William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream & Much Ado About Nothing : what has love got to do with it? Shakespeare's characters: good, bad, over the top or just delightfully human

This essay endeavours to look at two of Shakespeare's most popular plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing. These two comedies deal with the core of human emotions and therefore this essay will attempt to bring certain elements to the surface, such as: love, hate or darkness and what these two opposite emotions make humans capable of. Moreover it will aim to unmask the lead characters in the plays, these pretend people who sprung from Shalespeare's mind. In addition, the human traits such as loyalty, strenght and jealousy that Shakespeare have bestowed upon them will be looked at to establish whether they are of a similar form or if they divers from one another. Lastly, there will be an attempt to see if these characters are the extremes that Shakespeare so often used to show humans as they are, flawed but likable, capable of great love as well as fierce hatred. As a parenthesis, Cupid, the little love god will be discussed due to his presence in both plays by means of symbolic language and numerous mentionings of him by the characters themselves.Validerat; 20101217 (root