A Midsummer Night’s Dream
by William Shakespeare
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eNotes: Table of Contents
1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Introduction
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: William Shakespeare Biography
3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Summary
4. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
5. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: List of Characters
6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Historical Background
7. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act I, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act I, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act II, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act II, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act III, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act III, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act IV, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act IV, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
♦ Act V, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Critical Commentary
♦ Act I Commentary
♦ Act II Commentary
♦ Act III Commentary
♦ Act IV Commentary
♦ Act V Commentary
9. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Quizzes
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
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♦ Act I, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
♦ Act I, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
♦ Act II, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
♦ Act II, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
♦ Act III, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
♦ Act III, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
♦ Act IV, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
♦ Act IV, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
♦ Act V, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
10. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Essential Passages
♦ Essential Passage by Character: Nick Bottom
♦ Essential Passage by Character: Helena
♦ Essential Passage by Theme: Love
♦ Essential Passage by Theme: Reality
11. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Themes
12. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Character Analysis
♦ Note on the Character Analysis
♦ Bottom (Character Analysis)
♦ Demetrius (Character Analysis)
♦ Helena (Character Analysis)
♦ Hermia (Character Analysis)
♦ Hippolyta (Character Analysis)
♦ Lysander (Character Analysis)
♦ Oberon (Character Analysis)
♦ Puck (Character Analysis)
♦ Theseus (Character Analysis)
♦ Other Characters (Descriptions)
13. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Principal Topics
14. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Essays
♦ What Fools They Be—An Analysis of Puck and Bottom
♦ Love's Course in A Midsummer Night's Dream
♦ The World of Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Elizabethan England
15. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Criticism
♦ Overviews
♦ Gender and Sex Roles
♦ Between Fantasy and Reality
♦ Language and Poetry
♦ Mythological Background
♦ Bottom
♦ The Lovers
16. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Selected Quotes
17. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Suggested Essay Topics
18. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Sample Essay Outlines
19. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Modern Connections
20. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: FAQs
♦ Did Shakespeare have a specific reason for writing this play?
♦ How does the dream of the play begin?
♦ What part do Bottom and the other "rude mechanicals" have in the play?
♦ Why is there a fifth act to this play?
21. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bibliography and Further Reading
eNotes: Table of Contents
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Introduction
Probably composed in 1595 or 1596, A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of
Shakespeare's early comedies but can be distinguished from his other works in this group by describing it
specifically as the Bard's original wedding play. Most scholars believe that Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer
Night's Dream as a light entertainment to accompany a marriage celebration; and while the identity of the
historical couple for whom it was meant has never been conclusively established, there is good textual and
background evidence available to support this claim. At the same time, unlike the vast majority of his works
(including all of his comedies), in concocting this story Shakespeare did not rely directly upon existing plays,
narrative poetry, historical chronicles or any other primary source materials, making it a truly original piece.
Most critics agree that if a youthful Shakespeare was not at his best in this play, he certainly enjoyed himself
in writing it.
The main plot of Midsummer is a complex contraption that involves two sets of couples (Hermia and
Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius) whose romantic cross-purposes are complicated still further by their
entrance into the play's fairyland woods where the King and Queen of the Fairies (Oberon and Titania) preside
and the impish folk character of Puck or Robin Goodfellow plies his trade. Less subplot than a brilliant
satirical device, another set of characters—Bottom the weaver and his bumptious band of "rude
mechanicals"—stumble into the main doings when they go into the same enchanted woods to rehearse a play
that is very loosely (and comically) based on the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, their hilarious home-spun
piece taking up Act V of Shakespeare's comedy.
A Midsummer Night's Dream contains some wonderfully lyrical expressions of lighter Shakespearean themes,
most notably those of love, dreams, and the stuff of both, the creative imagination itself. Indeed, close scrutiny
of the text by twentieth-century critics has led to a significant upward revision in the play's status, one that
overlooks the silliness of its story and concentrates upon its unique lyrical qualities. If A Midsummer Night's
Dream can be said to convey a message, it is that the creative imagination is in tune with the supernatural
world and is best used to confer the blessings of Nature (writ large) upon mankind and marriage.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: William Shakespeare
Biography
The details of William Shakespeare’s life are sketchy, mostly mere surmise based upon court or other clerical
records. His parents, John and Mary (Arden), were married about 1557; she was of the landed gentry, and he
was a yeoman—a glover and commodities merchant. By 1568, John had risen through the ranks of town
government and held the position of high bailiff, which was a position similar to a mayor. William, the eldest
son and the third of eight children, was born in 1564, probably on April 23, several days before his baptism on
April 26 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare is also believed to have died on the same date—April 23—in
1616.
It is believed that William attended the local grammar school in Stratford where his parents lived, and that he
studied primarily Latin, rhetoric, logic, and literature. Shakespeare probably left school at age 15, which was
the norm, to take a job, especially since this was the period of his father’s financial difficulty. At age 18
(1582), William married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer’s daughter who was eight years his senior. Their
first daughter (Susanna) was born six months later (1583), and twins, Judith and Hamnet, were born in 1585.
Shakespeare’s life can be divided into three periods: the first 20 years in Stratford, which include his
schooling, early marriage, and fatherhood; the next 25 years as an actor and playwright in London; and the
last five in retirement in Stratford where he enjoyed the moderate wealth gained from his theatrical successes.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Introduction
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The years linking the first two periods are marked by a lack of information about Shakespeare, and are often
referred to as the “dark years.”
At some point during the “dark years,” Shakespeare began his career with a London theatrical company,
perhaps in 1589, for he was already an actor and playwright of some note by 1592. Shakespeare apparently
wrote and acted for numerous theatrical companies, including Pembroke’s Men, and Strange’s Men, which
later became the Chamberlain’s Men, with whom he remained for the rest of his career.
In 1592, the Plague closed the theaters for about two years, and Shakespeare turned to writing book-length
narrative poetry. Most notable were “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece”, both of which were
dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, whom scholars accept as Shakespeare’s friend and benefactor despite a
lack of documentation. During this same period, Shakespeare was writing his sonnets, which are more likely
signs of the time’s fashion rather than actual love poems detailing any particular relationship. He returned to
playwriting when theaters reopened in 1594, and did not continue to write poetry. His sonnets were published
without his consent in 1609, shortly before his retirement.
Amid all of his success, Shakespeare suffered the loss of his only son, Hamnet, who died in 1596 at the age of
11. But Shakespeare’s career continued unabated, and in London in 1599, he became one of the partners in
the new Globe Theater, which was built by the Chamberlain’s Men.
Shakespeare wrote very little after 1612, which was the year he completed Henry VIII. It was during a
performance of this play in 1613 that the Globe caught fire and burned to the ground. Sometime between 1610
and 1613, Shakespeare returned to Stratford, where he owned a large house and property, to spend his
remaining years with his family.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity
Church, where he had been baptized exactly 52 years earlier. His literary legacy included 37 plays, 154
sonnets, and five major poems.
Incredibly, most of Shakespeare’s plays had never been published in anything except pamphlet form, and
were simply extant as acting scripts stored at the Globe. Theater scripts were not regarded as literary works of
art, but only the basis for the performance. Plays were simply a popular form of entertainment for all layers of
society in Shakespeare’s time. Only the efforts of two of Shakespeare’s company, John Heminges and Henry
Condell, preserved his 36 plays (minus Pericles, the thirty-seventh).
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Summary
Theseus and Hippolyta are to wed at the new moon, and Philostrate has been ordered to have a revel prepared
for the wedding. Several local craftsmen agree to write and produce a play for the revel. Egeus brings his
daughter, Hermia, to Theseus for judgment since he is convinced that her choice of husband, Lysander, has
bewitched her into choosing him. According to Athenian law, a father may decide who his daughter marries;
if she does not obey, she may be put to death or ordered to a nunnery for the rest of her life. As she is well
aware, her father has chosen Demetrius. The craftsmen repair to the woods to rehearse at the same time that
Lysander and Hermia meet there to plan their elopement. Hermia and Lysander confide in Helena, who has
previously been jilted by Demetrius and wants to win him back. Helena, in turn, tells Demetrius of the young
lovers’ meeting.
Fairies have come from India to bless Theseus’ wedding and are haunting the same wood where the
craftsmen and lovers plan to meet. Oberon is quarreling with Titania over her continued possession of a
changeling; in retaliation for his wife’s actions, Oberon sends Puck to gather the flower necessary to make a
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: William ShakespeareBiography
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love juice. This love juice will cause the one who has it squeezed into his/her eye while asleep to fall in love
with the first being seen upon waking. Helena follows Demetrius into the wood as he attempts to find the
lovers, thereby disturbing Oberon who then orders Puck to squeeze the love juice into the eye of the youth
who disturbed him. Oberon describes Demetrius by his clothes, but Puck finds Lysander asleep near Hermia
and thinks this is the youth Oberon meant. Puck anoints Lysander’s eye while Oberon does the same to
Titania. When Helena, still following the unwilling Demetrius, finds Lysander, she wakes him and becomes
the object of his love. While Lysander is pursuing Helena, Hermia awakens and searches for him.
The craftsmen arrive in the haunted wood to rehearse. Puck is still nearby and plays a trick on Nick Bottom by
putting an ass’s head on him. The others flee in terror, but Bottom remains singing to keep up his courage.
His song awakens the anointed Titania, who immediately falls in love with him. Hermia happens upon
Demetrius and accuses him of murdering Lysander and then runs away. Demetrius is exhausted and falls
asleep, whereupon Puck anoints his eyes. Lysander and Helena arrive quarreling, which wakes Demetrius
who then falls in love with Helena. The two men begin competing for her love. Hermia hears the noise and
joins them, only to accuse Helena of stealing Lysander’s love. The men go off to find a place to fight, and
Helena, afraid of Hermia, runs away with Hermia in pursuit. Oberon orders Puck to make the four lovers sleep
and reanoint Lysander as he sleeps, so that he will fall in love with Hermia once again.
Titania continues her amorous pursuit of Bottom as the mismatched lovers fall asleep. Oberon gains
possession of the changeling and removes the enchantment from his wife. He orders Puck to take the ass’s
head off Bottom. As the sun rises, Hippolyta and Theseus enter the wood to hunt, see the sleeping lovers, and
awaken them with hunting horns. Egeus brings his suite again, but Demetrius is now in love with Helena and
leaves Hermia to Lysander. Theseus is so pleased at this that he invites each pair of rightly matched lovers to
be wed during his own wedding. Bottom wakes up thinking the whole experience has been a dream.
The craftsmen give their play, which they think is wonderful. At midnight, the lovers go to sleep and Oberon
and Titania, with their fairies, take over the palace. They dance, sing, bless the sleepers, and leave. Puck
remains to apologize and request applause from the audience.
Estimated Reading Time
Using The New Folger Library edition, reading will take approximately three hours (including the
introductory and concluding material). Keeping in mind that readers will take more or less time, depending on
what they choose to dwell upon and their reading rate. The time allotted for each section is as follows:
introductory material—45 minutes; Act I—20 minutes; Act II—30 minutes; Act III—55 minutes; Act IV—10
minutes; Act V—10 minutes; concluding material—10 minutes. Because of the puns, double entendres, poetic
description, and unfamiliar syntax, it is suggested you read the play itself at least twice. Readers should read
the play once to familiarize themselves with Shakespeare’s use of the English language and then again read
to better grasp the plot with its twists and turns and to firmly establish the role of each character in the plot.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
In this section:
• Shakespeare’s Language
• Shakespeare’s Sentences
• Shakespeare’s Words
• Shakespeare’s Wordplay
• Shakespeare’s Dramatic Verse
• Implied Stage Action
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Summary
5
Shakespeare’s Language
Shakespeare’s language can create a strong pang of intimidation, even fear, in a large number of modern-day
readers. Fortunately, however, this need not be the case. All that is needed to master the art of reading
Shakespeare is to practice the techniques of unraveling uncommonly-structured sentences and to become
familiar with the poetic use of uncommon words. We must realize that during the 400-year span between
Shakespeare’s time and our own, both the way we live and speak has changed. Although most of his
vocabulary is in use today, some of it is obsolete, and what may be most confusing is that some of his words
are used today, but with slightly different or totally different meanings. On the stage, actors readily dissolve
these language stumbling blocks. They study Shakespeare’s dialogue and express it dramatically in word and
in action so that its meaning is graphically enacted. If the reader studies Shakespeare’s lines as an actor does,
looking up and reflecting upon the meaning of unfamiliar words until real voice is discovered, he or she will
suddenly experience the excitement, the depth and the sheer poetry of what these characters say.
Shakespeare’s Sentences
In English, or any other language, the meaning of a sentence greatly depends upon where each word is placed
in that sentence. “The child hurt the mother” and “The mother hurt the child” have opposite meanings, even
though the words are the same, simply because the words are arranged differently. Because word position is
so integral to English, the reader will find unfamiliar word arrangements confusing, even difficult to
understand. Since Shakespeare’s plays are poetic dramas, he often shifts from average word arrangements to
the strikingly unusual so that the line will conform to the desired poetic rhythm. Often, too, Shakespeare
employs unusual word order to afford a character his own specific style of speaking.
Today, English sentence structure follows a sequence of subject first, verb second, and an optional object
third. Shakespeare, however, often places the verb before the subject, which reads, “Speaks he” rather than
“He speaks.” Solanio speaks with this inverted structure in The Merchant of Venice stating, “I should be
still/Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind” (Bevington edition, I, i, ll.17-19), while today’s
standard English word order would have the clause at the end of this line read, “where the wind sits.”
“Wind” is the subject of this clause, and “sits” is the verb. Bassanio’s words in Act Two also exemplify this
inversion: “And in such eyes as ours appear not faults” (II, ii, l. 184). In our normal word order, we would
say, “Faults do not appear in eyes such as ours,” with “faults” as the subject in both Shakespeare’s word
order and ours.
Inversions like these are not troublesome, but when Shakes–peare positions the predicate adjective or the
object before the subject and verb, we are sometimes surprised. For example, rather than “I saw him,”
Shakespeare may use a structure such as “Him I saw.” Similarly, “Cold the morning is” would be used for
our “The morning is cold.” Lady Macbeth demonstrates this inversion as she speaks of her husband: “Glamis
thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be/What thou art promised” (Macbeth, I, v, ll. 14-15). In current English word
order, this quote would begin, “Thou art Glamis, and Cawdor.”
In addition to inversions, Shakespeare purposefully keeps words apart that we generally keep together. To
illustrate, consider Bassanio’s humble admission in The Merchant of Venice: “I owe you much, and, like a
wilful youth,/That which I owe is lost” (I, i, ll. 146-147). The phrase, “like a wilful youth,” separates the
regular sequence of “I owe you much” and “That which I owe is lost.” To understand more clearly this type
of passage, the reader could rearrange these word groups into our conventional order: I owe you much and I
wasted what you gave me because I was young and impulsive. While these rearranged clauses will sound like
normal English, and will be simpler to understand, they will no longer have the desired poetic rhythm, and the
emphasis will now be on the wrong words.
As we read Shakespeare, we will find words that are separated by long, interruptive statements. Often subjects
are separated from verbs, and verbs are separated from objects. These long interruptions can be used to give a
character dimension or to add an element of suspense. For example, in Romeo and Juliet Benvolio describes
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
6
both Romeo’s moodiness and his own sensitive and thoughtful nature:
I, measuring his affections by my own,
Which then most sought, where most might not be found,
Being one too many by my weary self,
Pursu’d my humour, not pursuing his,
And gladly shunn’d who gladly fled from me. (I, i, ll. 126-130)
In this passage, the subject “I” is distanced from its verb “Pursu’d.” The long interruption serves to provide
information which is integral to the plot. Another example, taken from Hamlet, is the ghost, Hamlet’s father,
who describes Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, as
…that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts—
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce—won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen. (I, v, ll. 43-47)
From this we learn that Prince Hamlet’s mother is the victim of an evil seduction and deception. The delay
between the subject, “beast,” and the verb, “won,” creates a moment of tension filled with the image of a
cunning predator waiting for the right moment to spring into attack. This interruptive passage allows the play
to unfold crucial information and thus to build the tension necessary to produce a riveting drama.
While at times these long delays are merely for decorative purposes, they are often used to narrate a particular
situation or to enhance character development. As Antony and Cleopatra opens, an interruptive passage
occurs in the first few lines. Although the delay is not lengthy, Philo’s words vividly portray Antony’s
military prowess while they also reveal the immediate concern of the drama. Antony is distracted from his
career, and is now focused on Cleopatra:
…those goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front…. (I, i, ll. 2-6)
Whereas Shakespeare sometimes heaps detail upon detail, his sentences are often elliptical, that is, they omit
words we expect in written English sentences. In fact, we often do this in our spoken conversations. For
instance, we say, “You see that?” when we really mean, “Did you see that?” Reading poetry or listening to
lyrics in music conditions us to supply the omitted words and it makes us more comfortable reading this type
of dialogue. Consider one passage in The Merchant of Venice where Antonio’s friends ask him why he seems
so sad and Solanio tells Antonio, “Why, then you are in love” (I, i, l. 46). When Antonio denies this, Solanio
responds, “Not in love neither?” (I, i, l. 47). The word “you” is omitted but understood despite the confusing
double negative.
