A Midsummer Nights Dream by William Shakespeare is a Athenian comedy.
Some of the characters are fairies, kings, queens, and even lower class people. It is
apparent what time period this story is from, because of some of the things that
Theseus, the duke of Athens, and Oberon, the king of the fairies, say in it. One of these
such quotes from Theseus is, Go, Master of Revels. Stir up the Athenian youth to
merriments, awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth, and all of Athens shall
celebrate. Yet another quote talking about the Athenians is spoken by Oberon, A
sweet Athenian lady is in love with a disdainful youth. You will know him by the
Athenian garments that he wears.
In this story the lower class people are called mechanics. Before this story
many people may have thought a mechanic could only be some who worked on cars
for a living. Boy, were they ever wrong. The mechanics in this story are far to dumb to
ever work on anything. They even manage to turn a Greek tragedy into a comedy,
because of their lack of acting skills. One such character is Bottom, a line that he has
to say is suppose to be serious and sad, but he turns it into something funny because of
the way he says and acts it. Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now I am dead. I die, die,
die, die, die, and yet he does not die for quite some time.
Some changes that the characters made through out the play were quite
interesting. Puck, a kind of evil fairy, plays a trick on his queen Tatania. He changes
Bottom, a mechanical, into a donkey and makes Tatania fall in madly in love with him.
After a little while he decides to let her see what she was actually in love with and she
starts to scream. Its quite amusing that a fairy could be so evil. In all the other stories
that are ever read make fairies out to be nice things that grant wishes and such. Who
would ever think that they would play crewel tricks on people like that. Puck also puts
a type of love potion in the eyes of Lysander and Demetreuis to make them fall in love
with Helena instead of Hermia. Which also a evil plan.
This book was very interesting to read. There are some very interesting things
to be learned from this book. For example, there was a Athenian law that said the
father could Condemn his daughter to death if she did not do as he said. Herima,
Theseus daughter, refuses to marry Demterius the man that her father favors, so he
says that if she does not obey him that he will kill her. It seems that is a bit ridiculous
that some one would even think of doing that if they did not marry some one that they
did not even love. Its very wrong to make someone marry a person that they have no
feelings for at all.Words
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