Supernatural elements in Shakespeare’s plays

There are many supernatural beings included among the characters of Shakespeare’s plays. The three distinct categories that usually are used to describe these beings are spirits, ghosts and gods. Between them are not included the fairies, one of the most noticeable and entertaining elements in “A Midsummer night’s dream”, even Shakespeare maybe would include the fairies in the category of gods, due to the fact that during the play they are making the humans get confused thanks to their powers. They do what they want and humans don’t realise that fairies are joking with them.

Shakespeare probably changed the conception of the natural world that we had, attributed new features to fairies, and made the formula of romanticism change in a new comic way.

There is as well always a heaven presiding over the fates of man in Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare added many of the supernatural apparitions in his plays due to popular demand; he wanted his audience to have fun, so he included ghosts or spirits when the play needed drama and fairies or other elements when he wanted to create complicate and make funny situations.

From beginning to end, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is filled with supernatural themes. Titania is the Queen of fairies, Oberon is the King of fairies and the husband of Titania, and finally Puck who is the fairy which due to misunderstood, complicates all the situation in the woods.

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Titania, the Queen of the fairies

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Puck, the main fairy

Shakespeare’s presentation of fantastic characters could be attributed to his obsession with all things mystical and mythical. His plays became incredibly popular and accepted because he understood the people and the way people thought, and so stretched to the supernatural during his lifetime.

1 comentari »

  1. esmea Said,

    novembre 22, 2010 @ 16:25 pm

    Your paper synthesizes perfectly supernatural elements in ” A Midsummer night’s dream” and both the explanations and the images are so developed. Good job!

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