In addition to leaving out words, Shakespeare often uses intentionally vague language, a strategy which taxes
the reader’s attentiveness. In Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra, upset that Antony is leaving for Rome after
learning that his wife died in battle, convinces him to stay in Egypt:
Sir, you and I must part, but that’s not it:
Sir you and I have lov’d, but there’s not it;
That you know well, something it is I would—
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
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O, my oblivion is a very Antony,
And I am all forgotten. (I, iii, ll. 87-91)
In line 89, “…something it is I would” suggests that there is something that she would want to say, do, or have
done. The intentional vagueness leaves us, and certainly Antony, to wonder. Though this sort of writing may
appear lackadaisical for all that it leaves out, here the vagueness functions to portray Cleopatra as rhetorically
sophisticated. Similarly, when asked what thing a crocodile is (meaning Antony himself who is being
compared to a crocodile), Antony slyly evades the question by giving a vague reply:
It is shap’d, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth.
It is just so high as it is, and moves with it own organs.
It lives by that which nourisheth it, and, the elements once out of it, it transmigrates. (II, vii,
ll. 43-46)
This kind of evasiveness, or doubletalk, occurs often in Shakespeare’s writing and requires extra patience on
the part of the reader.
Shakespeare’s Words
As we read Shakespeare’s plays, we will encounter uncommon words. Many of these words are not in use
today. As Romeo and Juliet opens, we notice words like “shrift” (confession) and “holidame” (a holy relic).
Words like these should be explained in notes to the text. Shakespeare also employs words which we still use,
though with different meaning. For example, in The Merchant of Venice “caskets” refer to small, decorative
chests for holding jewels. However, modern readers may think of a large cask instead of the smaller,
diminutive casket.
Another trouble modern readers will have with Shakespeare’s English is with words that are still in use today,
but which mean something different in Elizabethan use. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare uses the
word “straight” (as in “straight away”) where we would say “immediately.” Here, the modern reader is
unlikely to carry away the wrong message, however, since the modern meaning will simply make no sense. In
this case, textual notes will clarify a phrase’s meaning. To cite another example, in Romeo and Juliet, after
Mercutio dies, Romeo states that the “black fate on moe days doth depend” (emphasis added). In this case,
“depend” really means “impend.”
Shakespeare’s Wordplay
All of Shakespeare’s works exhibit his mastery of playing with language and with such variety that many
people have authored entire books on this subject alone. Shakespeare’s most frequently used types of
wordplay are common: metaphors, similes, synecdoche and metonymy, personification, allusion, and puns. It
is when Shakespeare violates the normal use of these devices, or rhetorical figures, that the language becomes
confusing.
A metaphor is a comparison in which an object or idea is replaced by another object or idea with common
attributes. For example, in Macbeth a murderer tells Macbeth that Banquo has been murdered, as directed, but
that his son, Fleance, escaped, having witnessed his father’s murder. Fleance, now a threat to Macbeth, is
described as a serpent:
There the grown serpent lies, the worm that’s fled
Hath nature that in time will venom breed,
No teeth for the present. (III, iv, ll. 29-31)
Similes, on the other hand, compare objects or ideas while using the words “like” or “as.” In Romeo and
Juliet, Romeo tells Juliet that “Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books” (II, ii, l. 156). Such
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
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similes often give way to more involved comparisons, “extended similes.” For example, Juliet tells Romeo:
‘Tis almost morning,
I would have thee gone,
And yet no farther than a wonton’s bird,
That lets it hop a little from his hand
Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,
And with silken thread plucks it back again,
So loving-jealous of his liberty. (II, ii, ll. 176-181)
An epic simile, a device borrowed from heroic poetry, is an extended simile that builds into an even more
elaborate comparison. In Macbeth, Macbeth describes King Duncan’s virtues with an angelic, celestial simile
and then drives immediately into another simile that redirects us into a vision of warfare and destruction:
…Besides this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind…. (I, vii, ll. 16-25)
Shakespeare employs other devices, like synecdoche and metonymy, to achieve “verbal economy,” or using
one or two words to express more than one thought. Synecdoche is a figure of speech using a part for the
whole. An example of synecdoche is using the word boards to imply a stage. Boards are only a small part of
the materials that make up a stage, however, the term boards has become a colloquial synonym for stage.
Metonymy is a figure of speech using the name of one thing for that of another which it is associated. An
example of metonymy is using crown to mean the king (as used in the sentence “These lands belong to the
crown”). Since a crown is associated with or an attribute of the king, the word crown has become a
metonymy for the king. It is important to understand that every metonymy is a synecdoche, but not every
synecdoche is a metonymy. This is rule is true because a metonymy must not only be a part of the root word,
making a synecdoche, but also be a unique attribute of or associated with the root word.
Synecdoche and metonymy in Shakespeare’s works is often very confusing to a new student because he
creates uses for words that they usually do not perform. This technique is often complicated and yet very
subtle, which makes it difficult of a new student to dissect and understand. An example of these devices in
one of Shakespeare’s plays can be found in The Merchant of Venice . In warning his daughter, Jessica, to
ignore the Christian revelries in the streets below, Shylock says:
Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then… (I, v, ll. 30-32)
The phrase of importance in this quote is “the wry-necked fife.” When a reader examines this phrase it does
not seem to make sense; a fife is a cylinder-shaped instrument, there is no part of it that can be called a neck.
The phrase then must be taken to refer to the fife-player, who has to twist his or her neck to play the fife. Fife,
therefore, is a synecdoche for fife-player, much as boards is for stage. The trouble with understanding this
phrase is that “vile squealing” logically refers to the sound of the fife, not the fife-player, and the reader
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
9
might be led to take fife as the instrument because of the parallel reference to “drum” in the previous line.
The best solution to this quandary is that Shakespeare uses the word fife to refer to both the instrument and the
player. Both the player and the instrument are needed to complete the wordplay in this phrase, which, though
difficult to understand to new readers, cannot be seen as a flaw since Shakespeare manages to convey two
meanings with one word. This remarkable example of synecdoche illuminates Shakespeare’s mastery of
“verbal economy.”
Shakespeare also uses vivid and imagistic wordplay through personification, in which human capacities and
behaviors are attributed to inanimate objects. Bassanio, in The Merchant of Venice, almost speechless when
Portia promises to marry him and share all her worldly wealth, states “my blood speaks to you in my veins…”
(III, ii, l. 176). How deeply he must feel since even his blood can speak. Similarly, Portia, learning of the
penalty that Antonio must pay for defaulting on his debt, tells Salerio, “There are some shrewd contents in
yond same paper/That steals the color from Bassanio’s cheek” (III, ii, ll. 243-244).
Another important facet of Shakespeare’s rhetorical repertoire is his use of allusion. An allusion is a
reference to another author or to an historical figure or event. Very often Shakespeare alludes to the heroes
and heroines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. For example, in Cymbeline an entire room is decorated with images
illustrating the stories from this classical work, and the heroine, Imogen, has been reading from this text.
Similarly, in Titus Andronicus characters not only read directly from the Metamorphoses, but a subplot
re-enacts one of the Metamorphoses’s most famous stories, the rape and mutilation of Philomel. Another way
Shakespeare uses allusion is to drop names of mythological, historical and literary figures. In The Taming of
the Shrew, for instance, Petruchio compares Katharina, the woman whom he is courting, to Diana (II, i, l. 55),
the virgin goddess, in order to suggest that Katharina is a man-hater. At times, Shakespeare will allude to
well-known figures without so much as mentioning their names. In Twelfth Night, for example, though the
Duke and Valentine are ostensibly interested in Olivia, a rich countess, Shakespeare asks his audience to
compare the Duke’s emotional turmoil to the plight of Acteon, whom the goddess Diana transforms into a
deer to be hunted and killed by Acteon’s own dogs:
Duke:
That instant was I turn’d into a hart,
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E’er since pursue me. […]
Valentine:
But like a cloistress she will veiled walk,
And water once a day her chamber round…. (I, i, l. 20 ff.)
Shakespeare’s use of puns spotlights his exceptional wit. His comedies in particular are loaded with puns,
usually of a sexual nature. Puns work through the ambiguity that results when multiple senses of a word are
evoked; homophones often cause this sort of ambiguity. In Antony and Cleopatra, Enobarbus believes “there
is mettle in death” (I, ii, l. 146), meaning that there is “courage” in death; at the same time, mettle suggests
the homophone metal, referring to swords made of metal causing death. In early editions of Shakespeare’s
work there was no distinction made between the two words. Antony puns on the word “earing,” (I, ii, ll.
112-114) meaning both plowing (as in rooting out weeds) and hearing: he angrily sends away a messenger,
not wishing to hear the message from his wife, Fulvia: “…O then we bring forth weeds,/when our quick minds
lie still, and our ills told us/Is as our earing.” If ill-natured news is planted in one’s “hearing,” it will render
an “earing” (harvest) of ill-natured thoughts. A particularly clever pun, also in Antony and Cleopatra, stands
out after Antony’s troops have fought Octavius’s men in Egypt: “We have beat him to his camp. Run one
before,/And let the queen know of our gests” (IV, viii, ll. 1-2). Here “gests” means deeds (in this case, deeds
of battle); it is also a pun on “guests,” as though Octavius’ slain soldiers were to be guests when buried in
Egypt.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
10
One should note that Elizabethan pronunciation was in several cases different from our own. Thus, modern
readers, especially Americans, will miss out on the many puns based on homophones. The textual notes will
point up many of these “lost” puns, however.
Shakespeare’s sexual innuendoes can be either clever or tedious depending upon the speaker and situation.
The modern reader should recall that sexuality in Shakespeare’s time was far more complex than in ours and
that characters may refer to such things as masturbation and homosexual activity. Textual notes in some
editions will point out these puns but rarely explain them. An example of a sexual pun or innuendo can be
found in The Merchant of Venice when Portia and Nerissa are discussing Portia’s past suitors using innuendo
to tell of their sexual prowess:
Portia:
I pray thee, overname them, and as thou namest them, I will describe them, and according to
my description level at my affection.
Nerrisa:
First, there is the Neapolitan prince.
Portia:
Ay, that’s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of his horse, and he makes it a great
appropriation to his own good parts that he can shoe him himself. I am much afeard my lady
his mother played false with the smith. (I, ii, ll. 35-45)
The “Neapolitan prince” is given a grade of an inexperienced youth when Portia describes him as a “colt.”
The prince is thought to be inexperienced because he did nothing but “talk of his horse” (a pun for his penis)
and his other great attributes. Portia goes on to say that the prince boasted that he could “shoe him [his horse]
himself,” a possible pun meaning that the prince was very proud that he could masturbate. Finally, Portia
makes an attack upon the prince’s mother, saying that “my lady his mother played false with the smith,” a
pun to say his mother must have committed adultery with a blacksmith to give birth to such a vulgar man
having an obsession with “shoeing his horse.”
It is worth mentioning that Shakespeare gives the reader hints when his characters might be using puns and
innuendoes. In The Merchant of Venice, Portia’s lines are given in prose when she is joking, or engaged in
bawdy conversations. Later on the reader will notice that Portia’s lines are rhymed in poetry, such as when
she is talking in court or to Bassanio. This is Shakespeare’s way of letting the reader know when Portia is
jesting and when she is serious.
Shakespeare’s Dramatic Verse
Finally, the reader will notice that some lines are actually rhymed verse while others are in verse without
rhyme; and much of Shakespeare’s drama is in prose. Shakespeare usually has his lovers speak in the
language of love poetry which uses rhymed couplets. The archetypal example of this comes, of course, from
Romeo and Juliet:
The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,
Check’ring the eastern clouds with streaks of light,
And fleckled darkness like a drunkard reels
From forth day’s path and Titan’s fiery wheels.
(II, iii, ll. 1-4)
Here it is ironic that Friar Lawrence should speak these lines since he is not the one in love. He, therefore,
appears buffoonish and out of touch with reality. Shakespeare often has his characters speak in rhymed verse
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
11
to let the reader know that the character is acting in jest, and vice-versa.
Perhaps the majority of Shakespeare’s lines are in blank verse, a form of poetry which does not use rhyme
(hence the name blank) but still employs a rhythm native to the English language, iambic pentameter, where
every second syllable in a line of ten syllables receives stress. Consider the following verses from Hamlet, and
note the accents and the lack of end-rhyme:
The síngle ánd pecúliar lífe is bóund
With áll the stréngth and ármor óf the mínd (III, iii, ll. 12-13)
The final syllable of these verses receives stress and is said to have a hard, or “strong,” ending. A soft ending,
also said to be “weak,” receives no stress. In The Tempest, Shakespeare uses a soft ending to shape a verse
that demonstrates through both sound (meter) and sense the capacity of the feminine to propagate:
and thén I lóv’d thee
And shów’d thee áll the quálitíes o’ th’ ísle,
The frésh spríngs, bríne-pits, bárren pláce and fértile. (I, ii, ll. 338-40)
The first and third of these lines here have soft endings.
In general, Shakespeare saves blank verse for his characters of noble birth. Therefore, it is significant when
his lofty characters speak in prose. Prose holds a special place in Shakespeare’s dialogues; he uses it to
represent the speech habits of the common people. Not only do lowly servants and common citizens speak in
prose, but important, lower class figures also use this fun, at times ribald variety of speech. Though
Shakespeare crafts some very ornate lines in verse, his prose can be equally daunting, for some of his
characters may speechify and break into doubletalk in their attempts to show sophistication. A clever instance
of this comes when the Third Citizen in Coriolanus refers to the people’s paradoxical lack of power when
they must elect Coriolanus as their new leader once Coriolanus has orated how he has courageously fought for
them in battle:
We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do; for if he
show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and
speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of
them. Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster
of the multitude, of the which we, being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous
members. (II, ii, ll. 3-13)
Notice that this passage contains as many metaphors, hideous though they be, as any other passage in
Shakespeare’s dramatic verse.
When reading Shakespeare, paying attention to characters who suddenly break into rhymed verse, or who slip
into prose after speaking in blank verse, will heighten your awareness of a character’s mood and personal
development. For instance, in Antony and Cleopatra, the famous military leader Marcus Antony usually
speaks in blank verse, but also speaks in fits of prose (II, iii, ll. 43-46) once his masculinity and authority have
been questioned. Similarly, in Timon of Athens, after the wealthy lord Timon abandons the city of Athens to
live in a cave, he harangues anyone whom he encounters in prose (IV, iii, l. 331 ff.). In contrast, the reader
should wonder why the bestial Caliban in The Tempest speaks in blank verse rather than in prose.
Implied Stage Action
When we read a Shakespearean play, we are reading a performance text. Actors interact through dialogue, but
at the same time these actors cry, gesticulate, throw tantrums, pick up daggers, and compulsively wash
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Reading Shakespeare
12
murderous “blood” from their hands. Some of the action that takes place on stage is explicitly stated in stage
directions. However, some of the stage activity is couched within the dialogue itself. Attentiveness to these
cues is important as one conceives how to visualize the action. When Iago in Othello feigns concern for
Cassio whom he himself has stabbed, he calls to the surrounding men, “Come, come:/Lend me a light” (V, i,
ll. 86-87). It is almost sure that one of the actors involved will bring him a torch or lantern. In the same play,
Emilia, Desdemona’s maidservant, asks if she should fetch her lady’s nightgown and Desdemona replies,
“No, unpin me here” (IV, iii, l. 37). In Macbeth, after killing Duncan, Macbeth brings the murder weapon
back with him. When he tells his wife that he cannot return to the scene and place the daggers to suggest that
the king’s guards murdered Duncan, she castigates him: “Infirm of purpose/Give me the daggers. The
sleeping and the dead are but as pictures” (II, ii, ll. 50-52). As she exits, it is easy to visualize Lady Macbeth
grabbing the daggers from her husband.
For 400 years, readers have found it greatly satisfying to work with all aspects of Shakespeare’s
language—the implied stage action, word choice, sentence structure, and wordplay—until all aspects come to
life. Just as seeing a fine performance of a Shakespearean play is exciting, staging the play in one’s own
mind’s eye, and revisiting lines to enrich the sense of the action, will enhance one’s appreciation of
Shakespeare’s extraordinary literary and dramatic achievements.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: List of Characters
Hermia—a young woman in love with Lysander but ordered by her father to marry Demetrius
Helena—Hermia’s friend from childhood who is in love with Demetrius
Lysander—the youth in love with Hermia
Demetrius—the man chosen by Egeus for his daughter, Hermia, to marry despite her love for Lysander
Egeus—Hermia’s father who insists upon his paternal right to choose her husband
Theseus—the duke of Athens; engaged to Hippolyta
Hippolyta—engaged to Theseus
Philostrate—master of the revel (celebration for Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding)
Nick Bottom (the weaver)—manager of the play-within-a-play and portrays Pyramus in it; becomes the object
of Titania’s love
Peter (the carpenter)—author and director of the play-within-the-play
Francis Flute (the bellows mender)—unwillingly plays the role of Thisbe in the play-within-the-play
Tom Snout (the tinker)—portrays a wall in the play-within-the-play
Robin Starveling (the tailor)—portrays the moon in the play-within-the-play
Snug (the joiner)—portrays the lion in the play-within-the-play because he roars well
Oberon—king of the fairies; married to Titania
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: List of Characters
13
Titania—queen of the fairies; married to Oberon
Robin Goodfellow (Puck)—a hobgoblin in Oberon’s service
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed—Titania’s fairies
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Historical Background
In order for the title to have any meaning for the contemporary student of Shakespeare’s play, its origin must
be explained. At the time the play was written, only three seasons were observed: autumn, winter, and
summer—which included what we now consider spring and began in March. Therefore, the play, whose action
takes place on the eve of May Day, actually is in midsummer as Shakespeare knew it. This was the time of
year when animals were traditionally let out to pasture and the spirits of nature were thought to be abroad. The
action takes place in the fairy wood, which may be what the “dream” part of the title refers, although it may
refer to another common custom, the divining by midsummer dreams and flowers who one’s lover is or
whether one’s lover is faithful, just as the characters in the play do. It was also customary on May Day (May
1st) to greet the day with a sunrise service that includes songs to emphasize hope and cheerfulness.
