William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[a] was an English

poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and
the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard
of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays 154 sonnets,
two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into
every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other
playwright.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he
married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and
Judith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer,
and part owner of the playing company the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the
King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three
years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been
considerable speculation about such matters as his sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether
the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early
plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication
and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainly tragedies until about
1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest examples
in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as
romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in
editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623 two of his former
theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works
that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.
Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation
did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in
particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped
Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the
twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements
in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are
consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts
throughout the world.
Scholars have often noted four periods in Shakespeare's writing career. Until the
mid-1590s, he wrote mainly comedies influenced by Roman and Italian models and
history plays in the popular chronicle tradition. His second period began in about 1595
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with the tragedy Romeo and Juliet and ended with the tragedy of Julius Caesar in 1599.
During this time, he wrote what are considered his greatest comedies and histories. From
about 1600 to about 1608, his "tragic period", Shakespeare wrote mostly tragedies, and
from about 1608 to 1613, mainly tragicomedies, also called romances.
The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry
VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are
difficult to date, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The
Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and Two Gentlemen of Verona may also
belong to Shakespeare’s earliest period. His first histories, which draw heavily on the
1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,
dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a
justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. Their composition was influenced by the
works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe,
by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca The Comedy of Errors
was also based on classical models; but no source for the The Taming of the Shrew has
been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived
from a folk story. Like Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve
of rape the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man
sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots
and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of
his greatest comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy
magic, and comic low-life scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic The
Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock
which reflected Elizabethan views but may appear prejudiced to modern audiences. The
wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Like
It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great
comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare
introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and
Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between
comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his
mature work.] This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the
famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius
Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—
which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James
Shapiro, in Julius Caesar "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness,

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contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to
infuse each other".
Shakespeare's so-called "tragic period" lasted from about 1600 to 1608, though he
also wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and
All's Well That Ends Well during this time and had written tragedies before. Many critics
believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The hero of the
first, Hamlet, has probably been more discussed than any other Shakespearean character,
especially for his famous soliloquy "To be or not to be; that is the question." Unlike the
introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that
followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of
Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and
destroy the hero and those he loves. In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual
jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In King Lear, the
old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead
to the murder of his daughter and the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester.
According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play offers neither its good characters nor its
audience any relief from its cruelty". In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of
Shakespeare's tragedies uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady
Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne, until their own guilt destroys
them in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure.
His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of
Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet
and critic T. S. Eliot.
In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed
three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the
collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are
graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the
forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators have seen this change in
mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely
reflect the theatrical fashion of the day. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving
plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.

Shakespeare's sonnets, or simply The Sonnets, is a collection of poems in

sonnet form written by William Shakespeare that deal with such themes as love, beauty,
politics, and mortality. They were probably written over a period of several years. All 154
poems appeared in a 1609 collection, entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, comprising

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152 previously unpublished sonnets and two (numbers 138 and 144) that had previously
been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim.
The Sonnets were published under conditions that have become unclear to history.
Although the works were written by Shakespeare, it is not known if the publisher, Thomas
Thorpe used an authorized manuscript from him, or an unauthorized copy. Also, there is a
mysterious dedication at the beginning of the text wherein a certain "Mr. W.H." is
described as "the onlie begetter" of the poems by the publisher Thomas Thorpe, but it is
not known who this man was. The dedication refers to the poet as "Ever-Living", a phrase
which has helped fuel the Shakespearean authorship debate due to its use as an epithet for
the deceased (Shakespeare himself used the phrase in this way in Henry VI, part 1 (IV, iii,
51-2) describing the dead Henry V as “[t]hat ever-living man of memory”). Authorship
proponents believe this phrase indicates that the real author of the sonnets was dead by
1609, whereas Shakespeare of Stratford lived until 1616.[2] Adding further to the
authorship debate, Shakespeare's name is hyphenated on the title page and on the top of
every other page in the book.
The first 17 sonnets are written to a young man, urging him to marry and have
children thereby passing down his beauty to the next generation. These are called the
procreation sonnets. Most of them, however, 18-126, are addressed to a young man
expressing the poet's love for him. Sonnets 127-152 are written to the poet's mistress
expressing his love for her. The final two sonnets, 153-154, are allegorical. The final
thirty or so sonnets are written about a number of issues, such as the young man's
infidelity with the poet's mistress, self-resolution to control his own lust, beleaguered
criticism of the world, etc.

