest is an important setting in A Midsummer Night's Dream is that the forest creates a dark, wild, mysterious atmosphere in which the magical elements of Shakespeare's plot can be...

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has two settings: Athens and the woods outside of Athens. While most of the play takes place in the woods, Athens is an important point of contrast in the...

Helena tells Demetrius that Hermia and Lysander have run away because she hopes that he will change his mind and fall for her. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a simple story, really. Hermia and...

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon sees how much Helena loves Demetrius. Oberon instructs Puck (his fairy henchman) to seek out a flower in a place they once visited. While Puck...

There are a lot of literary devices being used in this scene, but I would like to focus on the poetic aspects of the scene. Probably one of the first things that a reader or audience will notice is...

In this section, Helena laments that Demetrius's love has turned from her to Hermia and then discusses love's attributes in general. Shakespeare has her use personification: in an extended...

The climax provided in Act 3 occurs when Bottom’s head is replaced with that of an ass, and the anointed lovers gather together, argue, and fall asleep. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is broken up into...

At this point in the play Hermia has been told by her father, Egeus, that she must marry Demetrius, even though Hermia would rather marry Lysander. Theseus, the Duke of Athens, has confirmed that...

Props are any small objects that are used by actors in a play to help them tell the story, which exclude the set design. If we were to use as few props as possible with minimal set design, there...

Shakespeare paints, in Helena, a portrait of someone so in love with her rejecting ex-lover, Demetrius, that nothing else matters to her... not her safety, not her self-respect, not her sense of...

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream fits the description of "romantic comedy" for at least two reasons: it focuses on the romantic relationships of characters, and it ends in marriages....

The lines you cite are in Act II, Scene 2. First question: what Lysander is saying is that loving Hermia (who he used to love) instead of loving Helena would be like loving a crow instead of a dove...