As was usual for a dramatist of his time, most of Shakespeare’s plays were not original. This is not to say he
plagiarized, rather that plays were based on other, earlier works by masters such as the ones Shakespeare
studied in grammar school: Ovid, Plautus, Terence, and Chaucer. For Shakespeare, the poetry and the event
were much more important than the characters in his plays. There are several theories about this but the
preponderant one is that Puck is the imagination’s way of ordering the random. It could be said that Puck
(from English rustic folklore) is the gateway between the imaginative elements and reality as we know it.
Curiously enough, Bottom is the only human who can see the imaginative (fairy) elements.
The play-within-the-play seems to be Shakespeare’s version of a dramatist and actor’s worst nightmare.
Lines are forgotten, cues missed, conversation carried on between the actors and the audience, and the actors’
efforts laughed at. In addition, the audience loudly and freely carries on conversations during the production.
It is also a parody of his own Romeo and Juliet which was written just prior to this play. Remembering that
Shakespeare was both an actor and a dramatist may give us some insight into the behavior of actual audiences
at the Globe.
This particular play, commonly thought to have been commissioned for the wedding of Elizabeth Carey and
Thomas, the Son of Henry, Lord Berkeley, is Shakespeare’s most fully articulated. We have the lovers who
are either in love or out of it with no middle ground: Theseus and Hippolyta, Hermia and Lysander, and
Helena and Demetrius, the fairy world, Puck as the gateway between the fantasy and real world, Bottom as
the human “invited” into the fairy world, and the play within a play. This internal play, ending unhappily for
its pair of lovers, serves to show the three happily united or reunited couples in the larger play just how lucky
they are. Music was used extensively in the fairy scenes since they are in pentameter couplet and other free
forms which are suitable for singing. In keeping with his progressive treatment of female characters (although
played by young boys), Shakespeare makes a great deal of the distinction between Helena and Hermia by
constantly referring to their opposite physical attributes and temperaments while making very little distinction
between their male lovers, Lysander and Demetrius. He is also careful to make apparent the distinction
between the court and the craftspeople, except, of course, when Bottom is beloved by Titania.
This play was first printed in The Quarto Edition in 1600, although the printing of plays was not encouraged
since the thinking at that time was that no one would bother to actually attend the theater to see a play once
they could read it instead. Licenses were granted to both the Globe and The Blackfriars permitting them to
“reform” Shakespeare’s plays. Apparently they did because when Samuel Pepys saw the play for the first
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Historical Background
14
time, in its reformed version, in 1662, he was appalled by the play but loved the dancing (in the fairy scenes).
In 1692, Thomas Betterton produced an operatic adaptation with music by Henry Purcell.
Other musical adaptations in the eighteenth century were Richard Leveridge’s Comic Masque of Pyramus
and Thisbe in 1716, J. F. Lampe’s revision of Leveridge’s production in 1745 as Pyramus and Thisbe, and
Charles Johnson’s using the play within the play and As You Like It to produce Love in a Forest in 1723. In
1755, new songs were introduced in the production of The Fairies which was abbreviated by George Colman
in 1763 to become A Fairy Tale.
In 1816, the acclaimed Convent Garden was the site for Frederick Reynold’s musical version. By the
Victorian era, Mendelssohn’s music became the focal point and the original text was cut heavily for
Reynold’s production. This practice of musical productions as opposed the play Shakespeare wrote continued
well into the twentieth century.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Summary and Analysis
Act I, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
New Characters:
Theseus: duke of Athens; engaged to Hippolyta
Hippolyta: engaged to Theseus
Egeus: Hermia’s father who insists upon his paternal right to choose her husband
Lysander: the youth in love with Hermia
Demetrius: the man chosen by Egeus for his daughter, Hermia, to marry despite her love for Lysander
Hermia: a young woman in love with Lysander but ordered by her father to marry Demetrius
Helena: Hermia’s friend from childhood who is in love with Demetrius
Philostrate: the master of the revel (celebration for Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding)
Summary
As Theseus awaits his wedding day, Egeus brings Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius to Theseus, who agrees
she must marry Demetrius or be sentenced to death or a nunnery since it is the father’s right to decide who
his daughter will marry. Lysander has an aunt who lives out of Theseus’ jurisdiction, so the lovers agree to
meet in the wood in order to plan their escape to the aunt’s house. They tell Helena of their plans, but she is
still in love with Demetrius and thinks if she tells him of her love he will no longer love Hermia.
Analysis
Plautus and Terence both strongly influenced Shakespeare’s writing. These Roman writers used typical
characters for their new comedies; a young man (Lysander), a father who opposes the wishes of his child
(Egeus), and a tricky slave (in this case, a non-human — Puck). Shakespeare adhered to Plautus’ and
Terence’s three-part structure of play writing, which is composed of: part one – a situation which is the
opposite of the “right” one is set up; part two – since it is not the usual situation, complications follow; and
part three – the opening situation is “righted,” usually through some gimmick in the plot. The plot is very
much akin to contemporary soap operas in that the boy loves a girl, her father vetoes the match, and then the
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Summary and Analysis
15
boy somehow wins the girl with the father’s approval. In line 136, Shakespeare clearly states his use of
Plautus’ and Terence’s methods and succinctly foreshadows the moral of the entire play, “The true course of
love never did run smooth.”
In this initial section of the three-part structure, the situation is set with the “wrong” person being chosen.
Hermia is a headstrong young woman ready not only to risk her father’s wrath by choosing Lysander over
Demetrius, but she also risks her life, since death is one of the possible punishments available to her father.
Hermia is also willing to risk her sexual and sensual life since her father’s alternative punishment is
banishment to a nunnery, which would mean no sex, pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, or sensual pleasures.
Demetrius also chooses the “wrong” person. He had once wooed Helena, but now courts Hermia, Helena’s
close friend since childhood. Even Theseus seems to choose the “wrong” person since he won Hippolyta by
waging war on her, however, they do truly seem to be happy that they are going to be wed and are impatient
for the four days until the new moon. In addition, unlike the other couples, there are no other suitors to
complicate their relationship.
Act I, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
New Characters:
Peter Quince (the carpenter): author and director of the play-within-the-play
Nick Bottom (the weaver): manager of the play-within-the-play and is Pyramus in it; becomes the object of
Titania’s love
Francis Flute (the bellows mender): unwillingly plays the role of Thisbe in the play-within-the-play
Snug (the joiner): portrays the lion in the play-within-the-play because he roars well
Robin Starveling (the tailor): portrays the moon in the play-within-the-play
Tom Snout (the tinker): portrays a wall in the play-within-the play
Summary
The craftsmen meet with Quince, the director, to assign the roles for the play—“The most lamentable comedy
and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe”—they are going to present at the revel in honor of Theseus’ and
Hippolyta’s wedding during the new moon in four days. Bottom is to play the lover, Pyramus, although he
would prefer to be Thisbe or the Lion and professes that he will make the audience cry. Flute is to play the
lady, Thisbe, but is worried because he is growing a beard, however, this will be covered by a mask so it is not
the problem he thinks it is. Starveling is to play Thisbe’s mother and the Moon. Snout is to be Pyramus’
father and the Wall. Quince will play Thisbe’s father. Snug, who is to be the Lion, is worried he will need
more time to memorize his lines but he needs only roar. After some discussion of what beard Bottom should
wear as his costume, the men agree to meet in the wood to rehearse since they would be too easily distracted
or interrupted should they rehearse in the city.
Analysis
In this scene, we begin to differentiate the craftsmen from one another. Bottom, who predicts his
extraordinary job of acting and states his preference for the “fun” parts, seems to be the clown of the group.
Snug, worrying that he will not learn his part in time, seems well aware of his limitations. Flute, on the other
hand, is the literalist wondering how he can play a woman if he is growing a beard. Quince is all business and
reassuring as well, making certain each is comfortable with his role and ironing out any problems they may
foresee with their parts. Starveling and Snout are perfectly acquiescent, asking no questions and making no
Act I, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
16
comments.
Act II, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
New Characters:
Robin Goodfellow (Puck): a hobgoblin in Oberon’s service
Oberon: king of the fairies; married to Titania
Titania: queen of the fairies; married to Oberon
Summary
Puck and one of the fairies come upon each other in the wood. The fairy ascertains that Puck is that spirit who
is mischievous and plays all sorts of tricks on humans and animals alike. Oberon and Titania enter with their
various attendants from opposite sides of the wood (stage), still deep in their quarrel about Titania’s refusing
to relinquish the changeling—a child secretly exchanged for another in infancy—she had brought from India
with her since his mother had been her friend and died in childbirth. Each accuses the other of infidelities and
each takes a turn at denying these accusations. Titania remarks that Nature is at odds with itself due to their
argument and leaves her husband before the argument becomes even worse. Oberon vows to punish his wife
and does so by sending Puck to find a certain flower called “love-in-idleness” with which to make a love
juice. With this juice he intends to anoint the sleeping Titania’s eye so that when she awakens she will fall in
love with the first creature she sees. His intention is not to remove the spell until she gives him the
changeling.
As Oberon awaits Puck’s return, Demetrius enters the wood with Helena in pursuit. Oberon, being invisible,
is privy to Demetrius’ imploring Helena to leave him alone and Helena’s begging Demetrius to be with her
in any capacity. When Puck returns with the flower, Oberon instructs him to anoint Demetrius—describing
him by his Athenian clothing—with the love juice so that Demetrius will love Helena as she loves him. Puck
promises to do as he is bid.
Analysis
Shakespeare uses the stage to make the point that Oberon and Titania are at opposite sides of this argument by
having them enter from opposite sides of the stage. The accusations they make of each other, that Oberon has
had an affair with Hippolyta and that Titania has had one with Theseus, are preposterous since they are both in
Athens to bless and celebrate the wedding of these two people. Shakespeare pokes fun at the convention that
the play begin with lovers choosing the “wrong” people, in addition to being an extremely good foil to show
that Nature—meaning all of the natural world including the people in it—is at odds with itself since the king
and queen of the fairies are arguing. This keeps with the Elizabethan idea that the elemental (fairy) kingdom is
the creator and, hence, controller of nature—particularly the woods where fairies were thought to abide.
Helena’s pursuit of Demetrius also begins Shakespeare’s use of devices to sort out the lovers so that they
eventually achieve the love of the “right” people. Since this play is a love comedy, this use of an obstacle to
delay the union of one of the heroes and one of the heroines is to be expected. What makes this part of the
play something of a tragic comedy is that Demetrius had wooed, and won, Helena before Egeus chose him for
a son-in-law and he fell in love with Hermia who (as we already know) is planning to elope with her own
choice of husband, Lysander.
In keeping with plot designs for New Comedy of the Romans, Plautus and Terence, we already have a
complication to the first part. Not only has the situation been set with the young people choosing the “wrong”
lovers, but now we begin to have mistaken identity. Puck anoints the eye of the youth in “Athenian
Act I, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
17
garments” as directed, but it is the wrong youth. Shakespeare is moving into part two of the three-part
structure: the complications of a situation which is opposite that of the “right” one.
Act II, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
Summary
Titania enters the wood instructing her fairies to sing her to sleep. Just after they do, and leave, Oberon arrives
and anoints her eye with the love juice so that she will love the first creature she sees upon waking. Lysander
and Hermia make their entrance and decide to sleep since they are so tired that Lysander has forgotten the
way to his aunt’s house. He lays down next to Hermia but she suggests he move away since they are not yet
married. He pretends to be insulted at this request, so she apologizes and rephrases it in such a way that he
acquiesces. As they sleep, Puck enters and, thinking he has found the youth in “Athenian garments” who
Oberon ordered him to anoint, applies the love juice to Lysander’s eye.
Just as Puck leaves, Demetrius arrives with Helena in fast pursuit. Helena stops to catch her breath and sees
Lysander, who she awakens. He immediately falls in love with her, but she is convinced he is mocking her.
Helena believes Lysander is taunting her since she is obviously not the recipient of Demetrius’ love as she so
desperately wants to be. Lysander rues every minute he’s spent with Hermia, upon which Helena—still under
the impression that Lysander is making sport of her—leaves in a huff. Lysander sees Hermia and, now loathing
her leaves. Hermia awakens from a nightmare calling out his name only to find herself alone and sets out to
find him.
Analysis
Here the plot thickens and twists. Oberon has set his plan for revenge on his wife into effect. Puck, thinking
he is doing what he was ordered to, manages to alienate the “wrong” choice of husband for Hermia so that
he, Lysander, is now in love with Helena. But Helena has been in love with Demetrius all along.
Shakespeare changes the way he uses language when he has spells being cast or characters speaking while
spell-bound. The cadence sounds more like song than poetry, and the spells were often sung since they were
written in pentameter couplets and other free forms which easily lent themselves to song. In some versions of
the play, dances were also introduced during the spell-casting scenes. This scene, in particular, opens with
Titania commanding her fairies, “Come, now a roundel and a fairy song … Sing me now asleep.”
The women are passive in this scene, with all of the action being performed by the men: Lysander being
anointed and Oberon and Puck doing the anointing. The women passively react in this scene: Titania is
anointed because Oberon has chosen to do this to her; Helena is now loved by Lysander and Hermia no longer
loved by Lysander because of Puck’s annointment. There are no strong women left in the play at this point;
even Hippolyta, a queen in her own right, is not an active character because of her love for her captor/fiancé.
These men, who are the aggressors, have managed to thwart their own efforts. Oberon, trying to mend his
marriage so that Nature will settle down (according to Titania), plays a terrible trick on his wife in order to
win her love back. Puck, instead of helping Helena win Demetrius, disassociates the true lovers and aligns
Lysander with an astonished Helena while Hermia is sure to be heartbroken. Shakespeare is now firmly
entrenched in the second part of the three-part structure set up by Plautus and Terence: the complications of
the first part.
Act III, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
New Characters:
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed: Titania’s fairies
Act II, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
18
Summary
The craftsmen meet in the wood to rehearse their play. After finding the perfect setting for the rehearsal,
Bottom cautions Quince that he will need two Prologues to the play so that the ladies will not be afraid due to
the sword scene or the Lion. The logistics of the moonlight and the need to have someone play the Wall are
discussed and the rehearsal begins. This is when Puck (who is invisible), concerned that they are so near the
sleeping Titania, makes his entrance to watch and cause mischief. Bottom exits on cue, and while he is
“offstage” Puck replaces Bottom’s head with that of an ass. When it is Bottom’s cue to return, the other
craftsmen,seeing his new head, run away in fright. Snout and Quince return separately, but quickly exit again
after speaking a few words to Bottom.
Bottom, frightened, sings to keep up his courage. His song wakes up Titania who falls in love with him since
her eye had been anointed with the love juice and he is the first creature she sees upon awakening. She calls
her fairies to attend to Bottom and he banters with them as each is introduced.
Analysis
Bottom’s clownish qualities come forth in full force here. Instead of being frightened by his new situation as
Titania’s lover, he quickly accepts it as something odd but something he can quickly adjust to and decides
Titania is the strange one since she falls in love with him. The humor is in his instantaneous decision to fill the
role of her beloved. This is the same man who cautioned that the ladies in the audience will need Prologues to
prepare them from the sword scene and the Lion in the play. He now has implicitly reversed his position from
one of insisting upon protection for the ladies to that of being the object from which a lady needs to be
protected (although he seems unaware he has an ass’s head at this time). He soon discovers the lady simply
doesn’t want protection. He is a stubborn man who refuses to give in to his fear at being alone in a haunted
wood and he does not allow his friends to know he is afraid. He thinks they are playing a joke on him and he
does not want them to know it has succeeded.
His banter with the fairies is just shy of being rude and makes one wonder if they understand his sly
near-insults in the name of humor. He is, however, careful not to be outrightly insulting and, in his peculiar
manner, is actually paying tribute to the fairies’ powers as spirits. His interchange with Cobweb pulls into
play the folklore that cobwebs will staunch the flow of blood when cut. He refers to Peaseblossom’s
“vegetable” relatives and he teases Mustardseed about the strength of mustard to sting the mouth. His wit is
quick, hilariously funny if the point is understood, and clever in view of his present situation. He possesses all
the attributes of a contemporary stand-up comic who plays the audience well.
