asangam's blog

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most clear examples of loving by mimesis, through hearing, through the eyes and finally in the fantasy of a dream. With this play, Shakespeare adopted for first time a strategy perfectly adequated to the resistance provoked by any excess of mimetic revelation. Always the spectators will prefer the magic of a dream or the inevitable love at first sight, but much harder will be for them to aceptate mimesis as the way of the love.

In a Midsummer Night’s Dream, the aspect magical-religious is the most spread and most finished mask of the mimetic interaction, the original mask, our own culture. In this play, the mask is continuosly put and taken away.

Despite its magic characters, this play has an extrem realism which is very present today.

To choose love by another’s eyes, this is one of the most important texts in which we can perceive the clear intention of the author in order to develope the topic of loving mimesis.

LYSANDER
Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood,–
HERMIA
O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low.
LYSANDER
Or else misgraffed in respect of years,–
HERMIA
O spite! too old to be engaged to young.
LYSANDER
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,–
HERMIA
O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes.

(I, 1, 132-140)

This poetic duet belongs to a very well-known genre when the obstacles of love are sung : difference in age, difference in the social scale and – lastly but not less important- the pressures made by a third person.Love of Proteo to Sylvia depends on the election of Valentin; Tarquino, the one who never saw Lucrecia with his eyes, How can he love her but by another’s eyes?This is something rejected by anyone. Rejection of memetic desire is a silent imperative but very strict.

Lisander and Hermia are too mistaken in order to imagine something so subtle like the mimetic interpretation of their words. Mimetic desire is as less concious of itself as the act of breathing. Hermia has just changing one lover for another in a few hours, and Lisander invaded by another passion will abandon Hermia in the forest. The one and the other, however, only believe in their own myths. That is they have created their own myth, the one they will imitate along their lives.
Shakespeare is much more modern than all of us, puecause he is the only one who reveals the indefeasible tabues of our culture, that thinks that is free of any tabu. In front of the tiniest revelation of our abyss which separate from the conception of the desire, we murmur that Shakespeare was a conservatist. But in the field of the desire, the ideas that, fron century to century, we label as subversive in order to make then younger, they are in fact, the most conservatine, stale topics in the Renaissance and with which William Shakespeare jokes with no mercy.

This tabu of mimetism in very well studied by René Girard, who extracted the loving mimesis from which seemed to be only a romantical and pure desire. Though there are many theories of romantic love such as that of Robert Sternberg in which it is merely a mean combining liking and sexual desire, the major theories involve far more insight. For most of the 20th century, Freud’s theory of the family drama dominated theories of romance and sexual relationships. This has given rise to a few counter-theories. Theorists like Deleuze counter Freud and Jacques Lacan by attempting to return to a more naturalistic philosophy:

René Girard argues that romantic attraction is a product of jealousy and rivalry—particularly in a triangular form

Girard, in any case, downplays romance’s individuality in favor of jealousy and the love triangle, arguing that romantic attraction arises primarily in the observed attraction between two others. A natural objection is that this is circular reasoning, but Girard means that a small measure of attraction reaches a critical point insofar as it is caught up in mimesis. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and The Winter’s Tale are the best known examples of competitive-induced romance.[12]
Girard’s theory of mimetic desire is controversial because of its alleged sexism. This view has to some extent supplanted its predecessor, Freudian Oedipal theory. It may find some spurious support in the supposed attraction of women to aggressive men. As a technique of attraction, often combined with irony, it is sometimes advised that one feign toughness and disinterest, but it can be a trivial or crude idea to promulgate to men, and it is not given with much understanding of mimetic desire in mind.

Girard, René. Shakespeare,los fuegos de la envidia. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1995
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_(love)

\"Silent Movie Part1\"

\"Silent Movie Part2\"

Exciting and new, or even tedious and worn-out, love in all its variations is presented in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But what is love? What causes us to fall in love? How does love relate to the world of law and reason? These questions are broached in all their complexity in Shakespeare’s midsummer dream. Love is the primary concern of the play, which begins as Theseus and Hippolyta prepare for their upcoming wedding, but the picture painted of love is not necessarily romantic. Instead, the play shows the arbitrariness of desire, along with its depth, the sighs and tears that often make lovers miserable.

