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    A Midsummer Night's Dream Reflection

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    Anna Gassett
    Anna Gassett reflects on reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and gaining a new appreciation for Shakespeare's work. She discusses how the play explores the difficulties of love through Helena's struggles with her unrequited feelings for Demetrius. It also examines gender roles and stereotypes in ancient Greece, with male characters trying to control the women. While comedic on the surface, the play has deeper meanings around relationships and power dynamics. Gassett was able to understand and enjoy this Shakespearean comedy more than others she read in school.

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    A Midsummer Night's Dream Reflection

    Uploaded by

    Anna Gassett
    789 views3 pages
    Anna Gassett reflects on reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and gaining a new appreciation for Shakespeare's work. She discusses how the play explores the difficulties of love through Helena's struggles with her unrequited feelings for Demetrius. It also examines gender roles and stereotypes in ancient Greece, with male characters trying to control the women. While comedic on the surface, the play has deeper meanings around relationships and power dynamics. Gassett was able to understand and enjoy this Shakespearean comedy more than others she read in school.

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    Anna Gassett reflects on reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and gaining a new appreciation for Shakespeare's work. She discusses how the play explores the difficulties of love through Helena's struggles with her unrequited feelings for Demetrius. It also examines gender roles and stereotypes in ancient Greece, with male characters trying to control the women. While comedic on the surface, the play has deeper meanings around relationships and power dynamics. Gassett was able to understand and enjoy this Shakespearean comedy more than others she read in school.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    789 views3 pages

    A Midsummer Night's Dream Reflection

    Uploaded by

    Anna Gassett
    Anna Gassett reflects on reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and gaining a new appreciation for Shakespeare's work. She discusses how the play explores the difficulties of love through Helena's struggles with her unrequited feelings for Demetrius. It also examines gender roles and stereotypes in ancient Greece, with male characters trying to control the women. While comedic on the surface, the play has deeper meanings around relationships and power dynamics. Gassett was able to understand and enjoy this Shakespearean comedy more than others she read in school.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Anna Gassett

    Jim Price

    Acting

    15 October 2019

    A Midsummer Night’s Dream Reflection

    Reading this play was honestly so entertaining. I used to close myself off to Shakespeare

    completely. In high school, I was assigned to read Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet over

    the four years and I read them without understanding how Shakespeare wrote his plays and what

    the general gist of the language was. It was incredibly difficult for me to understand these plays

    simply because I didn’t open myself up to the possibility of liking them. Enjoying A Midsummer

    Night’s Dream is a huge step for me in the world of comprehending Shakespeare’s brilliant

    works.

    Shakespeare explores various aspects of love and friendship in this play. He points out that

    the path of love is full of obstacles. This is very present in Helena's situation. Her life is basically

    ruined because of her one-sided love. Being aware of the situation that Demetrius loves Hermia,

    Helena is struggling to figure out the reason behind it. Helena is constantly in a depressive state

    knowing that there is little to no hope of success in her love life. Her love, Demetrius treats her like

    absolute crap. For instance, he threatens to kill and rape her when she won’t stop following him in

    the forest. I can’t imagine how frustrating this must be for Helena. Then, when Demetrius and

    Lysander fall under the love spell, she automatically thinks they are making fun of her. This

    moment informs my monologue and I now understand how upset and in distress Helena feels at

    this moment in the play. She is embarrassed and ashamed of herself, for she is a woman with low
    self-confidence. Helena facing all these trouble in order to get Demetrius clearly suggest that her

    love life had low hope from the start.

    It’s no secret that there were very strict gender stereotypes in ancient Greece. Women were

    not allowed to perform in plays, when men were. There were also stereotypes such as men being

    stronger, and women being prettier. These rules and stereotypes affect A Midsummer Night’s

    Dream in many ways. The relationship between men and women echoes across both the mortal

    and fairy worlds of the play. More specifically, both the fairy and mortal plots in the play deal

    with an attempt by male authority figures to control women. Though Theseus and Hippolyta

    appear to share a loving relationship, it is built upon a man asserting power over a woman.

    Theseus won his fiancée’s love by defeating her in battle. Other similar situations are observed

    when Oberon creates the love juice in an attempt to control his wife and when Egeus seeks to

    control his daughter’s marriage. While the play ends happily, with everyone either married or on

    good terms, the love on display is a kind in which women accept a role submissive to their

    husbands.

    Overall, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a funny and charming story on the surface but

    holds deeper meaning. It had me intrigued and even laughing at moments, which I have never

    experienced reading Shakespeare before. I appreciate the simple and concrete storyline because

    it allowed me to look past that at the important themes and messages hidden within. The

    language of the play is beautiful, the characters are wildly varied, and the humor is evident even

    to non-Shakespeare readers such as myself.

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