Act III, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
Summary
Puck reports to Oberon that he placed an ass’s head on Bottom and that Titania fell in love with Bottom
because he was the first thing she saw when she awoke. Puck also reports that he anointed the eye of the youth
in “Athenian garments.” When Hermia and Demetrius enter, it becomes obvious to Puck and Oberon that
Puck has mistakenly placed the love juice in Lysander’s eye, not Demetrius’.
Hermia, finding all other explanations for Lysander’s disappearance unacceptable, harasses Demetrius for
supposedly murdering Lysander. Demetrius attempts to convince her that he is even more deeply in love with
her than he was before and more than Lysander could possibly ever be. Overwhelmed, Demetrius falls asleep
when Hermia leaves in disgust. Oberon orders Puck to correct his mistake by finding Helena and then
reanointing Demetrius’ eye, to make certain she is the one Demetrius falls in love with. As Demetrius sleeps,
Oberon annoints his eye with the love juice.
Act III, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
19
Helena appears pursued by the wooing Lysander. She is convinced he is scorning her with his vows of
undying love and is very angry about this. Their arguing awakens the sleeping Demetrius who also begins to
woo the, by now, distraught Helena (the first creature he saw upon awakening after being reanointed with the
love juice). Helena is sure the two men have concocted a scheme to make her feel foolish. Hermia joins her
friends only to be told by Lysander that he is now in love with Helena, which dumbfounds Hermia. Helena,
hearing Hermia deny Lysander’s feelings, thinks Hermia is the third party to this elaborate scheme and rails
at her longtime friend. Meanwhile, the two men decide the only way to settle who loves Helena more is to
fight a duel. The two men leave to find a spot for their duel. Hermia, beginning to believe Lysander, threatens
Helena with bodily harm which causes Helena to run away.
Puck entices Lysander and Demetrius into sleep by tricking them. Puck first pretends to be Demetrius, and
then Lysander, in order to tire them out with their efforts to find each other. Helena, tired from running away
from Hermia, also appears and falls asleep. Finally, Hermia enters and, tired from trying to find Lysander,
falls asleep too. Puck creeps in, reanoints Lysander’s eye, and leaves.
Analysis
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” exclaims Puck in this scene and so it seems since all the complications
of the original premise for the play are now in place for the climax: Lysander loves the wrong woman; Puck
has anointed the wrong man; Hermia is loved not at all and is in a rage at her childhood friend; and Helena is
loved by both men—one who she doesn’t want and the other she does love but cannot believe he loves
her—and she is fearful of the hatred of her childhood friend, Hermia.
Innocent mistaken identity, in this case Puck’s mistaking Lysander for Demetrius since both were wearing
“Athenian garments,” is common in Shakespeare’s plays. What adds even more to Shakespeare’s humor in
this scene is the fairies seeing the humans as interchangeable, whereas each humans feel themselves unique.
While the situations may seem somewhat contrived to a modern audience, those watching the play when it
was first performed surely accepted the error easily and enjoyed the unfolding of the plot.
The range of emotions in just one scene is quite wide. Poor Hermia goes from being the beloved of Lysander
to the woman scorned in, literally, the blink of an eye. In addition, Hermia fears for Lysander’s life and feels
hate for her best friend, Helena. In the same scene, Helena loses her best friend, the lover she pursues, and
gained a lover she never wanted. Helena completely misconstrues the love of the two men as an elaborate joke
meant to hurt her and is baffled as to how her friends could do this to her. Demetrius and Lysander seem not
to question the changes in their feelings and are not as perplexed as the women. In addition, if you read
carefully, you will see that in their arguments, Shakespeare manages to have the four young people sling
racial insults at each other; while this was perfectly acceptable and expected in his time, today it is considered
politically incorrect.
Act IV, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
Summary
Bottom makes several absurd requests of the fairies as he and Titania chatter about whether to eat or sleep.
They choose to sleep. Oberon and Puck come upon them while they sleep as Oberon explains to Puck that he
is now in possession of the changeling and will take the spell from Titania. He does so, wakes her, and she is
instantly in love with her husband, Oberon, again and repulsed by the ass-headed Bottom whom she had so
recently adored. Oberon orders Puck to take the ass’s head from Bottom and Puck complies as Titania causes
Bottom, Helena, Hermia, Demetrius, and Lysander to fall far more deeply asleep than they already are.
Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus arrive accompanied by the sound of hunting horns which awakens the five
sleepers, but not before the three new arrivals notice the sleepers and wonder why they are there. After
Act III, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
20
Theseus has them awakened, he questions them to no avail. Lysander remembers he and Hermia were going
to elope, but nothing more. Egeus is outraged to hear this and insists Theseus punish both Lysander and
Hermia for disobeying his order that she marry Demetrius who now announces he no longer wants to marry
Hermia since he realizes it is Helena he loves. Theseus, seeing a solution to the problem of having to punish
Hermia, overrides Egeus and announces that the two couples will be married during his own marriage to
Hippolyta.
The two young couples are not certain if they dreamt what happened or if this was reality. As they compare
their experiences, they agree the reality is that the duke, Hippolyta, and Egeus were there and ordered Hermia
and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius to join them at the temple. They intend to continue comparing their
dreams on the way. Bottom awakes abruptly, thinking he is awaiting his cue during the rehearsal. He
acknowledges that he is alone, and resolves to have Quince turn his “dream” into a ballad to sing at the end
of the play the craftsmen will be presenting at the revel.
Analysis
As dictated by Plautus and Terence, Shakespeare reverses the opening situation and cleverly reunites each
couple: Helena is once again beloved by Demetrius who she has never stopped pursuing; Hermia has her
Lysander returned to her; Titania loves her Oberon again; and Theseus and Hippolyta will be married just as
they planned except that they will have the other two couples marrying at their own wedding. Those who are
not couples also have resolution of one kind or another: Bottom is delighted that he will have a dream for
Quince to make a ballad about; Theseus finds a solution to his problem of either having to kill or banish his
friend’s daughter; and Puck, having corrected his mistakes, is no longer in Oberon’s bad graces.
It is apparent there is one dissatisfied, unresolved character in the play: Egeus. His daughter will neither marry
the man he has chosen, Demetrius (because Hermia loves Lysander, and Demetrius is now in love with
Helena), nor will she be punished by either banishment to a nunnery or death for breaking the Athenian law
stating she must marry her father’s choice of husband. The duke, to whom he has brought Lysander,
Demetrius, and Hermia for “justice,” has declared that the two young couples share his own wedding.
Act IV, Scene 2: Summary and Analysis
Summary
The craftsmen regret the loss of Bottom, for only he could play the role of Pyramus. Without him, they cannot
perform the play. Snug arrives to tell them that two other couples are also being married that night and, were
they performing, they would have made their fortunes. Bottom arrives, refusing to tell them what has
happened until later, but offering them advice on their roles for their play which has been chosen for the
night’s revel.
Analysis
It appears that while Bottom is clownish and egotistical, his friends truly like him and rue his
disappearance—not only for his acting, but for who he is. Bottom is in all probability a lover, too, since
Quince—an intelligent man and Bottom’s friend—inadvertently uses “paramour” or lover in his accolades to
Bottom instead of the correct word, paragon, and is unaware of his error until corrected by Flute. Bottom, in
turn, appears to truly care for his friends as is demonstrated by his deferring his own tale until after the play so
that they may spend the rest of the day preparing (following his advice to the actors, of course, even though
Quince is the director) and his obvious happiness that it is their play is chosen for the revel.
Act IV, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
21
Act V, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
Summary
Hippolyta and Theseus think the lovers are telling them a fantasy rather than what really happened to them in
the haunted wood. The lovers join them and Theseus asks Philostrate what entertainment is available to them
during the three hours between their wedding feast and bedtime. Theseus rejects one suggestion after another,
deciding upon the craftsmen’s play. Philostrate tries to dissuade him from this choice by telling him it is
inane, but Philostrate does have to admit he laughed until he cried when he saw how terrible it was.
The craftsmen present their play much to the delight of their audience, who freely pass comments from one to
another and discourse with the actors in the midst of their play. The actors are complimented on their skills
and asked questions as they act and the audience critiques and discusses the actors’ roles and intents
throughout the play. At the finish of the play, Bottom asks Theseus if he would prefer the Epilogue or a dance.
Theseus chooses the dance. The dance is performed, the players (actors) exit, and Theseus announces it is
time for all to retire.
Oberon, Titania, and the fairies take over the night intending to sing and dance until daybreak. But first,
Oberon sends the fairies to bless each of the newly married couples and whatever children they might have.
Puck remains behind to beg the audience’s forgiveness for any offense given and for their applause.
Analysis
Shakespeare has neatly tied up all his loose ends by having the craftsmen present their play-within-the-play.
The craftsmen’s play is a dramatist’s and actor’s worst nightmare: unexpected laughter, disparaging
remarks, cues missed, lines forgotten, overacting, and loud comments by the audience. It also makes the point
that the lovers—Demetrius and Helena (who were what we now call “off again, on again”), Hermia and
Lysander (whose union was opposed by Hermia’s father), Theseus and Hippolyta (who met while leading
opposing armies), and Oberon and Titania (who both had extramarital affairs)—have each other in the end,
unlike the unfortunate Pyramus and Thisbe. In addition, it makes clear that the players, much as
Shakespeare’s own company, owed allegiance to their patrons and were thankful for the patronage.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Critical Commentary
Act I Commentary
Scene i: A Midsummer Night's Dream opens with two romantic conflicts. The first part of the scene features
two famous characters from Greek mythology: Theseus, the hero who defeats the Minotaur in the labyrinth,
and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Theseus, the "duke" or ruler of Athens, has just led his people to a
defeat of the Amazons. In four days, Theseus will take Hippolyta as his wife as a spoil of the war, despite the
fact that the Amazons, as devotees of the virgin goddess of the moon Diana, swear an oath of chastity. Even
though this romantic/marital relationship has a very rocky beginning, Theseus demonstrates his impatience to
marry Hippolyta and his intentions of good will. This first section of Scene 1 demonstrates a major theme in
the play—love, whether romantic or marital, has its problems. These problems must be overcome in order to
maintain a healthy relationship.
The second section of Scene 1 introduces one of the major plot issues of the play. Ordinarily a love triangle
like that of Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius would cause a great deal of trouble just for the sake of love, but
this is complicated further by Egeus' staunch insistence that Hermia marry Demetrius despite her love for
Lysander. This conflict highlights a key issue in parent-child relationships—the amount of control a parent
should have over a child. By Athenian law, Egeus has the right to decide whom his daughter will marry.
Act V, Scene 1: Summary and Analysis
22
Egeus is shocked and angered by his daughter's refusal to follow his wishes on the matter because she should,
by both ancient Greek and Elizabethan societal standards, be governed by her father. However, Egeus
completely disregards Hermia's preferences and Demetrius' reputation, which has been tarnished by the
breaking of his oath to Helena. Theseus claims at this point that he cannot change the law, and he tells Hermia
to choose between Demetrius, life as a nun, and death. Although Theseus upholds Egeus' right to determine
whom his daughter will marry, Theseus is clearly unhappy about the manner in which Egeus and Demetrius
have handled the situation when he tells them that he has some "private schooling for them both" (l. 116). The
action of the play also creates sympathy for Hermia and Lysander as well.
The third part of the scene gives more information about the relationship between Hermia and Lysander, and
introduces another important character, Helena. When Theseus leaves with Egeus, Demetrius, and Hippolyta,
Hermia begins to cry over the situation. Lysander then reminds her that "The course of true love never did run
smooth," meaning that she should accept the fact that there will be problems for their relationship to overcome
(l. 134). Although things definitely look bad for the lovers, Lysander is able to keep his head. His calm
approach to the problem soothes Hermia's worries, and leads her to "teach our trial patience,/Because it is a
customary cross" (ll. 152-153). Because Lysander and Hermia are able to stay calm, they are capable of
creating a plan to elope from Athens and still have plenty of money to survive. The problem with the plan,
however, is that they reveal it to Helena.
Helena is the symbol of everything that can go wrong with love. She pines, wails, and wastes away for
Demetrius, who has spurned her several times over. Helena's obsession with Demetrius makes her try to view
everything through his eyes, including Hermia, and this obsession punishes Helena constantly. Love that it out
of control or obsessive is punished throughout the play, and Helena is the first, but not nearly the last,
example of it. During her lament, Helena gives a soliloquy discoursing on the nature of love, which she paints
as blind. Love, according to Helena, does not see with the eyes, which tell the truth, but with the mind, which
changes the truth to what the person wants. Therefore, everyone in love is blind, including Cupid himself. The
eyes also have the power to make people fall in love with others. This is what Helena believes has occurred to
transfer Demetrius' love for her to Hermia. Although Helena recognizes that love makes no sense, she does
not understand that this applies to herself as well. When Helena decides to tell Demetrius of the planned
elopement of Hermia and Lysander, she brings misfortune and pain to herself when she should have simply let
Lysander and Hermia go. Helena hopes to gain favor with Demetrius (or, at least, be near him for a while), but
the pain and confusion that occurs in the wood is greatly attributable to Helena, without whom Demetrius
would never have entered the wood in the first place.
Scene ii: After the tragedy and pain of love that occurs in the first scene, Shakespeare provides some comic
relief. Here we are introduced to the "mechanicals"—the tradesmen who intend to stage a short play for
Theseus' wedding. By the end of the scene, it is clear that the mechanicals, though well intentioned, have no
idea how to put on a play. In the beginning of the scene, Quince attempts to organize the men, but Bottom
takes immediately takes over by telling Quince how to do everything. This is a major aspect of Bottom's
character—he pretends to be very knowledgeable and logical, but he is clearly lacking in both traits. One
example of this is Bottom's attempt to play Pyramus, Thisbe, and the lion all at the same time. He also claims
that the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is "merry," even though the play is described as a "most lamentable
comedy and most cruel death." The other players are no better off. Flute does not want to play Thisbe because
he has a beard coming (and is afraid of being cast in a female role although young men always played the
female roles in Shakespeare's time), and Snug needs lines to play a lion when all he has to do is roar. The
players are also frightened by the concept of being too realistic, and thus believe they would be hanged if the
lion were to roar so well that it would scare the ladies. The mechanicals do not realize that their audience
already knows that they are watching a work of fiction. Through the bumbling errors of the mechanicals,
Shakespeare makes fun of his own profession.
Act I Commentary
23
This scene also highlights an important point about language in the play. Because the mechanicals are
"common folk" who are part of the lower class of society, they all speak in prose. This sets them apart from
the "Athenians," or nobles, who speak in iambic pentameter. This class distinction through language will also
be evident in the fairy world, where Oberon, Titania, and Puck speak in iambic pentameter, but the servant
fairies often speak in a different meter.
Act II Commentary
Scene i: As with most of Shakespeare's plays, Act II of A Midsummer Night's Dream brings further plot
complications, this time in the woods outside of Athens (where Hermia and Lysander and the mechanicals are
scheduled to meet). Scene 1 portrays the problems of the fairy world ruled by Titania and Oberon. The first
two characters in the scene are Puck (Robin Goodfellow) and one of Titania's fairies (speaking mainly in
iambic tetrameter). Through them exposition is given as to the duties of attendant fairies, and, more
importantly, the nature of the argument between Oberon and Titania. Oberon and Titania have been fighting
since the beginning of midsummer about an Indian boy that Titania has taken into her train. Titania dotes on
this child, who is the son of her late high priestess, and puts her love for him and his mother above her
relationship with her husband. This is another comment on the nature of marriage in the play in that though
there will be obstacles to overcome, married couples cannot favor someone else over their spouse if they hope
to have a good relationship. Titania does this, as she explains to Oberon, for love of the priestess, but she will
be punished for it. When the two meet in the wood, each accuses the other of having an affair with Theseus
and Hippolyta and cannot come to a compromise. As a result, Oberon plots his revenge against Titania and a
way to get the Indian boy by instructing Puck to go get the "love-in-idleness" flower, whose juice has the
power to make someone fall in love with any living creature. The idea of this potion demonstrates another
aspect of the love theme of the play—true love is not necessarily all-powerful. The love juice has the capacity
to not only make someone fall in love with someone else, but it also has the power to turn someone away
from true love. As with all of the other problems in the play, the juice of the love-in-idleness flower must be
overcome if everything is to end happily.
The problems of Helena and Demetrius also become more complex in this scene. Having told Demetrius
about the elopement of Hermia and Lysander in an attempt to gain favor with him, Helena enters the scene
chasing Demetrius, who clearly does not appreciate her more for the information. In fact, Demetrius insults
Helena several times because she insists on following him. Helena's betrayal of her childhood friend and her
refusal to think before acting cause her more pain as well as danger in this scene, because it is dangerous for
women to wander in the woods unprotected. However, Oberon, who has been secretly watching the
confrontation, orders Puck to find the "Athenian" in order to turn his love to Helena. Oberon's purposes in
doing this are not clear. While it seems that he has sympathy for Helena and believes that Demetrius'
treatment of her is overly cruel, Oberon's comments about the situation are vague: "Fare thee well, nymph.
Ere he do leave this grove,/Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love" (ll. 245-246). Certainly Helena
would like Demetrius to love her again, but not so much that she would need to run away from him. Of
course, this will not be a problem until much later than Oberon anticipates, as Puck mistakenly uses the potion
on Lysander first.