As Lysander tells Hermia, the course of true love never did run smooth. Often swift, short, and brief, love is besieged by class differences, by age differences, by war, by death, and by sickness. Helena’s love is plagued by a different demon: indifference. The more ardently she loves Demetrius, the more thoroughly he hates her. And there seems to be no reason for his disdain: She is as beautiful as Hermia, as wealthy, as similar to Hermia as “double cherries” on a single stem. Helena’s meditations present love in its guise as the childish, blindfolded Cupid, a constantly repeated image in this dream, who playfully transforms the vile into something pure and dignified. The image of blind Cupid is repeated when Titania falls in love with Bottom, the ass. Oberon’s love-potion works much as Cupid’s arrows are reputed to do: by impairing vision. The juice charms Titania’s sight, so she is unable to see her lover for what he really is.

Love’s arbitrary, irrational nature is the subject of one of Theseus’ speeches. In Act V, he famously creates a connection between the imaginations of lovers, lunatics, and poets: All three see beyond the limitation of “cool reason,” and all are beset by fantasies. While the lunatic’s imagination makes heaven into a hell, the lover shapes beauty in the ugliest face. The poet, meanwhile, creates entire worlds from the “airy nothing” of imagination. In Theseus’ opinion, all of these fantasies lack the stamp of truth; does this mean Theseus’ love for Hippolyta is equally specious? The Duke would probably say no — without reasons or evidence to back up his claim — but his comments lead us deeper into the question of what constitutes love. If his love for Hippolyta is based on seemingly clear vision, what has caused him to fall in love with her rather than with someone else? A deep understanding of her personality? A reverence for her compassion or her kindness?
The play doesn’t tell us, but its overall logic suggests a loud “no” to both questions. In this drama, love is based entirely upon looks, upon attractiveness, or upon the love-potion that charms the eyes. Thus, for example, Hermia accounts for Lysander’s surprising loss of affection by assessing her height; she is shorter and, therefore, less appealing than Helena. Like too many teenage girls in contemporary society, Hermia is plagued by doubts about her desirability. It’s not surprising that body image is such a vexing issue in Western society when love is so often based on appearance, rather than essence.

Even when love is mutual and seemingly based in clear vision, it is often hampered by family disapproval. For Lysander and Hermia, love is marred by her father’s desire for her to marry Demetrius. The law is on Egeus’ side. All of the relationships in the play, but this one in particular, emphasize the conflict of love and law. The “ancient privilege of Athens” allows Egeus to “dispose” of his daughter as he wishes; she is his property, so he can “estate” her to anyone. His words show the violence that often supports law and points out a discord within the seeming concord of love (to paraphrase a saying of Theseus’ in Act V). According to Theseus’ edict, Hermia needs to fit her “fancies” to her father’s “will” (I.1, 118), suggesting that Hermia’s love needs to be combated by her father’s authority; otherwise, the law of Athens will sacrifice her on the pyre of reason.

Yet, as noted earlier, her father’s choice of Demetrius seems as fanciful and arbitrary as Hermia’s choice of Lysander. Although Theseus is less willing than Theseus is to condemn Hermia to death or to celibacy, Theseus is guilty of linking violence and love: He wooed Hippolyta with a sword and won her love by “doing her injuries.” Although Hippolyta seems subdued, even passive, in the play, the violence that led to their love is a constant presence. This play’s representation of love is not the saccharine view presented in many modern love ballads; instead, Shakespeare returns us to our animal natures, displaying the primitive, bestial, and often violent side of human desire.

As Bottom astutely notes, reason and love keep little company with one another. The characters in this drama attempt to find a way to understand the workings of love in a rational way, yet their failures emphasize the difficulty of this endeavor. Shakespeare seems to suggest that a love potion, even though seemingly crazy, is a better way to explain the mysterious workings of sexual attraction than is common sense: Love and reason will never be friends. Nor will love ever be a controllable addiction. What fools mortals be, Puck philosophizes. And perhaps we are fools for entering into the dangerous, unpredictable world of love; yet what fun would life be without it?

Read more: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream-Critical-Essays-Imagining-Love-in-A-Midsummer-Night-s-Dream.id-78,pageNum-107.html#ixzz17XrsZUPK