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William Shakespeare’s plays are some of the most important and best plays ever to be written. Shakespeare draws from classical sources to create different types of literary elements in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and others of his plays. His characters are inspired from Celtic fairies and some are also even somehow connected to Greek myths. Greek gods are mentioned a lot throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream and are mentioned many times by some of the characters. In his plays, Shakespeare uses many sources to add historical context to his writings; and also uses the same ideas to create characters similar to Celtic Fairies and Greek gods.
Celtic Fairies are mischievous beings, which according to legend, are mostly doing bad things to humans. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the fairies presented can be compared to those mentioned in those legends. Shakespeare’s fairies are trying to use humans around doing things that change the plot and how things are supposed to be, and change them for their own benefit. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the king and queen of fairies, Oberon and Titania, are fighting over and Indian boy that Titania took custody of after his mother died. Oberon wants this boy to be his “henchman” as he says in Act 2 scene 1 when he has an argument with Titania about the boy. What Oberon does to gain the boy is that he sends his servant Robin Goodfellow to trick people. Oberon tells Puck, another name for Robin Goodfellow in other versions of the play, to go fetch him a magical flower that has a special juice that once laid on a sleeping person’s eyes, they will awake and fall madly in love with the first living creature that he or she sees. Oberon even uses this magical flower on his wife Titania to make her fall in love with someone else so she becomes distracted and he can take the little Indian boy for himself. This is something that could be expected from a Celtic fairy. As mentioned before, Celtic fairies are mischievous and would do...