Scene ii: In "the bank where the wild thyme grows," Titania is preparing to sleep for the night. The songs the
fairies sing, as well as the spells they cast, are typically in iambic tetrameter (either in couplets or in
alternating rhyme), which gives them a musical and magical quality. Once Titania sleeps, Oberon puts the
juice on Titania's eyes. The fact that this potion must be applied to the eyes correlates to Helena's speech in
Act I, scene 1, when she complains that love blinds people to reality. This is the exact effect of the love juice,
whose application to the eyes renders the victim unable to see clearly. It should also be noted that this is the
first example of scenes where at least one character is sleeping while the action of the scene occurs. The fact
that a character sleeps brings the issue of dreams into question—are these actions actually occurring, or are we
Act II Commentary
24
watching nothing more than the dreams of the characters who are sleeping? The "reality" of the scenes is also
complicated by the title of the play itself. The play is a "dream" in terms of the reality of the audience, but
plays usually are "real" to the characters in them. In this play, the playworld is called into question not only by
those watching but by those living in it. This reality/dream dichotomy occurs throughout the play.
After Oberon has cast his spell, Lysander and Hermia enter, having lost their way in the dark woods. They
decide to sleep for the night and find their way in the morning. This exchange features an aspect of love not
addressed previously in the play—sexual attraction. Lysander wants to sleep with Hermia, who he thinks will
soon be his wife, but Hermia tells him to sleep further off in the interests of propriety. Although this is
definitely the proper thing to do, Hermia's formality leads to the confusion that follows. Puck, having been
ordered to find an "Athenian" and make sure he falls in love with the maid with him, applies the love juice to
Lysander's eyes thinking that he must hate Hermia: "Pretty soul, she durst not lie/Near this lack-love, this
kill-courtesy" (ll. 76-77). If things had worked out the way Puck intended, Lysander would have seen Hermia,
and the spell would not have made any difference. However, Helena enters, and Lysander sees her first.
Despite his true love for Hermia, the love juice overwhelms his mind and turns his affections to Helena.
Helena's reaction to this is to believe that Lysander is mocking her because he has so quickly changed his
preference, but she should be more than familiar with the idea of men changing their affections, as that is what
occurred with Demetrius. However, Helena refuses once again to think about the situation because of her
jealousy of Hermia and her obsession for Demetrius, and becomes angry about being teased. The two run off,
leaving Hermia by asleep by herself and leaving the audience to question whether this may just be a dream (or
nightmare) of Hermia's.
Act III Commentary
Scene i: Just when things seem to be at their most serious, the comedy returns. Close to Titania's sleeping
place, the mechanicals assemble to rehearse their play. They are still concerned about the lion, and Bottom
brings up an additional worry that the ladies will not be able to cope with the fact that Pyramus kills himself
with his own sword. The solution, given by Bottom, is to write prologues explaining the situation. This
theatrical convention, which Shakespeare himself utilizes upon occasion (including the epilogue at the end of
this play), is made fun of through the mechanicals, who feel the need to explain everything through prologues
instead of trusting to the intelligence of their audience.
While the mechanicals bumble through their first rehearsal, Puck comes into the scene and decides to become
an "actor" himself. When Bottom goes off stage, Puck transforms Bottom's head into that of an ass. Although
the rest of the mechanicals panic and run away, Puck has merely given Bottom a head that is a reflection of
his character. Being the "ass" that he is, Bottom does not realize his transformation until after his own head
has been restored. Shakespeare provides Bottom with plenty of references to asses in order to make the
situation funnier.
Bottom's plight is not the end of the comedy in this scene, however. Under the influence of the love juice,
Titania wakes when Bottom sings and instantly falls in love with him. Bottom's response to Titania's
declaration of love reflects the main theme of the play: "And yet, to say the truth, reason and/love keep little
company together nowadays. The more/the pity that some honest neighbors will not make them/friends" (ll.
130-133). Reason and love keep very little company in this play, which is the cause of all of the problems.
Although Bottom is able to utter this perceptive comment, his foolishness keeps him from understanding
anything else that goes on around him.
Scene ii: Doting is punished further in this scene. Oberon is extremely happy about Puck's account of Titania
and Bottom, as well as the fact that Puck has supposedly successfully "latched" the Athenian's eyes for
Helena. However, Puck's mistake quickly becomes evident as Hermia and Demetrius enter the scene. Hermia
Act III Commentary
25
treats Demetrius very much like Demetrius treats Helena—with plenty of insults and sarcasm. Because
Demetrius treats Helena this way, he should be prepared to receive Hermia's insults, but the exchange upsets
and tires him, and he goes to sleep. This brings up the reality/dream dichotomy once again and also gives
Oberon time to put the potion on Demetrius' eyes. Thus, part of the problem of the play is solved at this
point—the original love triangle is over, and Demetrius is again in love with Helena. However, the interference
of the fairies has caused another love triangle (Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander) to occur. When Helena
enters the scene, she is once again punished for bringing Demetrius (and herself) into the woods in the first
place because she believes that Demetrius and Lysander are mocking her. She even goes so far as to accuse
Hermia of participating in this torment. If Helena were thinking, she would realize that Hermia wants nothing
more than to elope with Lysander, and that such a game would be of no advantage in accomplishing that.
However, Helena is as "blind" as the rest of the lovers. She is also hypocritical when she asks Hermia how she
can participate in this teasing when they have always been such close friends. Helena accuses Hermia of
betrayal when Helena has betrayed their friendship by bringing Demetrius into the woods in the first place.
Meanwhile, Lysander and Demetrius fight over Helena in a similar manner to the way they fought over
Hermia in Act I, scene 1, clearly showing that they are not thinking any more than Helena. Hermia is illogical
as well—the insults of Lysander and Helena lead Hermia to believe that Lysander has turned against her
because she is short. The parallel to Act I, scene 1 is further heightened when Helena and Hermia begin to
fight. When everyone runs away at the end of the scene, Oberon is compelled to remedy the situation after
blaming Puck for mistakes that are clearly Oberon's. Because the actions of the fairies have led to the
problem, Oberon orders Puck to fix the issue by applying the remedy to Lysander's eyes so that he will love
Hermia again. While Oberon is concerned enough about the situation to bother to fix it, he is still more
interested in Titania, whom he will be tormenting while Puck is solving the humans' problems.
Act IV Commentary
Scene i: Most of the resolutions of the play occur in this scene. In the first part of the scene, Oberon reveals to
Puck that Titania, consumed with her love for Bottom, has given Oberon the Indian boy. Thus Titania's
doting, now focused on Bottom, has lost her the one thing she has been fighting for since the beginning of the
play. As a result, Oberon lifts the spell and takes Titania away from Bottom. Although Oberon has enough
"mercy" to lift the spell, his anger has not quite abated. When Titania says that she has had a dream about
being in love with an ass, Oberon is cruel enough to point out Bottom to her, clearly showing that it was no
dream. However, Oberon tells Puck to make sure that the Athenian lovers see the night's events as nothing
more than a dream. Although Oberon implies that all is forgiven, the dispute between Oberon and Titania is
not exactly forgotten.
When dawn breaks, the fairies disappear, and the mortal world takes over once again. Theseus, Hippolyta, and
Egeus come to the edge of the woods to observe the rites of May Day. Hippolyta makes reference to a
mythological episode where she went hunting with Hercules and Cadmus. Her pleasure over the remembrance
of the incident seems to spark a bit of jealousy from Theseus, who quickly states that his dogs are more
musical than those of Hercules. This shows further complications in the relationship of Hippolyta and
Theseus, and although they will wed, it is unlikely that they will ever have a successful marital relationship
because of the circumstances surrounding their wedding.
The Athenian nobles then discover the lovers, who have been asleep since the last scene. When Lysander
recounts the night's events, including the fact that he and Hermia had intended to elope, Egeus immediately
demands that Lysander be executed, and appeals to Demetrius for support. However, as we already know,
Demetrius now wants Helena, not Hermia, which gives Theseus the opportunity to countermand the law and
declare that the two couples will be married in the same ceremony as himself and Hippolyta. This is an
interesting contradiction to Theseus' statements in Act I, scene 1, where he claims that he cannot go against
Act IV Commentary
26
the laws of Athens and allow Hermia to marry the man of her choice. Theseus' order that Hermia marry
Lysander in this scene is a violation of that assertion.
Once all of the Athenians leave, Bottom awakens. It is only at this point that he realizes that he has spent the
night with the head of an ass, but he believes it was a dream. He claims that anyone who talks about what he
has dreamed is a fool, and yet this is exactly what Shakespeare does in showing Bottom's adventures through
the night. Shakespeare is again making fun of his profession here—plays sometimes have idiotic storylines.
Bottom also shows himself to be a fool when he says that he will have Quince write a ballet of this dream
(which he says only a fool will tell), which he will sing as an epilogue to Thisbe's death.
Scene ii: The other mechanicals, who have spent the night worrying about their "star" peformer, lament the
loss of their friend, who they believe would have most certainly won the prize being offered for the wedding
entertainment. However, "sweet bully Bottom" reappears, and at first says that he cannot tell his friends what
has happened to him overnight because he would be "no true Athenian" (l. 18, 1. 27). Then he says that he
will not say a word about it. Bottom then takes over the play once again, and hands out strange orders in
preparation for the play.
Act V Commentary
Scene i: The beginning of the last scene gives one more glance at Theseus and Hippolyta. When Hippolyta
notes that the events the lovers have told them are "strange," Theseus questions the validity of the story
despite the fact that all four lovers have told them exact same story. This short exchange demonstrates once
again that these two do not see things in a similar way, which will make their marriage difficult. Theseus'
refusal to listen to Hippolyta's opinions appears again when he orders that the mechanicals bring forth their
play, despite the Philostrate's warning that it is "nothing" and Hippolyta's distaste for "wretchedness."
Determined to have his own will, Theseus orders the play, which, as the audience as come to expect, unfolds
disastrously. The mechanicals miss lines, talk to the audience directly, and have far too many prologues for
one short scene. Most of the audience members (especially Hippolyta) take the opportunity to insult the
mechanicals at every turn. By the end, even Theseus is forced to concede the silliness of the play. Once the
mortals have gone to sleep, the fairies come to the palace in order to bless the marriage beds. This is a
compromise on the part of Oberon and Titania, as they bless the bed of their former paramours. Puck also
appears with a broom (traditionally associated with Robin Goodfellow) in order to clean up after the actors.
After having made fun of the conventions of the prologue and epilogue through the mechanicals, Shakespeare
gives Puck an epilogue to deliver to the audience written in iambic tetrameter couplets. Puck advises the
audience that if they do not like the play, they should think of it as nothing more than a dream. This recalls
one last time the issue of reality and dreams in the play. The suggestion that the audience should accept the
play as unreal if they did not enjoy it correlates with the characters' acceptance of the unpleasant events of
Midsummer's night as nothing more than a dream. However, if the audience does enjoy the play, then they
should "Give [Puck} your hands, if we be friends," or applaud (l. 426). The advice here seems to be that
unpleasant things should be remembered as only a dream, and good things remembered as reality.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Quizzes
Act I, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. Why has Theseus ordered a revel?
2. What does he promise Hippolyta?
Act V Commentary
27
3. Why does Egeus bring Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius to Theseus?
4. Why does Theseus tell Hermia to come to terms with her father’s choice of husband for her?
5. What is Hermia’s decision?
6. Why does Theseus lead Egeus and Demetrius away?
7. What is Lysander’s plan?
8. Why does Helena want to be like Hermia?
9. Why do Hermia and Lysander tell Helena the plan?
10. What does Helena intend to do with this information?
Answers
1. Theseus, Duke of Athens, has ordered a revel to celebrate his marriage to Hippolyta, Queen of the
Amazons, who he won through battle. The marriage is to take place in four days when there is a new moon.
He desires to “… Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments. Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth.”
2. Theseus promises Hippolyta that their marriage will be one of joy, unlike the warring he used to win her, by
declaring, “…But I will wed thee in another key….”
3. Egeus brings Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius to Theseus because he (Egeus) wants Hermia to marry
Demetrius. Against Egeus’ will, Hermia wants to marry Lysander. Egeus wants Theseus to invoke the law
requiring that a daughter marry the husband her father chooses for her or face the consequences: death or
banishment to a nunnery. This is illustrated when Egeus says, “…I beg the ancient privilege of Athens….”
4. Theseus tells Hermia to come to terms with the husband her father has chosen for her or “…prepare to die
for disobedience to your father’s will, … or on Diana’s alter to protest for aye austerity and single life.”
5. Hermia chooses to enter a nunnery rather than marry someone other than Lysander, who she feels is her
true love. She protests, “So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord, ere I will yield my virgin patent up….”
6. Theseus leads Egeus and Demetrius away saying, “…But, Demetrius, come, and come Egeus, you shall go
with me,” in order to speak with them privately. This is also a device to allow the actors to leave the stage so
that Lysander and Hermia may plot alone.
7. Lysander’s plan is that Hermia and he will flee to his aunt’s house, in a place where, “…the sharp
Athenian law cannot pursue…” them and where they may be married.
8. Helena wants Hermia to, “…teach me how you look and with what art …” because Demetrius loves Hermia
and Helena wants his love for her own. She thinks that if only she were like Hermia, she could have his love.
9. Hermia and Lysander tell Helena their plan because Helena complains to Hermia that Demetrius wants only
Hermia. They reassure Helena that Hermia will no longer be available to Demetrius and, as Hermia promises,
“… he shall no more see my face,” since Hermia and Lysander are going to elope.
10. Helena intends to tell Demetrius that Hermia is going to elope with Lysander in the hope that he will
pursue them, only to realize it is Helena he really loves at which point Helena will “… have his sight thither
Act I, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
28
and back again.”
Act I, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. Why do the craftsmen meet?
2. Why is Quince the one assigning the roles?
3. What is Bottom’s reaction to his assigned role?
4. What is Flute’s misgiving about his assignment?
5. Why does Bottom want to play Flute’s role?
6. What is Snug’s worry?
7. Why does Bottom want to play Snug’s role?
8. What do Quince and Bottom caution about the role of the Lion?
9. Why does Quince insist Bottom play Pyramus?
10. Where are the men to meet next?
Answers
1. The craftsmen meet to assign and discuss the roles they will have, “… to play in our interlude before the
Duke and the Duchess on his wedding day at night.” Quince wrote and is directing this play for Theseus’ and
Hippolyta’s wedding, which is to be held during the new moon, four days hence.
2. Quince is the person assigning the roles because he wrote the play with, “…every man’s name which is
thought fit …” for certain roles. As the director, it is his job to cast the actors in the parts for which they are
most suited—an easy job for him since he is also the dramatist (playwright).
3. Bottom’s reaction to his assigned role is that he wants to know who Pyramus is and, when told, proclaims
he will have everyone crying with his portrayal of this lover who dies. To quote, “I will move storms; I will
condole in some measure.”
4. Flute’s misgiving about his assignment is that he is growing a beard and women don’t have beards—so
how can he play the part of a woman? As he protests, “Nay, faith, let not me play a woman. I have a beard
coming.”
5. Bottom requests, “…let me play Thisbe, too,” because he wants to wear the mask the character will be
wearing and use a small voice, as Flute will have to do to portray a woman.
6. Snug’s worry is that he will not have enough time to memorize his lines since he is, “slow of study” as he
phrases it, and the play is to be in only four days.
7. Bottom requests, “Let me play the lion too,” so that he may roar as Snug will have to for this part. Bottom
seeks the exciting or “fun” parts for himself, possibly giving us a hint as to his nature.
Act I, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
29
8. Quince and Bottom caution the Lion not to frighten the ladies in the audience because, “…that were enough
to hang us all.”
9. Quince insists Bottom, “…must needs play Pyramus,” because he has both the bearing and the face of this
character. Remembering that Quince wrote the play with Bottom in mind for the role of Pyramus will also
help explain Quince’s insistence on Bottom playing this particular role.
10. The men are next to meet, “At the Duke’s Oak…” which happens to be in the haunted wood, although the
craftsmen are not aware that the fairies are now in residence there.
Act II, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. How did Puck earn his reputation?
2. Why is Oberon angry with Titania?
3. What is her argument with him?
4. What is it Oberon sends Puck to find?
5. How does Oberon intend to punish his wife?
6. Why does Helena pursue Demetrius?
7. Why does Demetrius want Helena to leave him alone?
8. How is it that Oberon is able to overhear them?
9. What does Oberon decide when Puck returns?
10. How does Oberon instruct Puck to recognize Demetrius?
Answers
1. Puck earned his reputation as a hobgoblin by playing pranks, some mean, on both humans and animals as
we can see by the fairy’s declaring, “…you are that shrewd and knavish sprite….” The name Puck, which is
not Robin Goodfellow’s actual name, means hobgoblin and often is used interchangeably with the
hobgoblin’s actual name.
2. Oberon is angry with Titania because she refuses to give up the changeling she has brought with her from
India. While she has had many affairs, it is her insistence on keeping the boy that enrages her husband.
Oberon, himself, declares, “I do but beg a little changeling boy…” and, more directly, “Give me that boy….”