Romeo and Juliet is an early tragedy by William Shakespeare about two

teenage "star-cross'd lovers" whose "untimely deaths" ultimately unite their feuding
households. The play has been highly praised by literary critics for its language and
dramatic effect. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and,
along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Its influence is still seen
today, with the two main characters being widely represented as archetypal young lovers.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to
Ancient Greece. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as Romeus and
Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William
Painter in 1582. Brooke and Painter were Shakespeare's chief sources of inspiration for
Romeo and Juliet. He borrowed heavily from both, but developed minor characters,
particularly Mercutio and Paris, in order to expand the plot. Believed written between
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1591–1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. This text was of poor
quality, and later editions corrected it, bringing it more in line with Shakespeare's original
text.
Shakespeare's use of dramatic structure, especially his expansion of minor
characters,use of subplots to embellish the story, has been praised as an early sign of his
dramatic skill. The play ascribes different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes
changing the form as the character develops. Romeo, for example, grows more adept at
the sonnet form over time. Characters frequently compare love and death and allude to the
role of fate.
Since its publication, Romeo and Juliet has been adapted numerous times in stage,
film, musical and operatic forms. During the Restoration, it was revived and heavily
revised by William Davenant. Garrick's 18th century version, which continued to be
performed into the Victorian era, also changed several scenes, removing material then
considered indecent. Performances in the 19th century, including Charlotte Cushman's,
restored the original text, and focused on greater realism. Gielgud's 1935 version kept very
close to Shakespeare's text, and used Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the
drama.
The play begins with a street brawl between two families: the Montagues and the
Capulets. The Prince of Verona, Escalus, intervenes with his men and declares that the
heads of the two families will be held personally accountable for any further breach of the
peace. Later, Count Paris, a young nobleman, talks to Lord Capulet about marrying his
thirteen-year-old daughter Juliet. Capulet is wary of this offer, citing the girl's young age,
but still invites him to try to attract Juliet's attention during a ball that the family is to hold
that night. Juliet's mother tries to persuade her daughter to accept Paris' courtship during
this ball, leading Juliet to say that although she will make an effort to love him, she will
not express love if it is not there. In this scene Juliet's nurse is introduced as a talkative
and humorous character, who raised Juliet from infancy.
In the meantime, a young man named Benvolio talks with his cousin Romeo, Lord
Montague's son, over Romeo's recent depression. Benvolio discovers that it stems from
unrequited love for a girl named Rosaline, one of Lord Capulet's nieces who has sworn
herself to chastity. Upon the insistence of Benvolio and another friend, Mercutio, Romeo
decides to attend the masquerade ball at the Capulet house in hopes of meeting Rosaline.
Alongside his masked friends Romeo attends the ball as planned, but falls in love with
Juliet (forgetting about Rosaline) and she with him. Despite the danger brought on by their
feuding families, Romeo sneaks into the Capulet courtyard and overhears Juliet on her
balcony vowing her love to him in spite of her family's hatred of the Montagues. Romeo

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soon makes himself known to her, and the two declare their love for each other and agree
to be married. With the help of the Franciscan Friar Lawrence, who hopes to reconcile the
two families through their children's union, they are married secretly the next day.
All seems well until Tybalt, Juliet's hot-blooded cousin, challenges Romeo to a duel
for appearing at the Capulets' ball in disguise. Though no one is aware of the marriage yet,
Romeo refuses to fight Tybalt since they are now part of the same family. Mercutio is
incensed by Tybalt's insolence, and accepts the duel on Romeo's behalf. In the ensuing
scuffle, Mercutio is fatally wounded when Romeo tries to separate them. Romeo, angered
by his friend's death, pursues and slays Tybalt, then flees.
Despite his promise to call for the head of the wrongdoers, the Prince merely exiles
Romeo from Verona, reasoning that Tybalt first killed Mercutio, and that Romeo merely
carried out a just punishment of death to Tybalt, although without legal authority. Juliet
grieves at the news, and Lord Capulet, misinterpreting her grief, agrees to engage her to
marry Paris with the wedding to be held in just three days. He threatens to disown her if
she refuses. The nurse, once Juliet's confidante, now tells her she should discard the exiled
Romeo and comply. Juliet desperately visits Friar Lawrence for help. He offers her a drug,
which will put her into a death-like coma for forty-two hours. She is to take it and, when
discovered apparently dead, she will be laid in the family crypt. While she is sleeping the
Friar will send a messenger to inform Romeo, so that he can rejoin her when she awakens.
The messenger, however, does not reach Romeo. Romeo then learns of Juliet's
"death" from his servant Balthasar. Grief-stricken, he buys poison from an apothecary,
returns to Verona in secret, and visits the Capulet crypt. He encounters Paris who has
come to mourn Juliet privately. Paris confronts Romeo believing him to be a vandal, and
in the ensuing battle Romeo kills Paris. He then says his final words to the comatose Juliet
and drinks the poison to commit suicide. Juliet then awakens. Friar Lawrence arrives and,
realizing the cause of the tragedy, begs Juliet to leave. She refuses, and at the side of
Romeo's dead body, she stabs herself with her lover's dagger.
The feuding families and the Prince meet at the tomb to find all three dead. In
explanation Friar Lawrence recounts the story of the two lovers. Montague reveals that his
wife has died of grief after hearing of her son's exile. The families are reconciled by their
children's deaths and agree to end their violent feud. The play ends with the Prince's brief
elegy for the lovers: "For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her
Romeo."
It is unknown when exactly Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. Juliet's nurse
refers to an earthquake which she says occurred eleven years ago An earthquake did occur
in England in 1580, possibly dating that particular line to 1591, although other
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earthquakes - both in England and in Verona - have been proposed in support of different
dates. But the play's stylistic similarities with A Midsummer Night's Dream and other
plays conventionally dated around 1594-5, place the writing between 1591 and 1595. One
conjecture is that Shakespeare may have begun a draft in 1591, which he completed in
1595.

