Illusion versus Reality

Last week, I had an interview with my Shakespeare professor, Dr. Burton. As I was preparing to meet with him, I went through each of the plays I had read and studied thus far this semester and made a short list of themes in each of them that I could then discuss if Dr. Burton asked. Well, I didn't end up using it; however, I made a rather interesting discovery as I was creating it. The common theme of Shakespeare: Illusion versus Reality.

Every play that I looked at had some specific attention paid to this theme. There was always some form of illusion that would contrast reality and much of the progression of the play was dependent upon the way that the characters would choose to accept either an illusion or reality as truth. I will list some examples.

Hamlet
Hamlet is only an obvious character to have dealt with this. So much of the play comes down to people either accepting illusion as reality or creating illusion in order to discover information about others. Hamlet creates the illusion that he is mad and others accept it as reality. It is even arguable that Hamlet begins to accept his own illusion. Another big way that this theme affects Hamlet: he spends so much of his time envisioning himself avenging his father and very little time actually doing it. The illusion doesn't lead to action; in fact, it seems to keep Hamlet from it as he continues to just think about it. The very backbone of the story seems to be based upon the question, "What is reality?"

A Winter's Tale
This one is, again, obvious. Leontes believes his own illusion that his wife, Hermione, is having an affair with his best friend. This leads to the death of his son, the loss of his daughter, and the apparent death of his wife. Everything is brought back into order once Leontes accepts reality and lets that truth bring him to repentance. But there are other examples of the theme: Perdita appears to be the daughter of the shepherd, but she is in fact the daughter of the king of Sicilia. Again with the son of the king of Bohemia: he appears to be a peasant boy, but in truth, he is royalty. So much of what drives this play is the confusion of appearance, or illusion, and reality.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Here, yet again, is the obvious use of the theme. At the beginning, the people, particularly the Athenian lovers, are in reality, in Athens. But by night, they head to the woods and experience the wrath of fairies and sprites and their own minds. But, we are told at the end, that it was really all a dream. The difference between illusion and reality is stark: night and day, city and woods, chaos and order. What is interesting about this play as opposed to the previous two is that illusion is used to good effect. In reality, the lovers are having problems. Hermia's father wants her to marry Demetrius, but she loves Lysander, who lovers her back. Helena loves Demetrius, but he doesn't want her. But in the woods, thanks to the workings of the fairies, all of this is eventually (after some comedic confusion) sorted out. Illusion versus reality.

Love's Labour's Lost
In this play, the theme is manifest in the illusion of the group of friends that believe that they can immortalize themselves through their learning. It is an illusion. The illusion of knowledge and immortality. Knowledge without perception is an illusion—this is manifest in the characters of Armado and Holofernes, who go about using flowery and advanced language but to no purpose. They only superficially perceive what it is they are saying. Their language is hollow. It is an illusion. The women in the story represent reality. The princess, for example, has a good mastery of language, but she means what she says, and is able to fool the men who believe they are so intelligent by outdoing them with perception and meaning in her words. Illusion versus reality. Reality is love. That is the real learning.

The Tempest
Finally, Prospero. There is much in the way of illusion versus reality. The men in the boat live under the illusion that Prospero is dead. Prospero, as a sorcerer, uses illusion to bring people around the island and eventually lead them to repentance. Ariel uses illusion to do the will of Prospero. There is the illusion of the food on the table. The illusion of power that is experienced by Prospero as he uses his magic. The play is full of it, both to good and bad effect.

I won't continue much more, but I think that perhaps Shakespeare thought that all the problems in the world revolved around people either living too much in an illusional world or not enough. His plays all seem to discuss this theme, but with different purposes. Maybe there was some perfect place in which one would find himself grounded in reality but occasionally taking flights into illusion. Maybe Shakespeare was criticizing the romantic ideas of some versus those who thought that they were enlightened. Interesting.