Imagination in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream Act 5 / Scene 1

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 10 University of Erfurt (Philosophische Fakultät) course: Shakespearean Comedy language: English abstract: The dream in A Midsummer Night's Dream implies a world of imagination illusion and unconsciousness. In addition the tradition and the popular beliefs of the midsummer festivals describe a time of unleashed natural forces (BOOCK 1981: 70). The audience of the play indeed witnesses magical incidents in the fairies' forest where the fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania rule over the natural processes. Human beings seem to behave irrationally under the spell of these fairies and in the surrounding of this magic forest (SHAKESPEARE 1980: II - IV). However in contrast the city of Athens is dominated by the rational Theseus duke of Athens who only believes in what cool reason is able to produce and to understand (SHAKESPEARE 1980: V i 2 - 22). The contrast of imagination and reason represents one of the major oppositional pairs of themes of A Midsummer Night's Dream (KERRIGAN 1998: 20ff). It becomes indirectly clear through the opposing worlds of forest and city and the ongoing actions in these two places. Furthermore in the last scene of the play the audience experiences directly a controversy between Theseus and his wife Hippolyta concerning the truth of the story about the incidents in the forest happened to the young Athenians Hermia Helena Lysander and Demetrius. Consequently it is also a controversy about the value of imagination and reason (SHAKESPEARE 1980: V i 1 - 27). Moreover questions of imagination are brought up on another level. The play within the play of Pyramus and Thisbe which is rehearsed by craftsmen throughout the story and performed at the wedding ceremony in the last scene offers an increase of imaginative perspectives. Its content not only mirrors the main plot but it also emphasises the