Analysis and criticism

Though critics have picked apart many weak points in Romeo and Juliet since the
play's first writing, it is still regarded by most as one of Shakespeare's better plays. Among
the most prevalent debates in the critical of the play regards Shakespeare's intent. Was the
play intended to be a story of two young lovers' struggle against fate and fortune, or was it
a commentary on the foolishness of unbridled passion and the ultimate tragedy to which it
will inevitably lead? Perhaps it was intended to show how two young lovers become
instruments in the hands of fate or providence in uniting two warring families. Scholars
have yet to agree on what the play is really about after centuries of analysis, though
recently several have argued that it is a combination of all three.
The earliest known critic of the play was Samuel Pepys, who wrote in 1662: "it is a
play of itself the worst that I ever heard in my life." [ The nineteenth century centered on
debates regarding the moral message of the play.. Later in the twentieth century, criticism
divided in the several ways described below in the Interpretations section.
Shakespeare shows his dramatic skill freely in Romeo and Juliet, providing intense
moments of shift between comedy and tragedy. Before Mercutio's death in Act three, the
play is largely a comedy. After his accidental demise, the play suddenly becomes very
serious and takes on more of a tragic tone. Still, the fact that Romeo is banished, rather
than executed, offers a hope that things will work out. When Friar Lawrence offers Juliet a
plan to reunite her with Romeo the audience still has a reason to believe that all will end
well. They are in a "breathless state of suspense" by the opening of the last scene in the
tomb: If Romeo is delayed long enough for the Friar to arrive, he and Juliet may yet be
saved.[25] This only makes it all the more tragic when everything falls apart in the end.[26]
Shakespeare also uses subplots to offer a clearer view of the actions of the main
characters, and provide an axis around which the main plot turns. For example, when the
play begins, Romeo is in love with Rosaline, who has refused all of his advances. Romeo's
infatuation with her stands in obvious contrast to his later love for Juliet. This provides a
comparison through which the audience can see the seriousness of Romeo and Juliet's love
and marriage. Paris' love for Juliet also sets up a contrast between Juliet's feelings for him
and her feelings for Romeo. The formal language she uses around Paris, as well as the
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way she talks about him to her Nurse, show that her feelings clearly lie with Romeo.
Beyond this, the sub-plot of the Montague-Capulet feud overarches the whole play,
providing an atmosphere of hate that is the main contributor to the play's tragic end.[26]
Language
Shakespeare uses a large variety of poetic forms throughout the play. He begins
with a 14-line prologue in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, spoken by a Chorus. Most
of Romeo and Juliet is, however, written in blank verse, and much of it in strict iambic
pentameter, with less rhythmic variation than in most of Shakespeare's later plays. In
choosing forms, Shakespeare matches the poetry to the character who uses it. Friar
Lawrence, for example, uses sermon and sententiae forms, and the Nurse uses a unique
blank verse form that closely matches colloquial speech. Each of these forms is also
moulded and matched to the emotion of the scene the character occupies. For example,
when Romeo talks about Rosaline earlier in the play, he uses the Petrarchan sonnet form.
Petrarchan sonnets were often used by men at the time to exaggerate the beauty of women
who were impossible for them to attain, as in Romeo's situation with Rosaline.

Themes and motifs

Scholars have found it extremely difficult to assign one specific, over-arching
theme to the play. Proposals for a main theme include a discovery by the characters that
human beings are neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but instead are more or less alike,
[36]
awaking out of a dream and into reality, the danger of hasty action, or the power of
tragic fate. None of these have widespread support. However, even if an overall theme
cannot be found it is clear that the play is full of several small, thematic elements which
intertwine in complex ways. Several of those which are most often debated by scholars are
discussed below.
Love
Romeo and Juliet is sometimes considered to have no unifying theme, save that of
young love.[36] In fact, the characters in it have become emblems of all who die young for
their lovers. Since it is such an obvious subject of the play, several scholars have explored
the language and historical context behind the romance of the play. On their first meeting,
Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication recommended by many etiquette authors
in Shakespeare's day: metaphor. By using metaphors of saints and sins, Romeo was able
to test Juliet's feelings for him in a non-threatening way. This method was recommended
by Baldassare Castiglione (whose works had been translated into English by this time). He
pointed out that if a man used a metaphor as an invitation, the woman could pretend she
did not understand the man, and the man could take the hint and back away without losing
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his honour. Juliet, however, makes it clear that she is interested in Romeo by playing
along with his metaphor. Later, in the balcony scene, Shakespeare has Romeo overhear
Juliet's declaration of love for him. In Brooke's version of the story, her declaration is
