Magic Themes In A Midsummer Night's Dream

The comedic play written by William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, follows a set of characters afflicted by magic as they intertwine paths while tryingand try to navigate through the night before Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding. Helena, Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius are four young lovers caught in a love predicament. Similarly, the fairy king Oberon and fairy queen Titania bicker over custody of an Indian boy. During their feuds, Athenian craftsmen attempt to practice the play Pyramus and Thisbe in celebration for Theseus’s wedding, but some events turn astray. Magic dictates the actions of the characters as it influences their emotions, is used underhandedly used to achieve selfish desires, and convolutes the plot through the addition of odd events and misunderstandings to ultimately act as a method offor resolution.

The emotions of the characters are altered by a love enchantment which serves as a catalyst forto developing challenges and eventual tranquility. Lysander and Hermia, two young lovers, decide to run away and get married against Egeus’s wish for her to marry Demetrius whom Helena is in love with. Magic changes Lysander’s feelings toward Helena into love to the extent that he says, “Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse:/My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!” (Ⅲ, ii, 245-246). Magic is used to change the object of affection from Hermia to Helena for Lysander, thus causing newfound conflicts with the other characters confused by his sudden switch in