Tuesday, March 17, 2015

What is the climax of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream ?

The climax of the story is the moment of crisis and the
moment of greatest emotional intensity. It is also the point at which the crisis begins
to be resolved but has not yet reached full resolution.

In A
Midsummer Night's Dream
, the crisis takes place the moment Oberon enchants
Demetrius into falling in love with Helena. At the same time, Puck brings Helena back on
stage with Lysander chasing after her, so that now both men are pursuing the same woman,
which happens to be the opposite woman they were pursuing at the beginning of the
story.

In this scene, Puck reaches a moment of emotional intensity
because he finds it hilarious that both men are now pursuing the same woman and refers
to all of the Athenians as fools. Also, he says that absurd things please him best, as
we see in his lines:


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Then will two at once woo one.
That
must needs be sport alone;
And those things do best please me
That
befall preposterously.
(III.ii.119-122)



Also,
enchanting the lovers creates a great deal of animosity amongst the Athenian characters.
Instead of being overjoyed that two men now love her instead of none, Helena distrusts
their sincerity and accuses both men of mocking her. Not only that, she accuses her best
friend Hermia of being in on the joke. Since the mix up of the lovers causes so much
animosity, we see that this is the most emotional part of the play.

We
begin to see the resolution take place when Oberon gives Puck orders to stop the fight
between the two men and make them follow him all over the forest until they drop from
exhaustion so that both men can be enchanted with the love flower again and this time
paired with the correct woman. 

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