done in her bedroom, alone. By bringing Romeo into the scene to eavesdrop, Shakespeare
breaks from the normal sequence of courtship. Usually, a woman was required to play
hard to get, to be sure that her suitor was sincere. Breaking this rule, however, serves to
speed along the plot. The lovers are able to skip a lengthy part of wooing, and move on to
plain talk about their relationship—developing into an agreement to be married after
knowing each other for only one night. In the final suicide scene, there is a contradiction
in the message – in the Catholic religion, suicides were often thought to be condemned to
hell, whereas people who die to be with their loves under the "Religion of Love" are
joined with their loves in paradise. Romeo and Juliet's love seems to be expressing the
"Religion of Love" view rather than the Catholic view. Another point is that although their
love is passionate, it is only consummated in marriage, which prevents them from losing
the audience's sympathy.
The play arguably equates love and sex with death. Throughout the story, both
Romeo and Juliet, along with the other characters, fantasize about it as a dark being, often
equating it with a lover. Capulet, for example, when he first discovers Juliet's (faked)
death, describes it as having deflowered his daughter Juliet later even compares Romeo to
death in an erotic way. One of the strongest examples of this in the play is in Juliet's
suicide, when she says, grabbing Romeo's dagger, "O happy dagger! / ...This is thy
sheath / there rust, and let me die." The dagger here can be a sort of phallus of Romeo,
with Juliet being its sheath in death, a strong sexual symbol.
Fate and chance
Scholars are divided on the role of fate in the play. No consensus exists on whether
the characters are truly fated to die together no matter what, or whether the events take
place by a series of unlucky chances. Arguments in favour of fate often refer to the
description of the lovers as "star-cross'd". This phrase seems to hint that the stars have
predetermined the lovers' future. Another scholar of the fate persuasion, Draper, points out
the parallels between the Elizabethan belief in humours and the main characters of the
play (for example, Tybalt as a choleric). Interpreting the text in the light of the
Elizabethan science of humourism reduces the amount of plot attributed to chance by
modern audiences. Still, other scholars see the play as a mere series of unlucky chances—
many to such a degree that they do not see it as a tragedy at all, but an emotional
melodrama. Nevo believes the high degree to which chance is stressed in the narrative
makes Romeo and Juliet a "lesser tragedy" of happenstance, not of character. For
example, Romeo's challenging Tybalt is not impulsive, it is, after Mercutio's death, the
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expected action to take. In this scene, Nevo reads Romeo as being aware of the dangers of
flouting social norms, identity and commitments. He makes the choice to kill, not because
of a tragic flaw, but because of circumstance.
Light and dark
Scholars have long noted Shakespeare's widespread use of light and dark imagery
throughout the play. The light theme was initially taken to be "symbolic of the natural
beauty of young love", an idea beginning in Caroline Spurgeon's work Shakespeare's
Imagery and What It Tells Us, although the perceived meaning has since its publication
branched in several directions. For example, both Romeo and Juliet see the other as light
in a surrounding darkness. Romeo describes Juliet as being like the sun, brighter than a
torch, a jewel sparkling in the night, and a bright angel among dark clouds. Even when she
lies apparently dead in the tomb, he says her "beauty makes / This vault a feasting
presence full of light." Juliet describes Romeo as "day in night" and "Whiter than snow
upon a raven's back." This contrast of light and dark can be expanded as symbols—
contrasting love and hate, youth and age in a metaphoric way. Sometimes these
intertwining metaphors create dramatic irony. For example, Romeo and Juliet's love is a
light in the midst of the darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity together
is done in night and darkness, while all of the feuding is done in broad daylight. This
paradox of imagery adds atmosphere to the moral dilemma facing the two lovers: loyalty
to family or loyalty to love. At the end of the story, when the morning is gloomy and the
sun hiding its face for sorrow, light and dark have returned to their proper places, the
outward darkness reflecting the true, inner darkness of the family feud out of sorrow for
the lovers. All characters now recognize their folly in light of recent events, and things
return to the natural order, thanks to the love of Romeo and Juliet. The "light" theme in
the play is also heavily connected to the theme of time, since light was a convenient way
for Shakespeare to express the passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and
stars.
Time
Time plays an important role in the language and plot of the play. Both Romeo and
Juliet struggle to maintain an imaginary world void of time in the face of the harsh
realities that surround them. For instance, when Romeo attempts to swear his love to Juliet
by the moon, Juliet tells him not to, as it is known to be inconstant over time, and she does
not desire this of him. From the very beginning, the lovers are designated as "star-cross'd"
referring to an astrologic belief which is heavily connected to time. Stars were thought to
control the fates of men, and as time passed, stars would move along their course in the
sky, also charting the course of human lives below. Romeo speaks of a foreboding he feels

