The role of magic in A Midsummers Nights Dream Research Paper

The role of magic in A Midsummers Nights Dream - Research Paper Example Patriarchal dominance is given a thorough overview within the play and revealed through making humor at the expense of its proprietary nature. The play explores the many ways in which love manifests, allowing for its exaltation as well as its trivialization. The play embodies a duality of mythologies from which to create its discourse. While the nature of the fairy is relative to the mythologies of Europe, the play takes place in the setting of Athens, thus bringing into mind the Greek mythologies. This convergence of mythological settings and universes provides a heightened sense of the supernatural within the play. In addition, as the time period of the Renaissance was a time when humanism was the philosophical standard, it is possible that beyond the mythological parallels, there is a contrast intended between the reason of classicism and the magic of the fairy realm. Therefore, the setting provides multiple levels of consideration, creating a world in which contrast and continuit y are both within the framework of the setting. This setting provides a structure in which the shifting shape of the emotion can be explored as it represents contrasts of differing beliefs. Love is often considered to be a magical emotional element in the human experience. In Shakespeare’s fantastical play, magic creates a complication of human emotions by the influence of the fae, As the fae are not human, but creatures of myth and fantasy, their association to love is both more cold and more passionate than that of human love. Therefore, the consequences of love and the intermix of emotional play that is done by the fairy folk becomes a reflection of the nature of man through a sense of exaggeration (Dowd and Pallata 558). As the play is considered to be a romantic comedy, there is an emphasis on love, but the elements of structure and expectation is how the play is formulated in order to convey the message that Shakespeare intended. Thus, while love is of a primary importa nce, the fulfillment of the expectations of complications that get in the way of love which are finally overcome, naturally leads towards an end which includes marriage (Nostbakken and Shakespeare 3). In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the complications are created first through the unrequited love within the human world, then through the magic within the fairy world as the fairies choose to interfere for their own amusement. The first complication in the human realm is that of Hermia as she loves Lysander while her father has demanded that she marry Demetrius. If she refuses to marry Demetrius she is given two choices by her father, Theseus; â€Å"Either to die the death, or abjure/ Forever the society of men† (Shakespeare Act 1: Scene 1: lines 65-66). Hermia has been given the choice to either love whom her father has chosen to be her husband or to live without love as a nun. The alternative to both is death. This firmly establishes the human world for its patriarchal nat ure. Males have the control over the future of females, thus their own desires are immaterial to the desires of the male. However, in the fairy world, this patriarchal power is less relevant. The magic in the fairy realm provides an opportunity to make