A Midsummer Nights Dream The world of fairies

Shakespeare's elaborate language and extravagant imagination can easily be observed in A Midsummer Night's Dream" which holds the most precise artistic description of the fairy world. Shakespeare has described the characteristics of the fairies, exposing a detailed image of their customs, habits and doings. The fairies and all their surroundings are generally noticeable for their beauty, mixed with power, both emphasized in Titanias character, for example. One important attribute is the state of immortality, alluded to by Titania(II.I): "The human mortals want their winter here" and when speaking of the changeling's mother: "But she, being mortal, of that boy did die" and by the fairies that address Bottom the weaver (III. I) "Hail, mortal!" an indication that they were not so themselves. The very fact, indeed, that fairies "call themselves spirits, ghosts, or shadows, seems to be a proof of their immortality." Puck talks about the "king of shadows," and Oberon declares: "But we are spirits of another sort." Another trait of the fairies is their power of vanishing at will and of assuming various forms:Puck used to take all kinds of forms and Oberon says: "I am invisible/And I will overhear their conference Shakespeares fairies are short in stature: Puck says that when Oberon and Titania meet, "they do square, that all their elves, for fear/Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."(II.I) Further on (II. III) Titania also points out the size of her fairies: "Come, now a roundel and a fairy song; Then, for the third part of a minute, hence; Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings, To make my small elves coats." Shakespeare creates finished and elaborated portraits of the human characters in "A Midsummer Night's Dream", in contrast with the fairies, and the clown-fairy, Puck, who have no characteristic features. Oberons jealousy, Titanias caprices, or Pucks mischief, are mere surface qualities. The fairies have no moral sense, and little or no comprehension of such sense in the mortals. They live in the present and are quite incapable of reflection. They play tricks on the human lovers, without any thought of the suffering they may cause them. "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" is Puck's only comment upon the results of his mischief. They form a community, ruled over by Oberon and Titania. There is a court and chivalry (Oberon would have the queen's sweet changeling to be a "knight of his train to trace the forest wild), he also has his jester, "the shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow." The confusion of the plot proceeds from the fairies, but they also solve the problems between the four young Athenian lovers. The elves are thus at the centre

of the play and they deserve the profusion of poetic imagery with which Shakespeare has so lavishly depicted their world.