10
in the stars' movements early in the play, and when he learns of Juliet's death, he defies
the stars' course for him.
A "haste theme" can be considered as fundamental to the play. [54] For example, the
action of Romeo and Juliet spans a period of four to six days, in contrast to Brooke's
poem's spanning nine months. Scholars such as Tanselle believe that time was "especially
important to Shakespeare" in this play, as he used references to "short-time" for the young
lovers as opposed to references to "long-time" for the "older generation" to highlight "a
headlong rush towards doom". Romeo and Juliet fight time to make their love to last
forever. In the end, the only way they seem to defeat time is through a noteworthy death
which makes them immortal through art.[
Time is heavily connected to the theme of light and dark as well. The play is said in
the Prologue to be about two hours long, creating a problem for any playwright wishing to
express longer amounts of time. In Shakespeare's day, plays were often performed at noon
in broad daylight. This forced the playwright to use words to create the illusion of day and
night in his plays. Shakespeare uses references to the night and day, the stars, the moon,
and the sun to create this illusion. He also has characters frequently refer to days of the
week and specific hours to help the audience understand that time has passed in the story.
All in all, no fewer than 103 references to time are found in the play, adding to this
illusion of its passage.

Context and criticism

Psychoanalytic
Psychoanalytic critics focus largely on Romeo's relationships with Rosaline and
Juliet, as well as the looming image of inevitable death. Romeo and Juliet is not
considered to be extremely psychologically complex, and sympathetic psychoanalytic
readings of the play make the tragic male experience equivalent with sicknesses. The first
line of criticism argues that Romeo is in love with Rosaline and Juliet because she is the
all-present, all-powerful mother which fills a void. According to this theory, this void was
caused by the negligence of his mother. Another theory argues that the feud between the
families provides a source of phallic expression for the male Capulets and Montagues.
This sets up a system where patriarchal order is in power. When the sons are married,
rather than focusing on the wife, they are still owed an obligation to their father through
the feud. This conflict between obligation to the father (the family name) and the wife (the
feminine), determines the course of the play. Some critics argue this hatred is the sole
cause of Romeo and Juliet's passion for each other. The fear of death and the knowledge
of the danger of their relationship is in this view channelled into a romantic passion.
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Feminist literary critics have pointed out Juliet's dependence on male characters, such as
Friar Laurence and Romeo.
Feminist
Feminist critics argue that the blame for the family feud lies in Verona's patriarchal
society. In this view, the strict, masculine code of violence imposed on Romeo is the main
force driving the tragedy to its end. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, for example, Romeo
shifts into this violent mode, regretting that Juliet has made him so "effeminate". In this
view, the younger males "become men" by engaging in violence on behalf of their fathers,
or in the case of the servants, their masters. The feud is also linked to male virility, as the
joke about the maid's heads shows. Juliet also submits to a female code of docility by
allowing others, such as the Friar, to solve her problems for her. Other critics, such as
Dympna Callaghan, look at the play's feminism from a more historicist angle. They take
into account the fact that the play is written during a time when the patriarchal order was
being challenged by several forces, most notably the rise of Puritanism. When Juliet
dodges her father's attempt to force her to marry a man she has no feeling for, she is
successfully challenging the patriarchal order in a way that would not have been possible
at an earlier time.
Gender studies
Gender studies critics largely question the sexuality of two characters, Mercutio and
Romeo. From the perspective of this form of criticism, the difference between the two
characters' friendship and sexual love is discussed heavily in the play. Mercutio's
friendship with Romeo, for example, leads to several friendly conversations, including
ones on the subject of Romeo's phallus. This would seem to suggest traces of
homoeroticism. Romeo, as well, admits traces of the same in the manner of his love for
Rosaline and Juliet. Rosaline, for example, is distant and unavailable, bringing no hope of
offspring. As Benvolio argues, she is best replaced by someone who will reciprocate.
Shakespeare's procreation sonnets describe another young man who, like Romeo, is
having trouble creating offspring and who is homosexual. Gender critics believe that
Shakespeare may have used Rosaline as a way to express homosexual problems of
procreation in an acceptable way. In this view, when Juliet says "...that which we call a
rose [or Rosaline] / By any other name would smell as sweet", she may be raising the
question of whether there is any difference between the beauty of a man and the beauty of
a woman.[
Hamlet
Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written
between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts
12
revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father, the King, and then
taken the throne and married Hamlet's mother. The play vividly charts the course of real
and feigned madness—from overwhelming grief to seething rage—and explores themes
of treachery, revenge, incest, and moral corruption.
Despite much literary detective work, the exact year of writing remains in dispute.
Three different early versions of the play have survived: these are known as the First
Quarto (Q1), the Second Quarto (Q2) and the First Folio (F1). Each has lines, and even
scenes, that are missing from the others. Shakespeare probably based Hamlet on the
legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta
Danorum and subsequently retold by 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest, and a
supposedly lost Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet.
Given the play's dramatic structure and depth of characterisation, Hamlet can be
analyzed, interpreted and argued about from many perspectives. For example,
commentators have puzzled for centuries about Hamlet's hesitation in killing his uncle.
Some see it as a plot device to prolong the action, and others see it as the result of pressure
exerted by the complex philosophical and ethical issues that surround cold-blooded
murder, calculated revenge and thwarted desire. More recently, psychoanalytic critics
have examined Hamlet's unconscious desires, and feminist critics have re-evaluated and
rehabilitated the often maligned characters of Ophelia and Gertrude.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, and among the most powerful and influential
tragedies in the English language. It provides a storyline capable of "seemingly endless
retelling and adaptation by others".[1] During his lifetime the play was one of his most
popular works,[2] and it still ranks high among his most-performed, topping, for example,
the Royal Shakespeare Company's list since 1879.[3] It has inspired writers from Goethe
and Dickens to Joyce and Murdoch, and has been described as "the world's most filmed
story after Cinderella".[4] The title role was almost certainly created for Richard Burbage,
the leading tragedian of Shakespeare's time;[5] in the four hundred years since, it has been
played by the greatest actors, and sometimes actresses, of each successive age.
The protagonist of Hamlet is Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of the recently
deceased King Hamlet and the nephew of King Claudius, his father's brother and
successor. After the death of King Hamlet, Claudius hastily marries King Hamlet's widow,
Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. In the background is Denmark's long-standing feud with
neighbouring Norway, and an invasion led by the Norwegian prince, Fortinbras, is
expected.
The play opens on a cold night at Elsinore, the Danish royal castle. The sentinels try
to persuade Hamlet's friend Horatio that they have seen King Hamlet's ghost, when it
13
appears again. After hearing from Horatio of the Ghost's appearance, Hamlet resolves to
see the Ghost himself. That night, the Ghost appears to Hamlet. He tells Hamlet that he is
the spirit of his father, and discloses that Claudius murdered King Hamlet by pouring
poison in his ears. The Ghost demands that Hamlet avenge him; Hamlet agrees and
decides to fake madness to avert suspicion. He is, however, uncertain of the Ghost's
reliability.
Busy with affairs of state, Claudius and Gertrude try to avert an invasion by Prince
Fortinbras of Norway. Perturbed by Hamlet's continuing deep mourning for his father and
his increasingly erratic behaviour, they send two student friends of his—Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern—to discover the cause of Hamlet's changed behaviour. Hamlet greets his
friends warmly, but quickly discerns that they have turned against him.
Polonius is Claudius' trusted chief counsellor; his son, Laertes, is returning to
France, and his daughter, Ophelia, is courted by Hamlet. Neither Polonius nor Laertes
thinks Hamlet is serious about Ophelia, and they both warn her off. Shortly afterwards,
Ophelia is alarmed by Hamlet's strange behaviour and reports to her father that Hamlet
rushed into her room but stared at her and said nothing. Polonius assumes that the "ecstasy
of love" is responsible for Hamlet's madness, and he informs Claudius and Gertrude.
Later, in the so-called Nunnery Scene, Hamlet rants at Ophelia, and insists she go "to a
nunnery."
Hamlet remains unconvinced that the Ghost has told him the truth, but the arrival of
a troupe of actors at Elsinore presents him with a solution. He will stage a play, re-
enacting his father's murder, and determine Claudius' guilt or innocence by studying his
reaction. The court assembles to watch the play; Hamlet provides a running commentary
throughout. During the play, Claudius abruptly rises and leaves the room, which Hamlet
sees as proof of his uncle's guilt. Claudius, fearing for his life, banishes Hamlet to England
on a pretext, closely watched by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with a letter instructing
that the bearer be killed.
Gertrude summons Hamlet to her closet to demand an explanation. On his way,
Hamlet passes Claudius in prayer but hesitates to kill him, reasoning that death in prayer
would send him to heaven. In the bedchamber, a row erupts between Hamlet and
Gertrude. Polonius, spying hidden behind an arras, makes a noise; and Hamlet, believing
it is Claudius, stabs wildly, killing Polonius. The Ghost appears, urging Hamlet to treat
Gertrude gently but reminding him to kill Claudius. Unable to see or hear the Ghost
herself, Gertrude takes Hamlet's conversation with it as further evidence of madness.
Hamlet hides Polonius' corpse.

