To What Extent Do the Rude Mechanicals Contribute to the Discomfort of a Midsummer Nights Dream.

To What Extent Do the Rude Mechanicals Contribute to the Discomfort of a Midsummer Nights Dream.

  • Submitted By: bascom
  • Date Submitted: 10/12/2009 2:52 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1348
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George Bascom GCSE Shakespeare Coursework

To what extent do the rude mechanicals contribute to the discomfort of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that is set in and around Athens, and explores different people’s lives and how they are affected by the occurrences within the play. Most of the play takes part in a wood surrounding Athens, where many important events occur. Although many of the characters in the play are upper class aristocrats, one of the main parts which contribute to the plays depth is that of the rude mechanicals. The rude mechanicals are characters in the play who represent the working class, people who take up common jobs by day and at the conclusion of the play show their abysmal acting skills. These traits are accompanied by extremely bizarre and comic names, for instance, the “boldest” of the rude mechanicals, Bottom. These names are key factors that add to the discomfort of the play, because although the play is a tragedy the bizarre names make it become quite comic and also remove the seriousness of the play. Also, due to the historical time of the play, the people who were watching the play in the seventeenth century may have found the names even more of a discomfort, and to some extent offensive. To conclude, these rude mechanicals provide us with a complete contrast to the upper class aristocrats of the play, through their language and also by the way in which they speak. This is important because it adds to the discomfort of the play, and also allows us to clearly identify the class of a character according to their personality.

One of the main things in A Midsummer Nights Dream that helps us to identify the social class of the rude mechanicals is the language they use and more importantly the way that they speak. One of the main things that represents this is that the rude mechanicals speak in the form of prose. This is a complete contrast to the upper...

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