A Midsummer Night�s Dream
Theseus More strange than true. I never may believe These antic fables nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold: That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong ...
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dilemma, this monologue serves to dismiss most of the play a hallucinatory imaginings. Theseus is the voice of reason and authority but, he bows to the resulting change of affection brought about by the night's confused goings on, and allows Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius to marry where their hearts would have them. This place where the line between dream and reality blurs is an important theme of the play. Theseus is also a lover, but his affair with Hippolyta is based upon the cold reality of war, "Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword, And won thy love doing thee injuries..."(I,i,16-17). He is eager to wed Hippolyta and marriage is the place where reason and judgement rule. He wins the hand of his bride through action not through flattery, kisses and sighs inspired by her beauty. In lines 4-6 of his monologue he dismisses the accounts of lovers and madmen on the grounds that they are both apt to imagine a false reality as being real. When, in I,i,56, Hermia tells ...
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A Midsummer Night�s Dream. (2007, September 6). Retrieved April 23, 2025, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Midsummer-Nights-Dream/70758
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"A Midsummer Night�s Dream." Essayworld.com. September 6, 2007. Accessed April 23, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Midsummer-Nights-Dream/70758.
"A Midsummer Night�s Dream." Essayworld.com. September 6, 2007. Accessed April 23, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Midsummer-Nights-Dream/70758.
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