3. Titania is angry with her husband because she does not want to give up the changeling and she feels Nature
“From our debate, from our dissension…“ is turning itself upside down. She maintains that if he would simply
allow her to keep the boy the arguing would end and Nature would be able to return to normal.
4. Oberon sends Puck around the world to find a flower called “love-in-idleness” with which to make a love
juice. He is going to use this love juice in his plan to punish his wife for keeping the changeling and force her
to relinquish the boy to him.
Act II, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
30
5. Oberon intends to punish his wife by anointing her eye with the love juice while she sleeps so that she will
fall in love with the first creature she sees upon waking. He plans to release her from the spell only when she
agrees to give him the changeling.
6. Helena pursues Demetrius because she loves him and will “…follow thee and make a heaven of hell to die
upon the hand I [Helena] love so well.” Demetrius had wooed and won her before Egeus chose him as a
son-in-law and before Demetrius fell in love with Hermia. Helena cannot accept that Hermia, who loves and
is loved by Lysander, is also loved by Demetrius.
7. Demetrius wants Helena to leave him alone because he is in pursuit of someone himself. He is looking for
Hermia and Lysander so that, “The one I’ll stay; the other stayeth me,” since he thinks he is in love with
Hermia and, more importantly, Egeus has chosen him as Hermia’s husband.
8. Oberon is invisible, so Helena and Demetrius speak freely in front of him since they do not know he is
there. Oberon states that “I am invisible, and I will overhear their conference.”
9. When Puck returns, Oberon decides he will help Helena, “a sweet Athenian lady …in love,” by having
Puck anoint Demetrius’ eye with the love juice just as he, Oberon, will be doing to his wife, Titania. Oberon
hopes that Demetrius will fall in love with Helena as she is with Demetrius, whom Oberon calls “a disdainful
youth.”
10. Oberon instructs Puck to recognize Demetrius by his “Athenian garments” and gives no further clue as to
his identification. This is an excellent example of one of Shakespeare’s devices to complicate the plot laid out
in Act I.
Act II, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. What is it Oberon hopes Titania sees immediately upon
wakening?
2. Why does Lysander want to rest?
3. Why does Hermia ask him to move further away to sleep?
4. Why does Robin Goodfellow (Puck) anoint Lysander’s eye?
5. What does Robin Goodfellow think Hermia’s reason is for sleeping so far removed from Lysander?
6. Why does Helena stop chasing Demetrius?
7. Why does Demetrius leave Helena alone in the wood?
8. Why does Lysander profess his love for Helena?
9. What is Helena’s reaction to Lysander’s protestations of love?
10. Why does Hermia awake?
Act II, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
31
Answers
1. Now that Oberon has anointed Titania’s eye with the love juice, she will fall in love with the first creature
she sees upon waking from the sleep she had instructed the fairies to sing her into. The still angry Oberon
hopes Titania will see some “vile thing” the moment she opens her eyes.
2. Lysander wants to rest because Hermia is already “faint with wand’ring in the wood” in the attempt to
reach his aunt’s house and he, frankly, has forgotten the way and needs to rest himself to remember the way.
3. Hermia, who is running away to avoid her father’s choice of husband in order to marry her own—a crime
punishable by death or banishment to a nunnery—asks Lysander, “For my sake, my dear, lie further off yet.
Do not lie so near,” because it is unseemly for an unmarried couple to sleep together.
4. Puck anoints Lysander’s eye because Oberon, being invisible at will, overheard Helena beseech Demetrius
to love her and took pity on her. He sent Puck to anoint Demetrius’ eye so that he would love Helena since it
is obvious she would be the first one he would see upon awakening because she keeps following him. Oberon,
however, described Demetrius as the youth in “Athenian garments,” which is also what Lysander is wearing.
Not knowing this is the wrong person, Puck carries out Oberon’s order.
5. Puck thinks Hermia is Helena and that she’s sleeping so far from Lysander, who he thinks is Demetrius,
because she cannot bring herself to sleep any nearer to “this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.”
6. Helena stops chasing Demetrius because he has actually been running away from her and she is “…out of
breath in this fond race,” and needs to catch her breath.
7. Demetrius leaves Helena alone in the wood “on thy peril,” as he thinks, because she will not agree to stop
following him and he simply wants to get away from her.
8. Lysander professes his love for Helena because, after Puck anointed his eye with the love juice thinking he
was Demetrius, Helena spies him in the wood and wakes him to ascertain if he is “dead or asleep” since she
knew he and Hermia had planned to run away the night before. This makes Helena the first creature he saw
when he awoke under the spell of the love juice.
9. Helena’s reaction to Lysander’s pledge of love for her is to demand in anger, “When at your hands did I
deserve this scorn?” She thinks he is mocking her since, as far as she knows, he and Hermia are presently in
the act of eloping. She feels even worse because it is so obvious that Demetrius loves Hermia, too, even
though he had once loved Helena.
10. Hermia awakes because she has a nightmare about a serpent upon her breast. She calls for Lysander to
help her, then realizes she is alone, with Lysander being, “Gone? No sound, no word?”
Act III, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. Why does Quince feel their rehearsal spot is ideal?
2. Why does Bottom feel they need two Prologues to the play?
3. How do they solve the problems of representing the moonlight and the Wall in their play?
4. Why is Bottom alone when Puck changes his head to that of an ass?
Act III, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
32
5. How is it that Bottom is alone when Titania awakes?
6. Why hasn’t Bottom followed his friends from the wood?
7. Why does Titania awake?
8. What does Titania offer Bottom?
9. What is his reaction to this offer?
10. What part are the fairies to play in this?
Answers
1. Quince feels that the rehearsal spot in the wood is “a marvelous convenient place” for practicing their play
because there is a flat area, a green plot, to serve as the stage and shrubs (hawthorne) to represent the tiring
house (dressing room).
2. Bottom feels the craftsmen need “a device to make all well” —two Prologues (opening speeches) to the
play—to warn the ladies of the audience that there will be a sword scene which is only acting, no one is really
going to be hurt, and that the Lion is only an actor, not an actual savage beast who may harm them.
3. The craftsmen solve the problems of the moonlight and the wall by checking the almanac and assuring
themselves there will, indeed, be moonlight to shine through the window (casement) on stage the night of the
play. “Some man or other must present Wall,” is Bottom’s suggestion. This actor is to be loam covered and
hold his fingers out between Pyramus and Thisbe, who are supposed to be speaking through a wall.
4. Bottom is alone when Puck changes his head to that of an ass because Quince has the actors rehearsing with
their stage directions, which are entrances and exits from the stage and the movements they are to make on the
stage itself. Bottom has just had an exit cue (word in the script upon which a specified actor performs a
predetermined action) and left the green plot serving as the rehearsal stage.
5. Bottom is alone when Titania awakes because during Bottom’s exit, Puck—already annoyed that these
humans are so close to the sleeping Fairy Queen—decided to play one of his wicked pranks. When Bottom
re-enters the green plot with an ass’s head instead of his own, his friends run in fright, crying “O monstrous!
O strange! We are haunted! Pray, masters, fly, masters! Help!” Although Quince and Snout each return for a
moment to attempt to make Bottom understand what has happened, both run away again.
6. Bottom hasn’t followed his friends from the wood because he doesn’t realize his head has been changed.
He thinks their running away and Snout and Quince’s attempts to tell him he has changed are nothing more
than a joke on him, “ …an attempt to make an ass of me, to fright me if they could.” He refuses to run after
them and be part of the joke.
7. Titania awakes because Bottom is singing to keep up his courage. He will not admit it to his friends, but he
is afraid to be in the wood by himself. He also sings because he wants his friends to hear it, “that they shall
hear I am not afraid.”
8. Titania offers Bottom the fairies to attend him, jewels, songs sung to lull him into sleep on a bed of pressed
flowers, and the chance to, “purge thy mortal grossness so that thou shalt like an airy spirit go.”
9. Bottom’s reaction to this offer is to banter with the fairies in a clownish way which seems to signify
acceptance.
Act III, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
33
10. The four Fairies—Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed—are to, “Be kind and courteous to this
gentleman [Bottom],” to attend to his every need, to fee him delicacies, and in all ways possible to make him
more than comfortable and happy.
Act III, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. What is it Puck reports to Oberon?
2. Why is Hermia following Demetrius?
3. What is it Oberon realizes when he sees them together?
4. How is this mistake to be rectified?
5. Why won’t Helena accept Lysander’s advances?
6. Why does she doubt the veracity of Demetrius’ protestations of love?
7. Why do Hermia and Helena argue?
8. Why do each of the young people leave?
9. How does Puck manage to make Lysander and Demetrius sleep?
10. Why do Helena and Hermia also fall asleep?
Answers
1. Puck reports to Oberon that he came upon the craftsmen “met together to rehearse a play” near the
sleeping Titania and changed Bottom’s head for that of an ass, then made certain Bottom was near Titania so
that he was the first being she saw when she woke up and would she fall in love with him. Puck also mentions
how frightened Bottom’s friends were and that the eye of the youth in “Athenian garments” has also been
anointed.
2. Hermia is following Demetrius because she is convinced Demetrius, “…hath slain Lysander in his sleep…”
Both men want to marry her. Theseus has ordered her to marry Demetrius, as Egeus desires, or face the
nunnery or death. She and Lysander have run away to elope. She cannot think of another reason for Lysander
to leave her sleeping, alone and unguarded, in the haunted wood other than that Demetrius must have killed
Lysander.
3. When Oberon sees Hermia and Demetrius together, he realizes that while Demetrius is the youth he’d
wanted Puck to anoint with the love juice, Hermia is not the maid he’d seen pursuing Demetrius; the maid he
wanted to help by having the man she was pursuing fall in love with her. In his dismay, he cries to Puck,
“What hast thou done?”
4. The mistake is to be rectified by having Puck, “about the wood go swifter than the wind, and Helena of
Athens look thou find,” bringing her to Oberon, in the haunted wood. Once Helena is found Oberon and Puck
will make Demetrius fall asleep and reanoint his eye so that he would fall in love with Helena, instead of
Hermia.
Act III, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
34
5. Helena will not accept Lysander’s advances because—as she says —“These vows are Hermia’s.” In
addition, Lysander and Hermia just told her the previous night that they were eloping. Helena is in love with
Demetrius, no one else. Hermia is both her best and childhood friend, and this seems like a case of mocking to
her. She is hurt, bewildered, and angry about his advances.
6. Helena doubts the veracity of Demetrius’ love because he had loved her once before and left. He has been
in love with Hermia, as far as she knows, since he came to Athens so that Egeus could have Theseus force
Hermia to marry him rather than face a nunnery or death. Helena suspects he is part of this cruel joke to mock
her love of him. She is baffled at the two men’s behavior and wonders at them “…but you must join in souls
to mock me too?”
7. Hermia and Helena argue because Helena is convinced Hermia, her closest and oldest friend, is “…one of
this confederacy…” to mock her. They are also arguing because Hermia is convinced Helena is scorning her
by refusing Lysander’s love after somehow managing to make him fall in love with her (Helena) and, hence,
out of love with herself (Hermia).
8. Each of the young people leaves for a different reason. Helena, physically afraid of the smaller Hermia,
comments to Hermia, “My legs are longer though, to run away,” and does so. Hermia, incensed and
devastated, pursues Helena. Demetrius and Lysander, losing all hope of convincing Helena which one of them
loves her more, go off to find a location for the duel which will supposedly prove to Helena which one loves
her more.
9. Puck manages to trick Demetrius and Lysander and make them sleep by tiring them each out. He tricks
each of them by pretending to be the other and throwing his voice, as each of them, hither, and yon. They
keep running from here to there to find the other and are finally exhausted into sleep as Demetrius explains in
saying, “Faintness constraineth me to measure out my length on this cold bed…”
10. Hermia and Helena fall asleep because they, too, are exhausted. Hermia has been trying to catch Helena as
Helena runs away from her. This after a night of nightmares for Hermia and running after Demetrius for
Helena. Helena concisely states the situation when she murmurs, “Never so weary, never so in woe…,” before
falling asleep.
Act IV, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. What is it Bottom asks Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, and Cobweb to do?
2. What news does Oberon tell Puck?
3. Why is Titania in love with her husband again?
4. Why are Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus in the wood?
5. Why does Theseus think the five sleeping people came to the wood?
6. What does Lysander answer when questioned by Theseus?
7. Why is Egeus so angry?
8. Why won’t Demetrius marry Hermia as he had promised?
Act IV, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
35
9. What is Theseus’ decision?
10. Why does Bottom want Quince to write a ballad?
Answers
1. Bottom asks Peaseblossom to scratch his head. He asks Cobweb to bring him the unbroken honey-bag of a
red-hipped bumble-bee on top of a thistle (a type of flower). He then asks Mustardseed to help Cobweb
scratch since Bottom, still unaware he has an ass’ head, ironically mentions, “And I am such a tender ass, if
my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch,” while thinking it’s time to get to a barber’s for a shave.
2. Oberon tells Puck the news that Titania, Oberon’s wife and queen of the fairies, has given him the
changeling once she fell in love with Bottom (due to the love juice). Now that he has the changeling she had
previously refused to relinquish, he orders Puck to remove the spell from Titania’s eye and, “…take this
transformed scalp from off the head of this Athenian swain…”
3. Titania is in love with her husband, Oberon—king of the fairies —again because the spell was removed from
her once she gave Oberon the changeling from India. “O! How my eyes do loathe his visage now!” she says
of Bottom and has a difficult time understanding she had been in love with him while under the love-juice
spell.
4. Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus have come to the wood to hunt as a way of starting the May Day
celebration. Theseus also wants Hippolyta to hear “the music of my hounds,” since this was considered a sort
of music at the time.
5. Theseus thinks the five sleeping people— Bottom, Lysander, Hermia, Helena, and Demetrius—came to the
wood to begin the rites to celebrate May Day. He also reminds Egeus that this is the day Hermia is to “…give
answer of her choice”: to marry the man her father chose as her husband, be banished to a nunnery, or be put
to death.
6. When questioned by Theseus, Lysander answers that he really doesn’t know how he came to be in the
wood, but he does remember that he and Hermia’s “intent was to be gone from Athens …without the peril of
the Athenian law –.”
7. Egeus is so angry because Lysander has just admitted he and Hermia are defying the Athenian law which
demands that a daughter marry the man her father chooses for her. Elopement with another man is not one of
the daughter’s options; therefore, Egeus now declares, “…I beg the law, the law, upon his head.”
8. Demetrius will not marry Hermia as he promised because, “the object and the pleasure of mine eye, is only
Helena,” due to Oberon and the love juice’s intervention. Oberon told Puck to make certain Helena was the
first creature Demetrius saw when he awakened after Puck reanointed his eye with the love juice while
Demetrius was sleeping.
9. Theseus’ decision is that the two couples in love—Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and
Helena—“…shall eternally be knit –,” during his own wedding to Hippolyta. Egeus is not pleased with this
decision but, since he came to his duke asking for a judgment, he cannot argue.
10. Bottom wants Quince to write a ballad about his dream, as he clearly states when he simply says, “I will
get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.” What he now thinks was a dream was really his experience
while he had an ass’s head. Bottom would like to hear the ballad of this dream/experience presented at the
end of the play the craftsmen are performing the night of the wedding ceremonies.
Act IV, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
36
Act IV, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. How do the actors know Bottom has not yet returned?
2. Why can’t they perform the play?
3. What do his friends say are Bottom’s best qualities?
4. What mistake does Quince make in referring to Bottom’s voice?
5. What is Snug’s news?
6. What is especially disappointing about not being able to present the play?
7. What would Flute have demanded for Bottom?
8. What is Bottom’s reaction upon finding his friends?
9. Why won’t he tell them what has happened to him?
10. What is his advice to his fellow actors?
Answers
1. The actors know Bottom has not yet returned because Robin Starveling went to his house, only to find, “He
[Bottom] cannot be heard of.”
2. They can’t perform the play because there is not, “…a man in all Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he
[Bottom].”
3. His friends say Bottom’s best qualities are his wit (sense of humor), which is “the best wit of any
handicraftsman in Athens,” and his sweet voice.
4. The mistake Quince makes is in referring to Bottom’s voice as that of a “paramour” rather than
“paragon.” The humor in this is that a paramour is a lover, while a paragon is a model of excellence. The
bawdy joke is that Quince is calling his friend a lover, rather than a role model.
5. Snug’s news is that, “…there is two or three lords and ladies more married,” that night.
6. What is especially disappointing about not being able to perform that night is that with the additional
couples being married, the craftsmen, “…had all been made men,” from just this one night’s performance.
This means they would have made enough money to live comfortable lives.
7. Flute declares he would have demanded nothing less than six pence – quite a bit of money at that time – for
Bottom’s performance or he’d “be hanged.”
8. Bottom’s reaction upon finding his friends is to ask the group in general why they are so sad.
9. Bottom will not tell his friends what has happened to him because, since it is so fantastic, it will take a long
time to tell and they need the time to prepare for their performance that night because their play has been
Act IV, Scene 2: Questions and Answers
37
chosen for the revel. Bottom saves his tale, for he would prefer, “no more words.”
10. Bottom’s advice to his fellow actors is as follows: prepare your costumes; review your parts;
Thisbe—wear clean clothes; Lion—do not cut your fingernails so that they may somewhat resemble claws; and,
“eat no onions nor garlic,” before the performance.