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 Demented by grief at Polonius' death, Ophelia wanders Elsinore singing bawdy
songs. Her brother, Laertes, arrives back from France, enraged by his father's death and
his sister's madness. Claudius convinces Laertes that Hamlet is solely responsible; then
news arrives that Hamlet is still at large. Claudius swiftly concocts a plot. He proposes a
fencing match between Laertes and Hamlet in which Laertes will fight with a poison-
tipped sword, but tacitly plans to offer Hamlet poisoned wine if that fails. Gertrude
interrupts to report that Ophelia has drowned.
Two gravediggers discuss Ophelia's apparent suicide, while digging her grave.
Hamlet arrives with Horatio and banters with a gravedigger, who unearths the skull of a
jester from Hamlet's childhood, Yorick. Ophelia's funeral procession approaches, led by
Laertes. He and Hamlet grapple, but the brawl is broken up.
Back at Elsinore, Hamlet tells Horatio how he escaped and that Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern have been sent to their deaths. A courtier, Osric, interrupts to invite Hamlet
to fence with Laertes. With Fortinbras' army closing on Elsinore, the match begins.
Laertes pierces Hamlet with a poisoned blade but is fatally wounded by it himself.
Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine and dies. In his dying moments, Laertes is reconciled
with Hamlet and reveals Claudius' murderous plot. In his own last moments, Hamlet
manages to kill Claudius and names Fortinbras as his heir. When Fortinbras arrives,
Horatio recounts the tale and Fortinbras orders Hamlet's body borne off in honour.
Hamlet-like legends are so widely found (for example in Italy, Spain, Scandinavia,
Byzantium, and Arabia) that the core "hero-as-fool" theme is possibly Indo-European in
origin. Several ancient written sources for Hamlet can be identified. The first is the
anonymous Scandinavian Saga of Hrolf Kraki. In this, the murdered king has two sons—
Hroar and Helgi—who spend most of the story in disguise, under false names, rather than
feigning madness, in a sequence of events that differs from Shakespeare's. The second is
the Roman legend of Brutus, recorded in two separate Latin works. Its hero, Lucius
("shining, light"), changes his name and persona to Brutus ("dull, stupid"), playing the
role of a fool to avoid the fate of his father and brothers, and eventually slaying his
family's killer, King Tarquinius. A 17th-century Nordic scholar, Torfaeus, compared the
Icelandic hero Amlodi and the Spanish hero Prince Ambales (from the Ambales Saga) to
Shakespeare's Hamlet. Similarities include the prince's feigned madness, his accidental
killing of the king's counsellor in his mother's bedroom, and the eventual slaying of his
uncle.
Many of the earlier legendary elements are interwoven in the 13th-century Vita
Amlethi ("The Life of Amleth") by Saxo Grammaticus, part of Gesta Danorum. Written in
Latin, it reflects classical Roman concepts of virtue and heroism, and was widely available
in Shakespeare's day. Significant parallels include the prince feigning madness, his
15
mother's hasty marriage to the usurper, the prince killing a hidden spy, and the prince
substituting the execution of two retainers for his own. A reasonably faithful version of
Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest, in his Histoires
tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length,
and introduced the hero's melancholy.
Shakespeare's main source is believed to be an earlier play—now lost—known today
as the Ur-Hamlet. Possibly written by Thomas Kyd, the Ur-Hamlet was in performance
by 1589 and is the first version of the story known to incorporate a ghost. [16] Shakespeare's
company, the Chamberlain's Men, may have purchased that play and performed a version
for some time, which Shakespeare reworked. Since no copy of the Ur-Hamlet has
survived, however, it is impossible to compare its language and style with the known
works of any of its putative authors. Consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd
wrote it, nor any evidence that the play was not an early version of Hamlet by
Shakespeare himself. This latter idea—placing Hamlet far earlier than the generally
accepted date, with a much longer period of development—has attracted some support,
though others dismiss it as speculation.
The upshot is that scholars cannot assert with any confidence how much material
Shakespeare took from the Ur-Hamlet, how much from Belleforest or Saxo, and how
much from other contemporary sources (such as Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy). No clear
evidence exists that Shakespeare made any direct references to Saxo's version. However,
elements of Belleforest's version do appear in Shakespeare's play, though they are not in
Saxo's story. Whether Shakespeare took these from Belleforest directly or through the Ur-
Hamlet remains unclear.
Most scholars reject the idea that Hamlet is in any way connected with Shakespeare's
only son, Hamnet Shakespeare, who died in 1596 at age eleven. Conventional wisdom
holds that Hamlet is too obviously connected to legend, and the name Hamnet was quite
popular at the time. However, Stephen Greenblatt has argued that the coincidence of the
names and Shakespeare's grief for the loss of his son may lie at the heart of the tragedy.
He notes that the name of Hamnet Sadler, the Stratford neighbor after whom Hamnet was
named, was often written as Hamlet Sadler and that, in the loose orthography of the time,
the names were virtually interchangeable. Shakespeare himself spelled Sadler's first name
as "Hamlett" in his will.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William
Shakespeare, written sometime in the 1590s. It portrays the adventures of four young
Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with the Duke and
Duchess of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta, and with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit

