The Female Archetype in Shakespeare: Marriage and Love

The thesis for the following paper forget be presented as sexual union as a theme in Shakespe ares gip as it is applicable to character schooling in female characters. Shakespeares portrayal of women in A summer solstice nighttimes ideate pull up stakes be one focus of the paper. Another theme and thesis supporter of the paper go forth be presented in the fact that in Shakespeares play the theme of shaft is integral to the diagram for two a comedy and a tragedy, as such the presence of make out in women will be examined as a transitional tool.Other avenues of discussion in this analytical paper will include mothers, female prophecy, and virginity, and as Rackin states, No woman is the protagonist in a Shakespearean memorial play. Renaissance gender role definitions prescribed silence as a feminine virtue, and Renaissance internal legendology associated the feminine with body and yield as a opposed to masculine intellect and spirit. (329), thus, women could not be co nsidered even a main character in these plays unless she became get married, or as in A summer solstice Nights ambition the woman sacrificed herself for her male counterpart.Shakespeares play A Midsummer Nights Dream is not only an aloneegory, exactly within the story there exists another allegory. Shakespeare creates a play in which events take place as they would in the real world, or seemingly so, alone juxtaposed with this storyline Shakespeare includes a second story with Oberon and Titania thus presenting to the audience a work story. Aristotle wrote that art is an action which is defined done mimesis as such, the play A Midsummer Nights Dream is written partly as a dialogue of the possibilities of life (as bum be witnessed with the human beingnesss of the story) and partly as a dialogue for the fantastical (as is written pertaining to the faeries of the play).The argument then arises from, Jacobus, that offers, is drama an assumed of life, or is life an imitation o f drama, and in Shakespeares play, the answer is cleverly disguised between his layering of realism in fantasy in which the real becomes so engrossed in the fantasy, as if the scenes set in the forest are all(prenominal) under the spell of Puck. It is in Pucks reality that all of the protagonists exist and thereby the answer to Jacobus question may be analyzed.The theme of Shakespeares play can aptly be stated as recognize in groundlessness since this is also the name of the prime of life Robin Goodfellow or Puck uses to cause the characters to fall in relish with each other (Lysander with capital of Montana then Demetrius with Helena and as Oberon uses it to cause Titania to fall in love with Bottom)Yet markd I where the bolt of Cupid fell It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with loves wound, And maidens predict it love-in-idleness. (Shakespeare 2004 Act 2 Scene 1)In this plot, it is revealed that drama in part is imitating life. Love in idlen ess is a circular event in life that seems abysmal in its foreplay, and desperate in its reality. As each character falls in love with the wrong character, or is forced to fall in love with another person, Jacobus claim that characters are the building blocks of allowing the audience to secern with the actions of the play as they match to their life, is succinctly pandering to Aristotles concepts of drama in imitation of art.The characters frolic around the wood, hopelessly in love with one another, and loved by the wrong person, as is shown in the four couples Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena while the faeries in turn present the audience with how ridiculous this love in idleness is defined in presentation Titania in love with Bottom who has been transformed into a donkey. Aristotles definition for a sad hero is one who is not in control of his own fate, but instead is ruled by the gods in one fashion or another (Jones 1962).The theme of Shakespeares play delves into the morality of his aim to present the audience in stride with how to perceive their own lives and loves in relation to the events that transpire in the woods. In context of the play, Aristotles mimesis gives the audience a chance to pause and consider the motive of love both in term of the reality that Shakespeare delivers with Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena and the motivation of love when it is juxtaposed with Titania and Bottom.As Jacobus states, although drama has the capacity to hold up an conjuring trick of reality like the reflection in a mirror we take for granted while recognizing that it is nonetheless illusory (Jacobus 2005 1-2). Thus, it may be extolled from this statement that illusion transforms the allegory of the play into applicable terms whereby the audience becomes not only immersed in the play and its actions and characters, but also takes those actions and characters to stand as testaments to their life experiences.The fact that the characters lose themse lves in a maze of vileness and fog and awake approached by Theseus and Hippolyta who are likened to the gaurdians of the play or the characters of reason, stand in testement to the actions of the characters and it is accepted that Lysander and Hermia are united and Demetrius and Helena join together in a group wedding.Shakespeares play besides does not end there but continues with the theme of love in idleness with the mechanicals performing the myth Pyramus and Thisbe in which both lovers kill themselves because each assumes the other is dead. This is Shakespeares way of contributing both the beautiful and loving end of one story, with the humans in the forest, as well as showing with this play, how love may go awry and become a tragedy. The love in idleness theme is afterwards debunked in Shakespeares play merely by the endings in which even Oberon and Titania reunite.Jacobus states, The action of some drama is not drawn from our actual experience of life, but from our potent ial or imagined experience (Jacobus 2005 1-2), thereby exhibiting the idea that a