Act V, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. Why does Theseus doubt the reality of the story the lovers tell him?
2. What are the choices for the revel?
3. Why does Theseus choose the craftsmen’s play?
4. What is the consensus of opinion about the Prologue?
5. Why does Theseus command Demetrius to be silent?
6. What is Hippolyta’s astute comment about the play?
7. How does Robin Starveling defend the use of the lanthorn (lantern) in representing the moon?
8. How does Pyramus die in the play-within-the-play?
9. What does Oberon tell the fairies to do before they sing and dance all night?
10. What two things does Puck ask from the audience before Shakespeare’s play ends?
Answers
1. Theseus calls the story the lovers tell him, “More strange than true,” because he thinks, “the lunatic, the
lover, and the poet,” are alike in their overblown imaginations. Hippolyta wonders if this is true since all of
the four lovers tell the same story.
2. The choices for the revel are a battle song sung by, “an Athenian eunuch [a castrated male] to the harp,” an
old play Theseus has already seen, another play he deems too serious for a wedding feast, and the craftsmen’s
play.
3. Theseus chooses the craftsmen’s play for several reasons. The first is he doesn’t care for the other choices
for various reasons. The second is he is intrigued by the contradictory wording of the title: “A tedious brief
scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth.” He is also delighted that his craftsmen
would honor him by attempting to push their brains to write a play and then their acting skills by presenting it.
4. The consensus of opinion about the Prologue is that it was roughly and poorly delivered, but Lysander
takes this as a morality lesson that, “it is not enough to speak, but to speak true,” if one is to bother speaking
at all.
5. Theseus commands Demetrius to be silent because. “Pyramus draws near the wall,” and he, Theseus,
wants to hear if he and Thisbe do speak through the Wall (portrayed by Snout).
Act V, Scene 1: Questions and Answers
38
6. Hippolyta’s astute comment about the play is, “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.”
7. Starveling defends the use of the lanthorn in representing the moon by saying, “The lanthorn doth the
horned moon present,” three times and offering no other explanation.
8. Pyramus dies in the play-within-the-play when he kills himself, proclaiming, “Out, sword, and wound the
pap of Pyramus.…” He had found Thisbe’s bloodied mantle (cloak) and concluded the Lion killed her, which
is not the case at all. Since, according to Pyramus’ thinking, she is dead and he is her love, he sees no reason
to continue living.
9. Oberon tells the fairies that before they sing and dance all night, they are to bless the newly married couples
and whatever children these couples may have in the future so that they, the humans, “…ever shall be
fortunate.”
10. The two things Puck asks of the audience before Shakespeare’s play ends are that they forgive the
characters for any offense given and that they applaud or, “Give me your hands.…”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Essential Passages
Essential Passage by Character: Nick Bottom
BOTTOM:
[Wakes] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer.
My next is ‘Most fair Pyramus.’ Heigh-ho! Peter
Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker!
Starveling! God's my life, stolen hence, and left me
asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a
dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.
Methought I was—there is no man can tell what dream.
Methought I was, and methought I had, but man is but
a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath
not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to
conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I
will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It
shall be call'd ‘Bottom's Dream,’ because it hath no bottom;
and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.
Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I
shall sing it at her death.
Act 4, Scene 1, Lines 204-221
Summary
Nick Bottom is part of a group of (very) amateur players who have decided to perform for the wedding of
Theseus and Hippolyta. They are rehearsing a play based on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, two thwarted
lovers. They have come to the forest to practice without interruption, but have indeed been interrupted by the
fairies and other mischievous creatures of the woods.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Essential Passages
39
The king of the fairies, Oberon, has played a trick on his wife, Titania, as revenge for her supposed infidelity.
Using a magic flower, he has anointed her eyes so that she will fall in love with the first living creature she
sees. As fate would have it, she first sees Nick Bottom, who has been given the head of an ass by Robin
Goodfellow (or Puck). Despite the ridiculousness of the situation, Titania becomes passionate toward Bottom,
adorning him with love and decoration.
Seeing nothing odd in this, Bottom goes along, enjoying every minute of it. Around him, the true action of the
story—the mix-up of the loves of Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena—continues until Puck corrects all
so that the right partners come together.
Bottom, on waking up, cannot decide if what has happened is a dream or has actually occurred. Thinking that
he has merely falling asleep while he was waiting for his cue, he rehearses his lines although the other players
are nowhere near (having run off once they saw the ass’s head on their companion).
Bottom, in his puzzlement, says that “man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.” There is no
point in explaining it. He considers thinking it through and coming up with an explanation, but cannot bring
himself to believe the nonsense of it. Rattling off a paraphrase from the Bible (I Corinthians 2:9), “No eye has
seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him….”, he states
that “the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not see, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to
conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was.”
Rather than analyze his situation further, Bottom decides he will get Peter Quince, another one of the players,
to write a play based on his dream, and call it “Bottom’s Dream,” continuing with the biblical passage that
“the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God,” this depth signifying that there is no “bottom.”
He continues to rattle on, oblivious to what he is saying, musing that he will have the group perform it for the
Duke and perhaps on Hippolyta’s death, signifying that he is still half asleep. Bottom soon returns to his
fellows, who are overjoyed to see him, supposing something tragic had happened to him.
Analysis
Nick Bottom could very well be called the “head clown” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His over-the-top
performance provides the most comic backdrop against which the rest of the characters play. As such, he is a
marvelous foil to the “serious” (though still comic) episodes of the misalliance of lovers that is the
foundation of the work.
Though not professionally an actor, Bottom clearly enjoys performance. The consummate amateur actor, he is
vastly overconfident of his abilities and as such provides a strong measure of the ridiculous, though he is
completely unaware of this. Lacking the subtleness of the other actors, he insists that he is equally adept at
playing all the roles. In fact, with each revelation of the part assignments, he wishes to change his part for that
of one of the others.
With just enough knowledge of drama to be dangerous, Bottom repeatedly asserts his lack of talent on the
others. Clearly, though, they enjoy his company, if not his acting. By his personality alone, he emerges as a
leader of the troupe. His overdramatic pronouncements, his frequent mispronunciations and grammatical
errors, while performed with much bravado and gusto, show him to be little more than a fool.
In his encounter with Titania, Bottom accepts her admiration as odd, but understandable. Not completely
aware at first of his transformation by Puck, he continues to make an “ass” of himself, a term that is
frequently used through the latter sections as a play on words pointing toward Bottom. It is this ridiculous
pairing between the fairy queen and the man with the head of an ass that heightens the comic tone. The
mismatched adventures of the other two couples are seen not as ridiculous but comical. His inability to
Essential Passage by Character: Nick Bottom
40
understand the transformation that has occurred to him makes him a figure of ridicule. Bottom's
overconfidence and overdramatic performance also make him look like an “ass.” He truly believes that
Titania could actually fall in love with him. And yet, in a way, he may be inwardly aware of his situation. He
frequently asks the other players if a particular aspect of their performance would be believable. Though he
appears confident that his portrayal of Pyramus will “move storms,” he is not so sure of the situation as a
whole. He is wise enough to sense that there is something ridiculous going on, but foolish enough to be
unaware that it is he who is ridiculous.
Bottom also serves to highlight the more serious questions that arise between the other two couples. Is it
ridiculous to presume that Hermia and Lysander would give up their lives for love? Is it ridiculous that Helena
would chase a man whose affections have been transferred to another? With Bottom’s adoration by Titania,
the audience can have an added measure of comic relief. The perils of love, especially in a society in which
marriage is an economic concern more than an emotional one, would weigh heavily on the observers without
the comedy of Nick and Titania.
Essential Passage by Character: Helena
HELENA:
How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know.
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes, figure unheedy haste;
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere;
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolv'd, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight;
Then to the wood will he tomorrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.
Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 232-257
Summary
Hermia and Lysander are in love, but their marriage does not receive the approval of Hermia’s father, Egeus.
Instead, he wants her to marry Demetrius, who would be happy to do so, but Hermia is against this proposal.
Essential Passage by Character: Helena
41
Egeus appeals to Theseus as ruler: if Hermia will not follow her father’s commands and marry Demetrius,
she will be either condemned to a life of perpetual celibacy as a nun, or she shall be put to death.
To complicate matters further, Hermia’s best friend Helena is in love with Demetrius. The two had at one
time been together, but Demetrius’s affection faded and has been transferred to Helena. He is thus very much
in favor of Egeus’s plan, though he is the only one who is.
To avoid a death sentence or a life of celibacy, Hermia plans to elope with Lysander that evening, going
through the forest to Lysander’s aunt where they hope to gain refuge. Hermia tells Helena about the plan.
Helena is, of course, unhappy that Demetrius has rejected her and says that she will keep her friend’s secret.
Hermia and Lysander wish Helena the best of luck with Demetrius.
Left alone, Helena delivers the above soliloquy on love. She bemoans the fact that some people are happier
than others. Although she is considered by all Athens to be Hermia’s equal in beauty, it means nothing to her
since Demetrius does not seem to share that view. He will not or cannot see what everyone else sees.
Yet Helena admits she may be focusing too much on Demetrius’s pleasing qualities. Things
that normally may be contemptible can be transformed in the eyes of someone who is in love. Helena states
that love is a function of the heart and mind, not the eyes. Because of this, she notes, Cupid is portrayed as
blindfolded.
Helena continues to muse on Cupid, how inappropriate a symbol for love he is. The fact that "Love" is blind
and able to fly swiftly away does not bode well. Also, as a child, Love often shows lack of good judgment. As
boys are always playing tricks on each other, so Love is the subject of deception.
Helena remembers how Demetrius had pledged his love to her. Yet once Hermia cast her eyes on Demetrius,
he callously turned away from Helena and flew to Hermia. Although she knows that she will receive little
thanks, Helena intends to tell Demetrius of Hermia's intention to run away and marry Lysander. Helena feels
that it will all be worthwhile just to see Demetrius again.
Analysis
Helena, though the most unlucky in love, is the one character who is most aware of what love is. Somewhat
insecure and unsure of herself as a desirable woman, she alone remains unaffected by the magic potion that
causes the others to fall falsely in love with someone else. This characterization thus puts Helena in a unique
position: she is an observer of the ridiculous antics of the others under the possession of the love potion.
Placing herself primarily in the role of a “stalker,” Helena pursues Demetrius, despite the fact that he has
betrayed her love and now is enamored with Hermia. In addition, she has experienced betrayal by her friend
Hermia, who has the admiration of the man that Helena loves and did not seem to do much to prevent
Demetrius’s transfer of affections. It is thus some sense of divine justice later when it is Helena who is
pursued by both Lysander and Demetrius, and Hermia is left without anyone.
Though eventually Helena regains Demetrius’s love, his initial rejection has a negative effect on her
self-worth. Not only does she become depressed from losing Demetrius, she cannot take Lysander seriously
when he professes his love for her. Her emotions have been trodden on, and she has become cynical toward
any other offers of affection. However, in the case of Lysander, she is wise to doubt him, as his love is not
sincere.
Helena’s faithfulness sets her apart from the other characters as the most honorable, at least in the matter of
love. Not only has she remained constant to Demetrius, she has stayed true to the concept of love itself. She
alone sees love for what it truly is: a complicated mess at times, but ultimately well worth the struggle. As
Essential Passage by Character: Helena
42
Lysander says, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” And in the case of Helena, it is indeed
genuine love that is experienced, not the manufactured variety inflicted on Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius
by Puck. As Helena realizes in the passage above, love is blind and thus should not be a product of the senses.
The heart/mind alone should be the source of affection.
Perhaps it is this understanding that causes Helena alone to be free of Puck’s potion. She is rewarded in the
end by receiving Demetrius's genuine love, one untainted by the fairies’ magic. By staying true to what true
love is, Helena remained a bulwark in all the chaos of the midsummer night.
Essential Passage by Theme: Love
LYSANDER:
How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?
HERMIA:
Belike for want of rain, which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.
LYSANDER:
Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood—
HERMIA:
O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low.
LYSANDER:
Or else misgraffed in respect of years—
HERMIA:
O spite! too old to be engag'd to young.
LYSANDER:
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends—
HERMIA:
O hell! to choose love by another's eyes.
LYSANDER:
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’
The jaws of darkness do devour it up;
So quick bright things come to confusion.
Essential Passage by Theme: Love
43
HERMIA:
If then true lovers have ever cross'd,
It stands as an edict in destiny.
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross,
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers.
Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 130-157
Summary
Hermia is in love with Lysander, and her feelings are reciprocated. However, Hermia’s father Egeus has
commanded Hermia to marry his choice for her husband, Demetrius. If she does not, then he will appeal to the
Athenian law that states that she will either be put to death or exiled to a nunnery and live a life of celibacy.
Pleading before Theseus, Egeus begs for his official approval. Lysander, speaking in his and Hermia’s
defense, points out to the Athenian ruler that Demetrius had previously been attached to Helena. To force him
to marry Hermia (though Demetrius is altogether willing) would break the young woman’s heart. Theseus
says that he had heard of the attachment and was going to speak to Demetrius about it, but it had slipped his
mind with cares of state. Theseus then tells Egeus and Demetrius that he wants a word with them in private.
Before leaving, Theseus warns Hermia that she must comply with her father’s wishes, or else the laws of
Athens will condemn her to death or celibacy. The others then depart, leaving Lysander and Hermia alone.
Lysander asks Hermia why she is so pale, to which Hermia replies that it might because of lack of rain,
though she could remedy that with her own tears. Lysander begins to philosophize, stating the “the course of
true love never did run smooth.” He speculates that in some instances, there is a class difference. Hermia sees
it as unconscionable to be so high born that she could not be allowed to love a commoner. Then Lysander says
that at times there is an age difference. To this likewise Hermia objects that one should be too old to marry a
young person. And then, says Lysander, there is the issue of objections from parents. In this Hermia sees a
hell in which others make a choice for the lovers. There is even the possibility of politics, war, or sickness
intervening in love.
Hermia resigns herself that true lovers have always had to go down a harsh and embattled road. Therefore,
they must accept the fact that their love will not be easy, for trouble is born to interfere with love.
With this, Lysander proposes an elopement. He and Hermia will travel through the forest to his aunt’s home.
Lysander believes that his aunt will support and protect them in their desire to be married. He makes plans
with Hermia to meet her in the forest that night so they can leave together and be married.
Analysis
Love is a major theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and as Lysander says, “The course of true love never
did run smooth.” In the passage above, Lysander and Hermia discuss the impediments to love, impediments
which are in some way reflected by the couples in the play.
First of all, Lysander speaks of a love between people who are “different in blood,” or of different classes. A
romance between people of different social stations was considered taboo in the Renaissance, acceptable only
in the sense of a passing affair. One could have a lower-class person as a mistress or lover but never as a
spouse. “True” love, one resulting in marriage, was practically unthinkable if couples came from different
classes. Such a case, in a way, is reflected in Titania’s magic-induced obsession with Nick Bottom. Despite
the differences in “race,” and the ridiculousness of a fairy queen in love with someone having an ass’s head,
Titania is royalty while Bottom is a mere weaver. Bottom’s calm acceptance of the infatuation of Titania as
Essential Passage by Theme: Love
44
only natural would have been seen to the audience of the time as even more hilarious because of the
difference in station. In the class-conscious society of Elizabethan England, equals only marry equals.
Although ages are not specified, Titania is presumably immortal as a fairy, so this fact would also be reflected
in Lysander’s reflection of the stumbling block of age differences. During the Renaissance, any great
difference of age was held to be more acceptable if the man was older than the woman. In fact, this was quite
common, as marriage for the woman was more a matter of security that love. An older woman’s marriage to
a younger man would have been looked down upon as being based on sex, which would have reflected
negatively on the woman’s character. Although morals and mores were changing during the reign of
Elizabeth, women were still held to a different standard of behavior when it came to marriage, and an obvious
reflection of the sexual nature of marriage was considered totally improper.
Lysander then speaks of the impediment of a marriage that stands “upon the choice of friends.” This
statement could also be read as "the choice of family," because a father was given the sole responsibility of
official approval of his daughter’s marriage. While a daughter’s goal might primarily be love in marriage, a
father was focused more on his daughter’s security (thus relieving him of financial responsibility) than
whether or not she was particularly happy. In the higher ranks, especially among the monarchy, daughters
were seen as living treaties, with the marriage between the children of kings functioning as an alliance. Thus
daughters became a valuable commodity, but only in the sense of their being marriageable.
Lastly, Lysander speaks of the hindrance of war or illness that could keep couples apart. Theseus and
Hippolyta had been military adversaries at one time. With Theseus’s defeat of the Amazon queen, they then
agreed to marriage. The presence of true love between the two, however, is questionable.
The idea of marrying for true love was just beginning to come into its own during the time of Elizabeth, and it
would take several centuries before it became the norm. Shakespeare, in most of his comedies, utilized this
new concept to provide the conflict in the plot. The impediments to marriage is the common theme, driving
the action of the play along. The idea of the course of true love running smoothly would provide little interest
to theatergoers. It is only the progress toward a sure marriage that held the audience’s attention.
Essential Passage by Theme: Reality
PUCK:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend.
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call.
