Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream - Essay Example

The element of violence rears its head as early as the opening scene and continues to be a part of the play throughout. Much of the play is about the clumsiness of the laborers who seek to put up a show for the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. The magic that is present in such efforts is an important part of various performances of the play (Gray). The main focus of the play is however, love and the disturbing elements that are a part of it. Hippolyta’s defeat in war leads to her engagement with Theseus, a relationship that is forged not only with love but also with a threat of violence.

The defeat in a show of violent strength leads Hippolyta to have to bow down before the masculine prowess of Theseus and accept the position of his wife. None of this is stated explicitly in the play but is suggested by the playwright through the undertones of violence that is inserted into the addresses of Theseus to Hippolyta at the beginning of the play. The other relationships of love that are present in the play too have an element of violence in them. The relationship between Helena and Demetrius is a good example of this.

Helena always faces the threat of violence from Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia at the beginning of the play. . Hermia, however, is threatened with violence in a situation where a mistake has been committed by Puck. The threat of assault and rape are present for Hermia even without the mistake committed by Puck. She is faced with the possibility of rape when her lover is denied the opportunity to sleep next to her. Shakespeare makes all this clear to the audience through veiled suggestions and this enhances the dramatic quality of the work and leaves the subject open to multiple interpretations on the part of the members of the audience.

Critics like R.W. Dent locate the source of this tension in the play in the imagination that is necessary on the part of the audience to appreciate a play like A Midsummer Night’s Dream which has many elements of the fantastic (Dent, 115). In the fantastic realm too, love is tinged with violence. The spell that Oberon makes Puck put on his wife Titania causes her to fall in love with Bottom, whose head has been transformed into that of a donkey. The bestial associations that this episode has draw the attention of the audience to the bestiality that is possible in relationships of amorous love.

This idea is exemplified by the other couples in the play. The idea of love as a sacrosanct emotion that is likely to produce only positive effects is undercut at every level by the playwright. The threat of violence manifests itself against women more than men. By highlighting the violent aspects of love, Shakespeare thus shows another aspect of life in a patriarchal society that oppresses and marginalizes women and places them in a position of relative inferiority with respect to the men of the same society.

Love as an emotion was something that Shakespeare dwelt on at great length. He talks about it in almost every play of his and also in his