A Midsummer Night's Dream Review - Essay Example

According to Steve Martin, “Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke,” (Helitzer and Shatz 7). The play approached the story with a twist of laughter and fancy for the audience to enjoy. The story is presented in a light manner and people would truly appreciate and enjoy it without the need to be serious. Actually comedy may make people laugh but it is not exactly the same as humor. Comedy has serious subtext while using various media like play to show ridiculous and hypocrisy in certain prevailing beliefs or issues (Sheridan 66).

That shows how A Midsummer Night’s Dream can have hidden serious themes and agenda despite of the play being presented and written as a comedy. A good illustration to further deepen the understanding behind the aspect of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a comedy is to compare it with a tragedy made by the same writer. Romeo and Juliet was said to be written almost at the same time A Midsummer Night’s Dream had been made. According to Aristotle, tragedy starts calmly and ends with horror or depressing conclusion while comedy starts with conflict and ends in a calm and happy conclusion.

Also in tragedy individualism is promoted as for comedy the community is the whole focus. Both the stories of Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream have romance, but the latter have more than one couple while the former focused on a couple alone. Romeo and Juliet followed a single story plot about the love of the couple and the conflict between their families and ended with the suicide of the couple. On the other hand, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the story involved several plots with many characters like nobles, tradesmen and fairies responding to one another and the story ended with the three happy marriages and celebration (Nostbakken 1-2).

Large differences had been drawn to separate comedy from tragedy, but A Midsummer Night’s Dream has still many serious issues it tackled and once analyzed various issues from different perspectives would arise. Various generations had it analyzed in various ways. For the eighteenth-century critics, they focused on the plot of the play while the nineteenth-century commentators focused on the characters. The twentieth-century analysts focus on the language and theme of the play, but the recent decades also sprouted analysis regarding social and political context of the play (Kehler 3).

Various themes would be presented in the preceding paragraphs regarding the play as each theme would unfold the meaning and story of the play. One of the themes of the play is love and marriage. It can be seen between the characters Theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus is the Duke of Athens and Hippolyta is the Queen of Amazons and they discussed about the wedding. They also had some plans for Athenian youth to met and prepare for the grand celebration. Theseus promised Hippolyta even though they met from combat, they will get married with grand celebration and pampering (Shakespeare Act 1 Scene 1).

After all, the scene showed how love conquers all. Even at war the two rulers of two conflicting groups became one. Another theme is the presence of love and magic as characters like Puck exist throughout the play. He was fascinated with people when said the line “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” (Shakespeare Act 3 Scene 2). Puck is a sprite who affected the story of the play with his magic as sometimes he made