16
forest. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely
performed across the world.
It is not known exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first
performed, but, on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Spenser's
Epithalamion, it is usually dated 1595 or 1596. Some have theorised that the play might
have been written for an aristocratic wedding (numerous such weddings took place in
1596), while others suggest that it was written for the Queen to celebrate the feast day of
St. John. No concrete evidence exists to support either theory. In any case, it would have
been performed at The Theatre and, later, The Globe in London.
Some features of the plot and characters can be traced to elements of earlier
mythologically-based literature; for example, the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is told in
Ovid's Metamorphoses and the transformation of Bottom into an ass is descended from
Apuleius' The Golden Ass. Lysander was also an ancient Greek warlord while Theseus
and Hippolyta were respectively the Duke of Athens and Queen of the Amazons. In
addition, Shakespeare could have been working on Romeo and Juliet at about the same
time that he wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it is possible to see Pyramus and
Thisbe as a comic reworking of the tragic play. A further, seldom noted source is The
Knight's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The play features three interlocking plots, connected by a celebration of the
wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta, and set
simultaneously in the woodland, and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the
moon. In the opening scene, Hermia refuses to comply with her father Egeus's wish for
her to marry his chosen man, Demetrius. In response, Egeus quotes before Theseus an
ancient Athenian law whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her father, or
else face death. Theseus does not want this young girl to die, and offers her another
choice, lifelong chastity worshipping Diana as a nun. (The word 'nun' in this sense is an
anachronism.)
Hermia and her lover Lysander decide to elope by escaping through the forest at
night. Hermia informs her best friend Helena, but Helena has recently been rejected by
Demetrius and decides to win back his favour by revealing the plan to him. Demetrius,
followed doggedly by Helena, chases Hermia. Hermia and Lysander, believing themselves
safely out of reach, sleep in the woods.
Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen, Titania, arrive in the forest
outside Athens. Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until after she has attended
Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania
refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his "knight" or "henchman,"
17
since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks to punish Titania's
disobedience and recruits the mischievous Puck (also called Hobgoblin and Robin
Goodfellow) to help him apply a magical juice from a flower called "love-in-idleness"
(a.k.a. pansy), which makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing seen upon
awakening. He instructs Puck to retrieve the flower so that he can make Titania fall in
love with some vile creature of the forest. Oberon applies the juice to Titania in order to
distract her and force her to give up the page-boy.
Having seen Demetrius act cruelly toward Helena, Oberon orders Puck to spread
some of the elixir on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. Instead, Puck accidentally
puts the juice on the eyes of Lysander, who then falls in love with Helena. Oberon sees
Demetrius still following Hermia and is enraged. When Demetrius decides to go to sleep,
Oberon sends Puck to get Helena while he charms Demetrius' eyes. Due to Puck's errors,
both lovers now fight over Helena instead of Hermia. Helena, however, is convinced that
her two suitors are mocking her, as neither loved her originally. The four pursue and
quarrel with each other most of the night, until they become so enraged that they seek a
place to duel each other to the death to settle the quarrel. Oberon orders Puck to keep the
lovers from catching up with one another in the forest and to re-charm Lysander for
Hermia, to prevent them all from killing each other.
Meanwhile, a band of lower-class labourers ("rude mechanicals", as they are
famously described by Puck) have arranged to perform a crude play about Pyramus and
Thisbe for Theseus' wedding, and venture into the forest, near Titania's bower, for their
rehearsal. Nick Bottom, a stage-struck weaver, is spotted by Puck, who transforms his
head into that of an ass (donkey). Titania is awakened by Bottom's singing and
immediately falls in love with him. She treats him like a nobleman and lavishes him with
attention. While in this state of devotion, she encounters Oberon and casually gives him
the Indian boy. Having achieved his goals, Oberon releases Titania and orders Puck to
remove the ass's head from Bottom. The magical enchantment is removed from Lysander
but is allowed to remain on Demetrius, so that he may reciprocate Helena's love.
The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during
an early morning hunt. They wake the lovers and, since Demetrius doesn't love Hermia
anymore, Theseus over-rules Egeus's demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers
decide that the night's events must have been a dream. After they all exit, Bottom awakes,
and he too decides that he must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man." In
Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the mechanicals perform "Pyramus and
Thisbe." It is ridiculous and badly performed but gives everyone pleasure regardless, and
afterward everyone retires to bed. Finally, as night falls, Oberon and Titania bless the

18
house, its occupants, and the future children of the newlyweds, and Puck delivers a
soliloquy to the audience.

Themes
Love
Writer David Bevington finds in the play what he refers to as the dark side of love.
He writes that the fairies make light of love by mistaking the lovers and by applying a
love potion to Titania’s eyes, forcing her to fall in love with Bottom as an ass [3]. There are
many dark sides of love that occur in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hippolyta is “woo’d”
by a sword instead of being given “love-tokens” in the same way Lysander has won
Hermia’s love (1.1.17-30)[4]. What is even more disturbing is the possible outcome that
could have taken place at the forest. Shakespeare borrows the myth of Pyramus and
Thisbe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, transforming it into a play that is performed at the
end and using ideas of the myth for the entire play. Like Pyramus and Thisbe, Hermia and
Lysander escape to the forest to avoid the tyranny of Hermia’s father. In the forest, both
couples are met by problems and assume that a partner is dead at some point. Hermia and
Lysander are both met by Puck, who provides some comedic relief in the play by
confusing the four lovers in the forest. Despite the darkness and difficulty that obstructs
the love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is still a comedy as Benedetto Croce
indicates. He writes, “love is sincere, yet deceives and is deceived; it imagines itself to be
firm and constant, and turns out to be fragile and fleeting” [. This passage, like the play
juxtaposes one idea next to another. The play is a comedy, yet it harbors serious ideas. At
the end of the play, Hermia and Lysander, happily married, watch the play about the
unfortunate lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, and are able to enjoy and laugh about the play,
not realizing the similarities between them. Although their story is very similar to that of
Pyramus and Thisbe, it does not end in tragic death . Hermia and Lysander are both
oblivious to the dark side of their love. They are not aware of the possible outcome that
could have taken place at the forest.

Loss of Individual Identity

Maurice Hunt, Chair of the English Department at Baylor University writes of the
blurring of the identities of fantasy and reality in the play that make possible “that
pleasing, narcotic dreaminess associated with the fairies of the play”. By emphasizing this
theme even in the setting of the play, Shakespeare prepares the reader’s mind to accept the
fantastic reality of the fairy world and its magical happenings. This also seems to be the
axis around which the plot conflicts in the play occur. Hunt suggests that it is the breaking
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down of individual identities leads to the central conflict in the story. It is the brawl
between Oberon and Titania, based on a lack of recognition for the other in the
relationship, that drives the rest of the drama in the story and makes it dangerous for any
of the other lovers to come together due to the disturbance of Nature caused by a fairy
dispute. Similarly, this failure to identify and make distinction is what leads Puck to
mistake one set of lovers for another in the forest and place the juice of the flower on
Lysander’s eyes instead of Demetrius’. Victor Kiernan, a Marxist scholar and historian,
writes that it is for the greater sake of love that this loss of identity takes place and that
individual characters are made to suffer accordingly: “It was the more extravagant cult of
love that struck sensible people as irrational, and likely to have dubious effects on its
acolytes”. He believes that identities in the play are not so much lost as they are blended
together to create a type of haze through which distinction becomes nearly impossible. It
is driven by a desire for new and more practical ties between characters as a means of
coping with the strange world within the forest, even in relationships as diverse and
seemingly unrealistic as the brief love between Titania and Bottom the Ass: “It was the
tidal force of this social need that lent energy to relationships”. David Marshall, an
aesthetics scholar and English Professor at the University of California - Santa Barbara,
takes this theme to an even further conclusion, pointing out that the loss of identity is
especially played out in the description of the mechanicals their assumption of other
identities. In describing the occupations of the acting troupe, he writes “Two construct or
put together, two mend and repair, one weaves and one sews. All join together what is
apart or mend what has been rent, broken, or sundered”. In Marshall’s opinion, this loss of
individual identity not only blurs specificities, it creates new identities found in
community, which Marshall points out may lead to some understanding of Shakespeare’s
opinions on love and marriage. Further, the mechanicals understand this theme as they
take on their individual parts for a corporate performance of Pyramus and Thisbe.
Marshall remarks that “To be an actor is to double and divide oneself, to discover oneself
in two parts: both oneself and not oneself, both the part and not the part”. He claims that
the mechanicals understand this and that each character, particularly among the lovers, has
a sense of laying down individual identity for the greater benefit of the group or pairing. It
seems that a desire to lose one’s individuality and find identity in the love of another is
what quietly moves the events of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is the primary sense of
motivation and is even reflected in the scenery and mood of the story.

