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A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

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Magic and Love in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Summary:

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare intertwines magic and love to explore human nature and relationships. Magic, primarily through Puck's interventions, causes chaos and reveals truths, such as the fickleness of love among the Athenian lovers and Titania's infatuation with Bottom. Illusions blur reality, as seen in Puck's epilogue breaking the fourth wall. Ultimately, magic resolves conflicts, unifying characters and highlighting the play's theme that love, like magic, is unpredictable and transformative.

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How does Shakespeare use magic in Act 3, Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream?

At the start of this scene, Puck has a monologue in which he tells Oberon of his magical antics. "An ass's nole I fixed on his head," he says of the actor Bottom. When Titania wakes with the sleeping potion in her eyes, Bottom is the first one she sees and "straightway loved an ass."

Oberon asks if Puck also gave the love potion to the Athenian youth, and the duo observe the aftermath as Demetrius and Hermia enter. Puck has charmed Lysandar instead of Demetrius on accident. Oberon bids Puck to bring Helena here, and he attempts to fix the mistake by charming Demetrius:

Flower of this purple dye,
Hit with Cupid's archery,
Sink in apple of his eye.
When his love he doth espy,
Let her shine as gloriously
As the Venus of the sky.
When thou wakest, if she be by,
Beg of her for remedy.

Oberon says this spell as he puts the drops in Demetrius' eyes, and we witness Demetrius waking and falling for Helena. All four lovers quarrel and fight, and Oberon must fix it all with Puck's help.

Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye;
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,
To take from thence all error with his might,
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.
When they next wake, all this derision
Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision,
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,
With league whose date till death shall never end.
Whiles I in this affair do thee employ,
I'll to my queen and beg her Indian boy;
And then I will her charmed eye release
From monster's view, and all things shall be peace.

In this scene we also get to see Puck disguise his voice to sound like Demetrius, and then Lysander, tricking the boys:

Lysander: Where art thou, proud Demetrius? speak thou now.

Puck: Here, villain; drawn and ready. Where art thou?

Lysander: I will be with thee straight.

Puck: Follow me, then,
To plainer ground.

[Exit LYSANDER, as following the voice]

[Re-enter DEMETRIUS]

Demetrius: Lysander! speak again:
Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?
Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?

Puck: Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars,
Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars,
And wilt not come? Come, recreant; come, thou child;
I'll whip thee with a rod: he is defiled
That draws a sword on thee.

Demetrius: Yea, art thou there?

Puck: Follow my voice: we'll try no manhood here.

Finally, the lovers are all together asleep on the ground, and Puck is able to remove the charm from Lysander, so he no longer loves Helena and returns to his true love Hermia:

I'll apply
To your eye,
Gentle lover, remedy.
[Squeezing the juice on LYSANDER's eyes]
When thou wakest,
Thou takest
True delight
In the sight
Of thy former lady's eye:

Act 3 Scene 2 is long, but we get to see lots of magic happen.

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How does Shakespeare use magic, illusion, or the imaginary in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Shakespeare uses magic in A Midsummer Night's Dream to allow characters to act upon revenge as well as to allow characters to create unity. In both cases, magic is used to reveal truth about human nature, even with respect to the fairies, who also have very human-like natures.

Oberon first tells Puck to use the magic flower struck by Cupid's arrow in a way that will allow Oberon to revenge himself on his wife, Titania. Oberon feels jealous because Titania is showering so much affection on a changeling, a changeling that Oberon actually wanted for himself. The juice of the flower will allow anyone sleeping to fall in love with the first living creature he/she sees upon waking. Puck craftily uses his own magic to give the actor Bottom the head of a donkey, symbolic of Bottom's arrogance and stubbornness, then uses the juice of the flower to make Titania fall in love with a man who has the head of a donkey. While Puck's use of magic serves to reveal to Bottom the arrogance and stubbornness of his character while also revealing to Titania her foolish fickleness, Puck's magic also serves to reunite Titania and Oberon by the end of the play. Towards the end of the play, Oberon uses an herb to make the queen "[s]ee as though wast wont to see," meaning to see as she used to see. When she awakens, she feels so enlightened by the experience that she gladly returns to being in love with Oberon.

Puck also uses magic to reveal the true natures of the four Athenian lovers, Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius. Puck accidentally makes both Lysander and Demetrius fall in love with Helena using the flower, but his ability to do so reveals that their love for each other is not as strong as they profess it to be, which reveals the true fickleness of human nature. Puck remarks best on what his magic reveals about human nature when he says, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" (3.2.115). In addition, the love mix-up causes the Athenian characters to quarrel, leading to severed friendships and challenges to duel to the death, further revealing the faults in their human natures.

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What types of illusion are present in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

We should also remember the illusion presented to the audience by the play itself. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare playfully subverts the boundaries between fantasy and reality, no more so than when Puck breaks the fourth wall in the epilogue.

In speaking directly to the audience, Puck is deliberately drawing attention to the illusory nature of the action that we've just witnessed. Everything that has happened on stage has been nothing but an elaborate dream staged to delight, entertain, and instruct. If anyone has been offended at what has taken place, then Puck can only apologize and say that he and the other actors will make it up to the audience with, presumably, another performance. That is to say, another illusion.

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What types of illusion are present in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

This is a great question. There are several illusions in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

First, Titania is put under a spell by Puck. When she first sees the enchanted Nick Bottom, with a donkey's head, she falls in love, believing him to be the most handsome creature she has ever seen.

In terms of the four Athenian lovers, a spell is also placed on Lysander by mistake. The potion, as with Titania, makes one fall in love with the first person he or she sees. Puck mistakenly takes Lysander for Demetrius. Lysander, who is already in love with Hermia, sees Helena first, and falls in love with her. Demetrius is also enchanted, as was Oberon's intent, and sees Helena (also as Oberon had planned) and falls in love with Helena.

One of the singularly most entertaining parts of the play is the comedy revolving around the two men who now love Helena, when before, no one had loved Helena. Hermia, is—of course—puzzled by the change in Lysander, and then devastated. Soon she also becomes vengeful, trying to punish Helena for what she believes was a purposeful plan to lure Lysander away. Helena believes that both men are using her for their sport, to make fun of her, and she is disgusted with both of them.

By the end of the play, the illusion of love visited upon Titania and Lysander is removed by Puck (at Oberon's direction) using an "antidote," while it is left on Demetrius, in the name of love.

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How are magic and love interrelated in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream?

Lysander, in Wiliam Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream suggests that


Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth; …



This is somewhat ironic, for the loves of the four young mortal lovers in the play only do run smooth due to the interference of Puck, although even in the magical realm, love can be inappropriate and unrequited. Titania and Oberon do not live in complete harmony, and there are many plot complications before the inevitable happy resolutions.

The suggestion in  Puck's famous speech that love and poetry are alike akin to a certain type of madness suggest that all three, lunatic, lover, and poet are associated with the supernatural, both in the sense of their moving outside the ordinary world of "getting and spending" and the sense that perhaps there is something mysterious and magical inherent in their inspiration or cause and needed for their successful outcome.





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