Imagination and Transformation in a Midsummer Night's Dream



B.
Imagination and Transformation in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Appearance and physical vision plays an important role in defining this play and its characters. A Midsummer Night's Dream begins with Hermia wishing that her "father look'd but with (her) eyes." Although this reference to eyes mainly eludes to her father looking at Lysander in the way that she looks at him, - such at with the heart and soul - this reference to eyes seem to possess   materialistic implications.   With reference to Egeuses accusations against Lysander in which Lysander supposedly has "stol'n the impression of fantasy with bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits, knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats - messengers of strong prevailment in unhardened youth"; it seems Egeus has a fetish for materialism; he does not see these gifts as love tokens as does Hermia but merely as love bribes.   He sees with his physical eyes what is on the outside instead of looking also on the inside with emotional eyes. In trying to force Hermia's submission to his ideas of love and seemingly sustain his superego, it may be that Egeus is experiencing a conflict in his identity causing his conflict to pour over into other identity conflicts, such as the confused "love square" consisting of Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and "helpless little" Helena.   While I would not afford much to faith into Egeuses concepts of love, Theseus and Demetrius seem to conform to his standards of marriage, which is based not on true love, but merely manly materialism and social status. This is shown when Lysander feels he must compete materialistically by saying, "I am, my lord, as well deriv'd as he, as well possess'd; my love is more than his." This statement seems to imply that Egeus prefers Demetrius because of his assumed materialistic endowments and his social status and thus, Lysander must compete with the physical, such as possessions and status, but not love. This scene furthers the implication that everyone...