Explore the ways in which Shakespeare uses metatheatre in his plays

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts

~ Jacques, As You Like It, Act II,...

Can the ocean be considered a lover? Is it possible for someone to find a strong infatuation with the rolling waves and the smell of salt water? Does the sea have the capacity to love someone? Looking out into the waters, the female character in...

Bottom’s speech at the end of Act 4, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream marks a transition from a dream world to reality. In it, Bottom struggles to make his dream of an encounter with Titania the fairy queen into something concrete. Bottom’s...

What motivates Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Also known as Robin Goodfellow, the spirit Puck is based on legend contemporary to Shakespeare (OED). His origins are as curious as his character: the Oxford English Dictionary traces the origin of...

In his comedies, Shakespeare critically examines the nature of female and male friendships as they relate to sexual desire. Specifically, Shakespeare contrasts the strong, faithful bonds of female sisterhood with the chaotic, contentious...

In ‘The Motives of Eloquence’, Lantham describes Shakespearean drama as the art of “superposition”. One arc of action is performed over others so that “[d]ramatic motive is stronger than ‘real’, serious motive”. The justification of a characters...

“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of an imagination all compact" (Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 7-8). This quote by Theseus encompasses the notion of love as being an illusion, a product of the imagination. Love is equated with lunacy and poetry,...

Emilia from Othello and Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream both experience a constant battle against the institutions of men, such as marriage and courting. These institutions have the implications of turning these women against their own sex...

Throughout the span of the comedies, Shakespeare allows his female characters to establish a greater amount of independence and freedom than they would have actually been allowed for the time period. This freedom is not necessarily a feminist...

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is during Act IV that the four “lovers” awaken along the boundary of the woods in which they spent the prior evening and attempt to explain and understand the previous night’s happenings. This...

The success of the narrative arc of both Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone and Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream heavily rely on character interactions with the natural world. In each play respectively, the protagonists must purpose and...

The Unruly Child That is Love

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the concept of love and relationships are certainly at the forefront of the play. However, if one delves a bit further into the story, elements such as violence, death, and...

Mysterious Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy about how arbitrary love is. The play shows a cast of characters with conflicting love interests, and midway through the text, many of their...

As members of a patriarchal society, the women in A Midsummer Night's Dream are obligated to be subservient to the men. Power is only extended to women in the fictional world of Fairyland. This exemplifies the misogyny of the time, where women had...

A Midnight Summer’s Dream is exceptional in that it features more than just one story unfolding at once. Although the quartet of lovers and the fairy world is often the focus of the play, the rude mechanicals and their attempts to produce a play...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that explores what is universally thought to be one of the most bewitching and relatable themes present in literature: love and longing. There is something about the notion of love or romance that has the power...

William Shakespeare is an author who is known best for his tragedies, such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Julius Caesar: plays in which the heroes lose. However, Shakespeare also wrote comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of...

Many of Shakespeare’s plays contain the structural and symbolic elements of mythology. The inheritance of mythological conventions, which shall be explored in this essay, create an effect that is ritualistic and leads to Nietzsche’s observation of...

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the love juice is a liquid so potent that no being can resist its effects, not even the fairies, who wield a considerable amount of power over nature. This love juice can be seen as a device that Shakespeare uses as a...

According to Simon Estok, ecofeminism is defined as the paternalistic society driving a wedge between society and culture. In addition, it consists of the connection between the dominating of nature and the exploitation of women. Estok, as well as...

Almost completely opposite the beautiful, grave, and love-struck young Athenian nobles are the awkward, ridiculous, and deeply confused Mechanicals, around whom a great deal of A Midsummer Night's Dream's most comical scenes are centred. They are...

Shakespeare’s England was missing something. After its break from the Catholic church in 1534, national identity was a vacuum that needed to be filled. Since Henry XIII excommunicated the whole country, ended the monastic system, and essentially...

William Shakespeare’s 1600 comedy A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream tells the story of lovers who become woefully confused and actors who were woefully confused to begin with. Magic and fairies play a large role in the play, as they both move the plot...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream revealed a lot of society during its time. It embodied societal pressures and demands among the characters. The characters played as an example of the different types of people that were present during that time. The...