play can give the audience different proscenium displays or possibilities by which they may lead their life, or a review of what life may become. The subject of drama as it applies to life then becomes more focused on avenues of probability and possibility. Thus, in Shakespeares play A Midsummer Nights Dream the audience envisions three different chances of love with the humans, with the faeries and with the doomed lovers as performed by the mechanicals.Drama then is a way in which a person may identify with fictitious characters and design their own possibility of pleasures by that character. Often times drama leaves an audience atom questioning life, be it positive or negative and thereby adhering to Aristotles ideas of reflection, and it is this reflection that makes us human. In being given these different paths of love in A Midsummer Nights Dream the audience is given the oppurtunity to envision life differently and vicariously through these characers.In fact that is the decision of drama, to present the audience with a vicarious option of examining life. Although there is no ritual or religious interpretation associated with drama today (unless the playwright intends it) the genre of drama is best described as not only entertainment but a tool by which reality may be examained through make-believe characters in real life situations and themes.In the theme that is present in Shakepeares Midsummer Nights Dream love in idleness is a very prevalent topic. Although each character in the play has a deep devotion to another character such heating is lost in the woods when the characters are left to the devices of Puck, and his chicanery. The guiding light of love in this play may best be seen with Oberon and Titania as they are the ruling factors of love. Their love however has been forestall due to the presence of an Indian child and the jealousy of Oberon and the bullheaded ness of Titania. The theme within the theme in this context may best be described as compromise.The relationship between Oberon and Titania my be defined as a quintessential part of the character develoment between male and female, Shakespeare depicts male protagnosts fend for masculineprojects against both female characters who threaten to obstruct those projects and feminine appeals to the audience that threatedn to discredit them. IN shakespeares laterplays thos rfeminine voice become more insistent.They both threaten to invalidate the great, inheritedmyths that Shakespeare found in his historiiographic sources and imply that abefore they masculine voicecan be accepted as valid,it mustiness come to terms with women and the subversive forced they represetn. However, as soon as Shakesperae attmpts to incorporate those feminine forces, marryign words and things, spirit and matter(it) becomes problematic (Rackin 330).This statement suggests that if Shakespeare did not marry off his female characters the audience would believe it as come-at-able nor would they accept it. In the case of Titania and Oberon, it is Oberons masculinity that must make Titanias will submissive to him and to give him what he wants (in this case her Indian). In this case, the two characters are already married and this struggle of wills suggests that a man must constantly be domineering and gain what he wants through force and trickery.This shows that the dynamic of marriage in Shakepseares plays is exhibited with force. In the other characters in the play, the ones who are not yet married, that is Hermia and Helena, they are full of anticipation to get married but both had to first experience what it was like to not have their counterpart and suffere through the period of not being love neither of the men truly suffer in A Midsummer Nights Dream, which suggests that Shakespeares female characters must prove their love, while the men of the play have no such duties.The difference then between the marriad and the unmarried woman in A Midsummer Nights Dream is that the unmarried women must convince the men that they are loved while the married woman, Titania, must re-learn obedience.The theme of love is envisioned well in this play as Shakespeare chooses to focus on the bureau of love through marriage as a tool of union. In union is found the relevance of transisiton. The characters in A Midsummer Nights Dream only become fully sensible of their own intentions and feelings after they are given the drug from Puke and spend the night in the forest. When rouse each character realizes their true desires. In these desires in the morning the women are quieted because they feel as though they have seen the measure of their desire reflected in their male counterparts and as such it is only through marriage that they may be tamed. Thus, Shakespeares female characters are revealed to be counterparts.This essay has argued for the interpretation of Shakespeares characters in A Midsummer Nights Dream to be the classical female archetypes such as wife, or lover. The plan in the play reveals how women are induced to persuasion and almost hypnotized by love and desire as is seen with Titania, Hermia, and Helena. Each character is in love, and at the end of the play this love becomes true instead of the farce of the beginning and middle of the play. Love is the conquering power over women in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream.Work CitedJacobus, L. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. Bedford St. Martins. 2005.Jones, John. On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy. impertinent York Oxford University Press, 1962.Levin, R. Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy. PMLA, Vol. 103, No. 2 (Mar., 1988), pp. 125-138.Price, J. R. Measure for Measure and the Critics Towards a New Approach.Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2. (Spring, 1969), pp. 179-204.Rackin, P. Anti-Historians Womens Roles in Shakespeares Histories.Theatre Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3, Staging Gender. ( Oct., 1985), pp. 329-344.Shakespeare, W. A Midsummer Nights Dream. Washington Press. 2004.