Elizabeth Flowers
ENGL 2148
Mr. Percy
Paper 1
A Revelation of an Arse
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a classic example of one of Shakespeare's comedies. While I began to read the play the first thought that struck me was, that this would be a love story. However, Shakespeare does a wonderful job using vocabulary, themes, and characters to create a humorous tone. When we read the title we can already get a hint of the play being a dream and as we read we get the sense that the events which unfold within the play are almost dreamlike. He creates images that a reader of the play would never have guessed. We see in Act IV scene I lines 199-216, Bottom awakening from a night after having this experience with Tatiana, queen of the fairies. Bottom, from the beginning is a clown of the play. He tries to present himself as courageous and confident when ironically he is simply an ass.
However, we can get a good sense of the comedy Shakespeare is trying to present through him and a tie several themes in the play. In the line after awaking he says "man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dreamâ¦I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream." We can use these lines as a way to analyze not only those specific words but how it ties into the entirety of the play.
Vocabulary in Shakespearean work is the base for how the entire play is perceived. A Midsummer Night's Dream was written in a time when not only was the English language profoundly different from the form we speak today, but during a time plays were presented without backdrops and animations. Vocabulary was what lead to imagery and perception...