Critique on a Midsummer Night's Dream (Movie Review Sample)

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Critique on a Midsummer Night’s Dream
This is one of the most loved plays of Shakespeare and he uses a number of styles which are very interesting to any one watching the play. Frank Kermode has viewed the aspects of the play from different perspectives. Frank refers to love in the play as blind and he refers to the four Athenians in the play as examples of the blind love. Kermode then observes that love is bred in the eyes as a kind of doting which is well reflected in love affairs that ended in disasters such as in the case of Romeo, Adonis and Pyramus. Frank also elaborates on the experience of the night as a dream by itself. Hence Frank basically refers to love as been blind from the way the undertakings occur in the whole play. This can be seen as a good resemblance of true love which can be said to go beyond limits and does not only look at appearance but the inner most feelings within the lovers (Ray, 78-80).
Frank also focuses most of his attention on the meaning of the word dream in the play. As he argues, the play purported to be a dream of midsummer night. In the play, Frank explains the dream held by the Athenians and the Titania to be known as phantasma which he refers to as a dream which lacks any specific meaning. Frank then argues that Bottom’s dream was the most important and in which most critics give a very serious interpretation of the blind love. Frank argues and also stresses that, Bottom is highly overwhelmed by the blind love to the point that he cannot even say anything or talk about it. Frank also goes ahead to draw a parallel line between Bottom’s dream and St. Paul’s epistles as some critics tend to relate them. Kermode proceeds by differentiating Bottom’s dream from that of other Athenians. He argues that Bottoms dream as somnium which are symbolic dreams which cannot be well understood not unless they are explained by a well trained interpreter. Frank says that other Athenian dreams are meaningless but Bottom’s dream is a highly significant dream which is a dream of divine love (Ray, 78-80).
Kermode also argues that Bottom’s dream is a love of Titania which is a supernatural entity. It is also very strange that Kermode goes ahead to compare Bottom’s dream to that of St. Paul and Apuleius by saying that they all shared something in common. He argues that the three share in common some form of transformation and the experience of divine love. It is seen that Bottom has known the love of triple goddess in a vision. Kermode says that the kind of vision or dream cannot be well explained and that the word b...