Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Comparative Study - A Midsummer Night's Dream

 

He, however, immediately remarks that it is, "not an adequate response [] to say that Titania's lines apply only to the lofty idealities of fairyland and are not intended as an description of ordinary human reality when she has gone to such a length to locate all that mud in the nine men's morris and to de-rhapsodize her speech with the sweat of redundantly 'human mortals,'" (264)
            
             However, this does not explain why the four lovers neither mention nor appear to notice the bad weather. Extending the allegory, one could say that the bad weather is a metaphor for the fight between the lovers and Hermia and her father. So, the fairies are ambivalent creatures: they can be seen as actual beings or as allegories. Whether or not the fairies are allegories or actual beings, either way, they influence the lives of the humans. In Macbeth and Hamlet the supernatural world also affects the human world. Macbeth's foul crimes are inspired, or perhaps even caused, by his encounter with the witches, and the supposed ghost of Hamlet's father urges the prince into action. The main action of these plays is located in the human world, but particular supernatural elements, three witches and a ghost, penetrate into the human world and change it. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, however, the situation is reversed. The four lovers, who represent the human world, enter fairyland. Titania first mentions fairyland: "When thou hast stol'n away from fairyland/ The fairyland buys not the child of me" (2.1.65 and 2.1.123). This suggests that fairyland is an actual geographical place. However, the first fairy to appear on stage says that fairies "wander everywhere," and the Puck can "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," (2.1.6 and 2.1.175). So, the fairies are not really bound to a geographical location. Titania appears to have a residence in India, where she is worshipped as a kind of goddess, but she is also at home in the Athenian woods where she sleeps on: .


Essays Related to Comparative Study - A Midsummer Night's Dream