Essay on Shakespeares Sources for A Midsummer Nights Dream

Shakespeares Sources for A Midsummer Nights ambition A Midsummer Nights Dream is one of Shakespeares most-performed plays a delightful comedy, besides full of enough emf tragedy to avoid becoming saccharine. Much of that tragic possibility comes from Shakespeares sources, as he directly acknowledges in Act V. The entertainments Philostrate proposes, all stories taken from Ovids Metamorphoses, install the unhappy endings all too likely to spring from tales like that of the 4 lovers of Shakespeares play, or the strife-torn fairy rulers. The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung / By an Athenian eunuch with the harp (V.i.44-5) is the first of Philostrates suggestions, and the most blatant. Centaurs are almost an persona of the dangerous fairy-world that underlies so much of Shakespeares play half-man, half-beast, they recall Bottoms similar, albeit more humorous, condition. thirst and jealousy cause the undoing of the marriage feast, for the Centaurs theft of women provokes a ba ttle. give thanks to the fairy intervention, all in Shakespeares play are happy with their spouses however how might the wedding accommodate been marred if Demetrius and Lysander both still love Hermia? These are the forgeries of jealousy (II.i.81) cries Titania to Oberon, and their contention, likewise a result of relish and jealousy and unbridled nature, luckily enters the play merely peripherally. Theseus law, and fairy medicine, overrules the lusty, sensual side of love and prevents such violence from marring, indeed unmaking, the comedy. The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, / Tearing the Thracian singer Orpheus in their rage (V.i.48-9) is an alternate selection, but one just as significant. The mad Ciconian women (p.259) cry There is ... ... scene. The meta-drama overcomes the real play, and what was tragic becomes tragical mirth, what was a dire warning to heed societys laws or fear the consequences is a gross entertainment and slapstick. Theseus laws have overcome the bloody, loving side of love the man himself appears to have ceased his earlier, youthful amours to settle batch with a wife, Hippolyta, vigorous enough to match his own martial nature. Indeed, he discounts the entertainments as those which he has already heard or t disused -- they are old news to him, settled affairs, and he needs hear of them no more. The only reason Pyramus and Thisbe receives a hearing is its ludicrous synopsis -- and equally odd presentation Shakespeare shows the alternate endings his play could all too easily have taken, to make us relish all the more the happy resultant he and the characters have found.