In the first period of Shakespeare's creation, he mainly created historical plays, plays and poems, with comedy as the main body. The comedies created in this period include A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Merry Wives of Windsor, Much ado about nothing and Twelfth Night. The basic themes of these plays are love, marriage and friendship, which are full of lyrical colors and show Shakespeare's ideal of humanistic life.
A midsummer night's dream (1595) is the most romantic of all Shakespeare's comedies, the most imaginative and romantic comedy written for court performance, and the symbol of Shakespeare's comedy creation. The play affirms the power of love, combines the mythical world with the realistic contradiction, and has strong fantasy and lyricism.
His creative background, distinctive flavor of the times and profound social significance.
The source and motivation of Shakespeare's creation is to accurately grasp the ideological pulse of the times. Shakespeare's writing period coincided with Elizabeth I's era. Britain defeated Spain's "Armada", expanded overseas and strengthened its national strength. People generally expressed optimism about Britain. In this era of change, humanism has become the ideological driving force to inspire people's confidence and hope. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a passionate eulogy for young men and women to boldly break through feudal fetters and traditional habits and strive for freedom of love and happiness in marriage. The tone is optimistic, strong and clear, with a strong flavor of the times and profound social significance.
In Shakespeare's comedy world, everything is beautiful. After watching his comedies, the sadness and sadness in people's hearts and the dirt in their souls will be dispelled and washed away by tenderness and poetry.
He took the optimism of Renaissance humanists as the keynote of comedy creation, and in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he clearly expressed humanistic thoughts such as demanding personality liberation, loving real life and praising sincere love.
Pursuing the pleasure of love and life.
The characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream are all admirers of love, and they do not hesitate to pay any price for the ideal marriage.
Humanists advocate loving life and persistently pursuing love. They think that love is one of the best, kindest and noblest manifestations of human nature. The nectar of the "acacia flower" picked by Parker in A Midsummer Night's Dream can clear the obstacles of love and remind people that in real life, love is blind and irrational, but as Helena said, all despicable weaknesses become insignificant in love, but become happy and solemn. Love doesn't need eyes to see with heart, and the judgment of love is completely irrational. Light has wings and no eyes.
Promote equality between men and women in love
Looking at the love between men and women from the perspective of equality is the essence of Renaissance literature. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare broke through the tradition of giving priority to male images and created radiant female images, such as Hebrida, Hermia, Helena, the fairy queen Dinixia and so on. From their ideology, emotional characteristics, manners and manners, we will find that they represent the progressive ideal and moral values of humanists in the Renaissance, and the concept of love and marriage, which embodies the consistent pursuit of "truth, goodness and beauty" in Shakespeare's drama creation.
Anti-feudal thought and the establishment of an ideal country
Humanism affirms human rights, opposes feudal autocracy, opposes asceticism with personality liberation, and opposes obscurantism with reason. Contrary to the strict feudal hierarchy, humanists' ideal is to establish an ideal country with equal relations between people. A Midsummer Night's Dream embodies the realistic conflict between feudal marriage system and free love. Hermia and Lysander finally fled to a beautiful fairyland, where both gods and people have secular desires, and they all have the freedom and happiness to pursue love life, which is the ideal kingdom pursued by humanists.
The plot of a play
A Midsummer Night's Dream is not only a pure romantic love story, but also a Midsummer Night's Dream. It consists of four independent and interrelated clues: the wedding of theseus and Hippolyta, the contradiction between the fairy king and the fairy queen, the love entanglement between two lovers, and the repertoire performed by craftsmen such as weavers. These four clues actually represent two different worlds: Athenian society and forest fairy country. The former respects the authority of secularism and ethics, and is rational and orderly; The latter is an unrestrained and whimsical rational kingdom. Humanists live in the real world, and this ideal kingdom is the dream that humanists constantly pursue.
Hermia, the protagonist in A Midsummer Night's Dream, is devoted to love, straightforward in character and extraordinary in courage. She firmly and persistently pursued love and freedom and fearlessly resisted feudal oppression. On the one hand, she is smart, upright, beautiful and upright, on the other hand, she also has shortcomings: impatience, irritability and poor eloquence.
Showing people's spiritual world, emotional world and desire requirements has become the basic artistic pursuit of humanistic literature. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the author conveyed to us the voice of personality liberation and free pursuit of love and happiness through wonderful stories and beautiful fairyland. These characters with full personality and distinct personality images are calling us to step out of the pursuit of free life.
The clever use of the technique of reality and falsehood is the main creative method of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Dreams and reality complement each other in the play. The play skillfully uses Shakespeare's technique of truth and falsehood, which is colorful and interesting. It not only enriches the plot, but also adds a romantic atmosphere. Dream is the core image of the text; The awakening of "people" shown by the conflict in the play also shows that their dream images are all symbols of humanism. The center of the drama's reality is fairy fantasy, which realizes the perfect combination of real society and forest wonderland.
Endless Shakespeare. Shakespeare's works and his humanistic thoughts are the unattainable peaks in the history of western drama art and the ideological treasures of human artistic heritage. "Although time and appearance will wither love, true love will always have the enthusiasm for first love." I think our love for him and his works will never fade.