In A Midsummer Night's Dream, love juice is a liquid so potent that no being can resist its effects, not even the fairies, who possess a considerable amount of power over nature. This love juice can be seen as a device that Shakespeare uses as a way to represent the vagaries of romantic love, as it allows Shakespeare to freely manipulate his characters' love interests to show how absurd love can be. This effect is achieved through the pairing of unlikely couples in the play, such as the pairing of Lysander and Helen, but these pairings pale in comparison to the jarring pairing of Titania and Bottom. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of the techniques Shakespeare uses to present the pairing of these two characters as an oddity is through the use of dramatic and situational irony. Even at the beginning of the scene, the irony is painfully obvious to the audience because Titania's description of Bottom as an "angel" cannot be further from the truth. This is exceptionally effective given that it takes place immediately after the Mechanics proclaim that the transformed Bottom is a monstrous creature, as the antithesis highlights how delusional Titania's state of mind is. Bottom, unaware of the fairy queen's presence, continues to sing, and the reference to the cuckoo in his song can be seen as a foreshadowing of the betrayal that is about to unfold. This is situationally ironic because Bottom is blissfully unaware that he himself will take part in this betrayal (Oberon is betrayed by Titania). It's also worth noting that, although this would have elicited a considerable amount of laughter from Elizabethan audiences, the foreshadowing would likely have gone unnoticed by modern audiences due to the reduced use of the word in recent times. A modern audience would be more likely to react to Bottom's singing, however, especially if the director chose to have the actor sing his lines horribly. This decision would certainly highlight the irony of Titania's request for Bottom to "sing again." On top of that, the director can choose to have the actress playing Titania gently stroke Bottom's donkey ears while saying the line "Thus my eye is charmed by thy form" to demonstrate how ironic it is that the fairy queen admires the very features that scared the Mechanics out of their minds. Titania's hyperbolic speech ends with the declaration of her love for Bottom, which might make the audience cringe in discomfort or laugh heartily at the absurdity of it all. Regardless, it forces the audience to acknowledge the fact that Titania and Bottom are a terribly mismatched couple. Immediately following Titania's speech, Bottom serves as a spokesperson for intuition by commenting that "reason and love hold little together nowadays." This epiphany is ironic, because Bottom has always been the silliest of all the characters, yet in this scene he is the most logical. When the audience juxtaposes Bottom's sensible opinions with that of Lysander's irrational belief that "reason" made him change lovers, it actually places Bottom in a positive light. It can therefore be said that Bottom's role was promoted as a voice of reason in the eyes of the public, while Titania's role was reduced to that of a pathetic lover. For example, Titania's statement that the moon "complains of forced chastity" implies that she is grateful to be romantically involved with Bottom and pities other beings in the world who do notthey are lucky enough to consummate their love or have romantic relationships. against their will. This is ironic because Titania would not have voluntarily entered into a romantic relationship with Bottom if she had not been under the influence of love juice. In fact, when she returns to her normal state of mind, she is amazed by Bottom's crassness, who reveals to the audience that the real Titania would certainly have been against the relationship. The difference between what he is saying and the truth of the facts leads us to understand that the two are terribly unsuitable for each other, to the point that the union would never have happened under normal circumstances. In addition to the use of irony, Shakespeare also uses the gap between their social statuses to make the pairing seem absolutely bizarre. This is first signaled to the audience through Titania's use of verse and Bottom's use of prose, as the audience is more likely to associate characters who speak in verse with the upper class and characters who they speak prose to common people. Although the difference between the two is quite evident when Titania speaks in blank verse, Shakespeare decides to take it a step further by having Titania speak in rhyming couplets while convincing Bottom to stay in the woods with her, which increases the discrepancy between her and her . Put the bottom to. If the public has not yet understood that they belong to completely distinct social classes, any doubts are dispelled when Titania herself explicitly speaks about this disparity. In the scene, he admits that he is a "spirit of no common standard", so in an attempt to raise Bottom to his level, he will thus "purge (his) mortal grossness". The antithesis employed by Titania shows that she is fully aware of their dissimilarity in terms of social stature, but is still extremely eager to pursue their relationship. Of course, since Titania is such a powerful individual, it will be her wishes that are granted at the end of the scene. Her power is implied in the phrase "I will give thee fairies to attend thee," and the director may choose to amplify the implication through the casting of adult men as the four fairies (which Adrian Noble chose to do in his 1950s production 1994 ). It can be argued that this is more effective than the traditional portrayal of children as fairies in conveying the extent of Titania's influence, as a leader of adults is easily considered more formidable than a leader of children. Furthermore, the notable difference in tone also manages to communicate the power imbalance between Titania and Bottom. Titania has a tendency to use imperatives ("Nod to him") while Bottom does not, which is at odds with the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta, as Theseus is the one who often uses imperatives. The portrayal of Titania as the dominant party in her romantic relationship may be empowering to female audience members, while male audience members may feel intimidated. This inversion in the typical power dynamics of a couple (in the Elizabethan era) serves to advance Shakespeare's point that the pairing of Titania and Bottom is terribly unnatural. Perhaps the most obvious difference between Titania and Bottom is not that they both come from different countries. social classes, but who come from different backgrounds. This can be made immediately apparent to the audience through the physicality of the actors. For example, to bring out the ethereal quality of the fairies, Granville-Barker (who staged the show in 1914) had the fairies covered in gold paint and in some places with real gold leaf. Therefore, when the aesthetically pleasing Titania is contrasted with the donkey-headed Bottom, the audience cannot help but feel that they are incompatible with each other. On the contrary, some.