Ambiguous sexuality
In his essay "Preposterous Pleasures, Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night's
Dream", Douglas E. Green explores possible interpretations of alternate sexuality that he
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finds within the text of the play, in juxtaposition to the proscribed social mores of the
culture at the time the play was written. He writes that his essay "does not (seek to)
rewrite A Midsummer Night's Dream as a gay play but rather explores some of its
'homoerotic significations'...moments of 'queer' disruption and eruption in this
Shakespearean comedy.". Green states that he does not consider Shakspeare to have been
a "sexual radical", but that the play represented a "topsy-turvy world" or "temporary
holiday" that mediates or negotiates the "discontents of civilization", which while resolved
neatly in the story's conclusion, do not resolve so neatly in real life Green writes that the
"sodomitical elements", "homoeroticism", "lesbianism", and even "compulsory
heterosexuality" in the story must be considered in the context of the "culture of early
modern England" as a commentary on the "aesthetic rigidities of comic form and political
ideologies of the prevailing order." Aspects of ambiguous sexuality and gender conflict in
the story are also addressed in essays by Shirley Garner and William W.E. Slights .

Other interpretations
Feminist
Male dominance is one thematic element found in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Shakespeare's comedies often include a section in which females enjoy more power and
freedom than they actually possess. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena and Hermia
escape into the woods for a night where they do not fall under the laws of Theseus or
Egeus. Upon their arrival in Athens, the couples are married. Marriage is seen as the
ultimate social achievement for women while men can go on to do many other great
things and gain societal recognition. In his article, "The Imperial Votaress," Louis
Montrose draws attention to male and female gender roles and norms present in the
comedy in connection with Elizabethan culture. In reference to the triple wedding, he
says, "The festive conclusion in A Midsummer Night's Dream depends upon the success
of a process by which the feminine pride and power manifested in Amazon warriors,
possessive mothers, unruly wives, and willful daughters are brought under the control of
lords and husbands". He says that the consummation of marriage is how power over a
woman changes hands from father to husband. A connection between flowers and
sexuality is drawn. The juice employed by Oberon can be seen as symbolizing menstrual
blood as well as the sexual blood shed by virgins. While blood as a result of menstruation
is representative of a woman's power, blood as a result of a first sexual encounter
represents man's power over women.
There are points in the play, however, when there is an absence of patriarchal
control. In his book, Power on Display, Leonard Tennenhouse says the problem in A
Midsummer Night's Dream is the problem of "authority gone archaic". The Athenian law
21
requiring a daughter to die if she does not do her father's will is outdated. Tennenhouse
contrasts the patriarchal rule of Theseus in Athens with that of Oberon in the carnivalistic
Faerie world. The disorder in the land of the faeries completely opposes the world of
Athens. He states that during times of carnival and festival, male power is broken down.
For example, what happens to the four lovers in the woods as well as Bottom's dream
represents chaos that contrasts with Thesus' political order. However, Theseus does not
punish the lovers for their disobedience. According to Tennenhouse, by forgiving of the
lovers, he has made a distinction between the law of the patriarch (Egeus) and that of the
monarch (Theseus), creating two different voices of authority. This distinction can be
compared to the time of Elizabeth I in which monarchs were seen as having two bodies:
the body natural and the body mystical. Elizabeth's succession itself represented both the
voice of a patriarch as well as the voice of a monarch: (1) her father's will which stated
that the crown should pass to her and (2) the fact that she was the daughter of a king [23].
The challenge to patriarchal rule in A Midsummer Night's Dream mirrors exactly what
was occurring in the age of Elizabeth I.
Religious
Patricia Parker, professor of English at Stanford University and the editor of the
New Arden edition of this play has argued that it contains a religious allegory. It has been
well established for two centuries that Puck and Robin Goodfellow are both names for the
devil from English folklore. Parker argues that the character of 'Wall' acted by Snout
represents the partition that exists between Earth and Heaven and that comes down on the
day of Apocalypse. Pyramus and Thisbe are a late Renaissance allegory for Jesus and the
Church, and that the source of the names Peter (petros, Greek for a stone), and Quince
(quoin, a term for a wedge shaped cornerstone) suggests his identity as St Peter. ( P.Parker
'Murals and Morals; A Midsummer Night's Dream' in (ed) Glenn W.Most,
Aporemata;Kritische Studien zur Philologiegeschichte, 1998 pgs 190-218). The play-
within-the play therefore appears to be a religious satire. The allegorical dimension was
extended to the other characters and demonstrated in performance by the Dark Lady
Players in a New York production in March 2007 (Ted Merwin ‘The Dark Lady as a
Bright Literary Light’ The Jewish Week, 23 March 2007 pgs 56-7).

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