LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:11 November 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIALS

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2015
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Fiction or Truth

Shabnum Iftikhar, M.A. Political Science, M.A. English Literature, ELT, Ph.D. Candidate


Abstract

Most probably written in 1595-96, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an enticing and enchanting play written by a master playwright William Shakespeare that still offers so much to intrigue, bewilder, and allure the readers and audience simultaneously. Even after the four hundred years of its publication and production, critical interpretations seem to strive to interpret this play from every possible angle. The play presents three freakish worlds in front of the people where characters of this play are acting and reacting absurdly and grotesquely. A Midsummer Night’s Dream records the events and incidents of three different worlds dexterously: the world of duke of Athens; the world of fairies; and the world of six amateur artists, how these three different worlds are entwined with each other is the hallmark of this play. This Dream is an amalgamation of the world of deception and the world of reality and Shakespeare has interweaved fiction with truth in such a way that on the surface level, this play is a comedy but on a deeper level, the play depicts tragic insights into the characters and situations.

Keywords: Dream, Night, Athens, Fairies, Love

Three Worlds of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The play is opened with the world of Athens, where we see authoritative Theseus, the duke of Athens in his court who is proud of his recent conquest of Amazon and is all set to marry occupied Hippolyta, the Queen of Amazons. His utterance “I wooed thee with my sword/and won thy love doing thee injuries” (Act1, Sc1) confirms his authority as a ruler. Egeus brings his daughter Hermia in the court of Theseus and complains about his daughter’s behavior who is in love with Lysander and both want to marry, but Egeus likes Demetrius for Hermia to marry. Helena, a friend of Hermia is in love with Demetrius, but Demetrius starts doting on Hermia after he sees her. Egeus’ complain and Theseus’s order to Hermia that “Either to die the death or to abjure forever the society of men” (Act1, Sc1) give a clear description of patriarchal society of an Elizabethan age. Both lovers Hermia and Lysander find refuge in the woods, where Helena and Demetrius also join them. In the same woods, they are entangled with the world of fairies where the fairy King Oberon is in clash with his fairy Queen Titania over the custody of an Indian boy whom Titania has adopted, but Oberon wants to make him his henchman. Oberon is another authoritative figure of this play who affirms the existence of male dominance over females. The play portrays six amateur artists also who are preparing a play to perform at the wedding ceremony of their duke, Theseus.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Shabnum Iftikhar, M.A. Political Science, M.A. English Literature, ELT
University of the Punjab
Lahore
Pakistan

Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas at Dallas
School of Arts and Humanities
Richardson, Texas 75080
USA
shabnum53@hotmail.com

Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.