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
Essential Passage by Theme: Reality
45
Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 418-433
Summary
The culmination of the play has come, with all being restored to what it was meant to be. Theseus and
Hippolyta are married, along with Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and Helena. Egeus, who has
accompanied Theseus and his bride to the woods, is not too happy at finding his daughter with Lysander.
Theseus makes excuses for the couples, stating that they must simply be celebrating May Day early and came
to pay honor to the Athenian leader. Awakening the sleeping pairs, Theseus asks why Demetrius and
Lysander seem to have put aside their differences long enough to be in each other’s company. Lysander states
that he cannot quite remember; all things seem to be hazy. Egeus is still ready to carry out his threats against
Hermia, but Theseus intervenes. He commands that the two couples shall be free to make their own choices in
love.
With this comes the resolution of the plot. Everyone is happily in love with the person he or she is destined to
be matched with. Egeus has come to grips willingly with his daughter’s marriage to Lysander, and all threats
of death and exile are removed. In the fairy realm, Oberon and Titania have reunited into marital bliss. Nick
Bottom has been returned to his natural state, though he has lost the “affection” of Titania. The play has been
presented to the wedding party, with approval.
The fairies are in the midst of their usual festivities, singing and dancing in the forest. Oberon proposes that
all the fairies go to Theseus’s home and preside over his marriage bed, the intention being to bestow a
blessing on the couple. The blessing consists of a hope that their children will be fortunate in life, that all three
couples always reside in love and harmony, that all their children will be perfect and without blemish. Oberon
commands the family to depart to the palace and give these blessings of peace. All leave except Puck.
As an epilogue, Puck speaks directly to the audience. He begs forgiveness if the players have offended
anyone. If this is so, he begs them to think it was only a dream, a weak and idle dream that signified nothing.
He further asks that they do not reprove the actors, but bestow their pardon on them. If they do, the players
cannot do anything but improve.
Puck then bids the audience good night and asks for their applause, if they are friends, and Robin (Puck)
himself “will make amends.”
Analysis
Dreams are a major motif, of course, in a play titled A Midsummer Night’s Dream. From the first scene,
Hippolyta speaks of the four days that must go by until she and Theseus can be married as going by as rapidly
as a dream. It ends with this passage in which Puck suggests that the audience, if it has been offended by the
play, should treat it as a dream without consequence. The fine line between dream and reality runs all the way
through.
The setting of the play is divided between the world of human beings and the fairy realm. The latter is used to
symbolize the dream world, with fantastical creatures, magic, and unexplained and unexplainable happenings.
The conflict arises when the two worlds interface, as the couples and the players wander into the forest.
The depths of the dark and shadowy forest house the fairy realm. The motif of shadows is used throughout to
denote the dream world, where the sunlight of reality is present, but muted. Puck, when addressing the
audience in his epilogue, speaks of the players as but “shadows,” or images of unreality, that have perchance
invaded on their waking hours. Whether these “shadows” are good dreams or bad dreams is up to each
individual audience member to decide. The shadows exist simply as themselves, without meaning. The dark
or the light must come from the person themselves, as they apply the meaning of the dream to their own lives
in the real world.
Essential Passage by Theme: Reality
46
Lysander and Demetrius are both unwilling participants in the dream world. By the application of the love
potion, they have been removed from the real world to a dream love toward Helena. Helena and Hermia
remain in the real world but have to contend with the men’s dreams. Titania, also, though an inhabitant of the
dream world, is forced into a dream-like obsession with Nick Bottom, whose ass’s head is a reality that she
sees because of magic and falls in love with. In the “reality” of the fairy realm, such a love would not have
been possible, as she realizes when Oberon releases her from the spell.
As the five humans awake, they cannot tell if what they had experienced had been real or a dream. The only
thing that has really changed is that Demetrius now loves Helena. As such, Helena, who had been unaffected
by the love potion, is the largest beneficiary of this “midsummer night’s dream.” Her dream thus becomes
reality with her marriage of true love to Demetrius. In fact, both couples have their “dreams” come true when
Theseus unexpectedly reverses his decision that Hermia must marry Demetrius or face death or exile; he
instead commands that she marry Lysander, and Helena marry Demetrius. In this way, Theseus parallels in
command Oberon, who is the one who grants “love” through the magic potion. However Theseus, living and
functioning in the real world, bestows love without the use of magic. Thus the course of true love, which up to
now has not run smooth, has reached its point of happy destination.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Themes
In A Midsummer Night's Dream romantic love is a salient, but ultimately subordinate theme. That love, and
specifically romantic love leading to marriage, is a subject of the play that cannot be denied. This is a work
that ends with the weddings of three couples (the four Athenian youths along with the city's rulers, Theseus
and his bride Hippolyta) and the reconciliation of fairyland's married monarchs, Oberon and Titania. As for
Shakespeare's ideas about romantic love in this work, they embody much of what has been said about the
topic over the ages. Love, according to Helena, is blind, irrational, and oft-times cruel.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
(I.i.232-235)
By the "mind" Helena plainly does not mean reason, but instead, something akin to imaginative fantasy. Love
is symbolized by the myriad flowers that arise throughout the play's text, fleeting and ephemeral, and it is
most closely akin to the changing, bewitching moon. It is the "moon" or the "watery" moon of the summer
Solstice that dominates the figurative language of the play. In the very first scene, we encounter Theseus
counting the days to the wedding according to the replacement of the old moon by a new one, and we hear
Egeus accusing Lysander "Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung" (30). Love is frequently equated in
this play with madness and with being under the influence of the moon. Yet, at the same time, while Love is
mad, it is not necessarily bad. In the reconciliation between Oberon and Titania and the mature relationship
between Theseus and Hippolyta, Shakespeare provides positive, stable examples of love and marriage.
Love, of course, triumphs in A Midsummer Night's Dream. As a standard element of the comedy genre, the
stock blocking character of the irate father, here Egeus, objects to his daughter's choice of Lysander as her
marriage partner and is, at first, supported by existing law (here that of Athens and its ruler, Theseus).
Although Shakespeare uses this standard plot device, there is never any real tension along these lines, for the
tandem sets of lovers are essentially protected from the long arm of paternal authority by the magic of the
fairyland woods and its immortal denizens. After Puck's mistakes are undone, the objections of Egeus fall by
the wayside as Theseus is able to bend law and custom after all. This is a play that has no genuine narrative
core but is concerned, instead, by the ribbons tied round the package. The plot is overwhelmed by the beauty
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Themes
47
of Shakespeare's magical lyricism. For example, in Act II, scene i, Oberon speaks of his wife Titania's sylvan
sleeping quarters:
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
(II.i.249-252)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is replete with such multisensory word pictures, bouquets of language flooding
the audience and often taking the form of extended, sometimes overly-protracted, lists.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a fantastic work in which the most active characters (the Athenian couples)
fall asleep not once but twice. That being so, we might expect dreams and dreaming to loom large in this
work; and, in fact, they do. The most noteworthy individual dream in the play belongs to Bottom, who
awakens from his romance with Titania restored to his natural form and tells us:
I have had a dream, past the wit of man to
say what dream it was. Man is but an ass,
if he go about to expound this dream.
………
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of
man hath not seen; man's hand is not able
to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his
heart to report, what my dream was.
(IV.i.205-214)
But more than just a dream-world, the realm that Shakespeare creates in A Midsummer Night's Dream is the
world of imagination. The inhabitants of the fairy woods invite us to follow them on a path of endless fantasy.
When Puck asks one of Titania's fairies where (s)he has been, the gentle spirit replies:
Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through brier,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere.
(II.i.2-7)
The fairies of Shakespeare's comedy are found among those elements of nature that spark the human
imagination, especially fire and, again, the moon. Consider further what Puck says while reveling in his sport
with Bottom and the rude mechanicals:
I'll follow you; I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier;
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
(III.i.106-111)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Themes
48
Here again, sparks of imagination come to mind, Puck's ability to transform himself into any number of things
through the aid of the beholder's susceptible mind working as the human imagination does. The final word on
the imagination, however, belongs to Theseus, who remarks about the confusion that has transpired in the
woods to his queen Hippolyta at the start of Act V:
More strange than true. I never may believe
These antic fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
(V.i.2-8)
Lovers, madman, and creative artists share the same force, the inspiration of imagination and its ability to
reach into what cool reason cannot grasp.
It is by no means a coincidence that Theseus mention's "poets" in the passage cited immediately above. This
is, after all, a play that concludes with an original work of written art, the "Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe" as
amended and performed by Bottom, Peter Quince, Snug, and their fellows. In their hands, the story of
Pyramus's love for Thisbe and its tragic ending is transmuted into a farce. In the first scene of Act III, Bottom
comes up with a way to avoid scaring the audience with the sight of the hero's death, saying to Quince:
Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say
we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus
is not killed indeed; and for the more better assurance,
tell them that I Pyramus am not Pyramus, but Bottom
the weaver. This will put them out of fear.
(III.i.16-20).
Incredibly, Quince does just that. The presentation of this absurdly amateurish but sincere piece in Act V of A
Midsummer Night's Dream allows the real characters, especially Theseus and Hippolyta, to issue comic but
lenient critical comments upon the production, with Theseus saying of actors on stage and at large, "The best
in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them" (V.i.211-212).
The play concludes as the rulers of fairyland bless the human marriages of the play, and Puck then speaks an
epilogue that begins:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbr'ed here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding than a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend.
(V.i.423-429)
On one level a plea for patronly tolerance toward the light nature of A Midsummer Night's Dream and, on
another, a reinforcement of the "dream/imagination" nexus at the work's bottom, the epilogue brings together
the gossamer strands into a coherent whole. The play is about the power of creative imagination and its
function of bringing the blessings of Nature (writ large) upon mankind and marriage.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Themes
49
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Character Analysis
Note on the Character Analysis
Note: While the older couples in A Midsummer Night's Dream have greater depth than the Athenian youths
and their female mates, none of the characters in this play is truly three-dimensional. True, Theseus presides,
but he is absent from the three central acts of the work, while the majestic Oberon and Titania are so caught
up in respectively causing and being victimized by the magic at hand that their characters are adumbrated.
Above all, lyrical language and imagery is much more important in A Midsummer Night's Dream than in
virtually any of Shakespeare's other works, including his other early comedies.
Bottom (Character Analysis)
Nick Bottom, the weaver, first appears in I.ii, with the other mechanicals, or clowns (Quince, Snug, Flute,
Snout, and Starveling), as they are sometimes called. It is often noted that the mechanicals' names reflect their
work. "Bottom," critics explain, refers to the bottom, or skein, around which yarn is wound. Bottom directs
Quince to tell the group which play they will be performing and to tell everyone which parts they will be
playing. Quince assigns the role of Pyramus to Bottom. Bottom seems enthusiastic about playing this part, and
he volunteers also to play the role of Thisby and that of the lion. Quince convinces him, however, that he "can
play no part but Pyramus" (I.ii.85).
Bottom appears again in III.i as the group of mechanicals gathers in the wood to rehearse. He tells Quince that
the play needs a prologue to explain that the dangers in the play (Pyramus drawing his sword to kill himself,
and the lion) are not real. After the group decides that the moonshine by which Pyramus and Thisby meet and
the wall which separates the lovers must be played by people, the group proceeds with their rehearsal. Bottom
bungles his first line, and Quince corrects him. Flute, playing Thisby to Bottom's Pyramus, doesn't do much
better, to Quince's dismay. Puck, who has been watching, intervenes to change Bottom's head into the head of
an ass. When the others see this, they run off, frightened. Bottom thinks they are playing a trick on him, trying
to scare him, so he begins singing to show them he is not afraid. His song is interrupted by Titania, who has
just woken up, having been anointed with the love juice by Oberon. Titania swears she is in love with Bottom,
a man with the head of an ass, and he replies ''Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that"
(III.ii.142-43). When Titania tells Bottom that he is both wise and beautiful, he assures her that he is not.
Nevertheless, he seems to accept her affection and follows her with little objection.
Bottom is next seen seated upon Titania's ''flowery bed'' as she caresses him, adorns his head with flowers,
and kisses his "fair large ears" (IV.i.l-4). Bottom is busy instructing the fairies to fetch him honey and scratch
his ears. When Bottom and Titania fall asleep, Oberon reverses the effect of the love juice on Titania. As
Titania wakes up saying that she thought she had been in love with an ass, she sees Bottom lying next to her
and exclaims "O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!" (IV.i.78). Puck then removes the ass's head from
Bottom. When Bottom awakens, he determines that he has had a "rare vision" (IV.i.205), and he vows to get
Quince to write it down for him. He then finds his friends, and they leave for the palace to perform Pyramus
and Thisby.
Act V is comprised primarily of the performance of the Pyramus and Thisby play. Bottom, as Pyramus, and
the rest of the group frequently misspeak their lines and mispronounce the names of the legendary lovers
referred to in the play. Bottom also interacts with his audience (Theseus, Hippolyta, and the four young
lovers). For example, when Theseus comments on the speech of the Wall, Bottom responds, telling him what
is about to happen and that "You shall see it / fall pat as I told you" (V.i. 186-87). Although the onstage
audience scoffs a bit at the performance (for example, Hippolyta says ''This is the silliest stuff that ever I
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Character Analysis
50
heard" [V.i.210]), as the performance progresses, they make some positive comments as well. Hippolyta, in
fact, seems touched by Bottom's performance: "Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man" (V.i.290) she says as
Pyramus comes to think that his beloved Thisby is dead. As the play ends, with Bottom and Flute lying on the
stage representing the dead Pyramus and Thisby, Demetrius comments that the Wall is left to help Moonshine
and Lion bury the dead. Bottom then sits up and says, "No, I assure you, the wall is down that parted their
fathers. Will it please you to see the epilogue … ?" (V.i.351-54). Theseus declines the epilogue.
Bottom is considered by many commentators to be the central figure of the play. He is admired for his humor
and his imagination. It has been noted that he seems to represent the common experience of humanity.
Additionally, Bottom is the only character in the play who can see and interact directly with the fairy world.
And when he wakes up and has been returned to his former self, he acknowledges that something has
happened to him, and it would be foolish to try explain it: "I have had a most / rare vision. I have had a dream,
past the wit of / man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass, / if he go about to expound this dream"
(IV.i.204-07). In fact, it is this speech, referred to as the awakening speech or soliloquy, that intrigues many
critics. The speech is often argued to be indicative of Shakespeare's acknowledgment of the possibility of
spiritual life beyond our everyday existence. The speech is also said to demonstrate both nature's and love's
inexplicability. Additionally, Bottom's lively involvement in the Pyramus and Thisby performance has been
cited as proof of Bottom's ability to understand the imaginative process of art. This ability, some argue, sets
Bottom apart from other mortals in the play who don't seem to share this understanding.
Demetrius (Character Analysis)
Demetrius first appears in I.i with Egeus, Hermia, and Lysander. Egeus speaks highly of Demetrius, calling
him "my noble lord" (I.i.24), and telling Theseus that it is Demetrius who has his consent to marry Hermia,
Egeus's daughter. After Hermia has expressed her desire to marry Lysander, and the duke has outlined her
choices (death, nunnery, or marriage to Demetrius), Demetrius asks Hermia to ''Relent'' and Lysander to ''yield
/ Thy crazed title to my certain right" (I.i.91-92). Lysander replies that Demetrius has in fact "Made love to …
Helena, / And won her soul" (I.i.107-08). Theseus admits that he had heard of this and meant to speak to
Demetrius about it. Nevertheless, he holds Hermia to her father's will. It is not clear why Demetrius
transferred his affections from Helena to Hermia, but Helena seems obsessed with getting him back.
When Demetrius learns from Helena of Hermia's and Lysander's plans, he pursues his beloved, and Helena
pursues him. Oberon overhears the conversation between Helena and Demetrius in which she repeatedly
professes her love for him. After Demetrius discourages her, he runs off. Oberon then reveals his plan to have
Puck anoint Demetrius's eyes with the love juice, so that Demetrius will return Helena's love. Puck instead
finds Lysander and puts the juice of the flower on his eyes. As it happens, Helena, who has been chasing
Demetrius but can pursue no longer, comes upon Lysander and wakes him. Lysander then falls in love with
Helena. In an attempt to rectify the situation, Oberon places the love juice on Demetrius's eyes, so that when
he wakes he will indeed be in love with Helena. And this is exactly what happens. Demetrius and Lysander
are now both in love with Helena; Hermia does not understand why Lysander now hates her; and Helena is
convinced the three of them are playing a cruel joke on her. Oberon then arranges, with Puck's assistance, to
finally right what has gone wrong by placing an herb on Lysander's eyes which will reverse the effects of the
love juice, thus restoring Lysander's love for Hermia. Once this transformation is complete, Theseus approves
of both couples and announces that they will all be married. In the last act, Demetrius and the others comment
on the Pyramus and Thisby play as it is being performed.
Critics generally agree that the four young lovers are practically interchangeable; it is nearly impossible to
distinguish one from the other. Some attribute this lack of characterization to Shakespeare's own inexperience
as a playwright. Most commentators, however, argue that this lack of individualization is central to the plot,
that Shakespeare did this on purpose. The young Athenians may seem indistinguishable to the audience, but
Bottom (Character Analysis)
51
as objects of love to one another they are seen as sheer perfection. Arguably, it is the transformative power of
love that makes four almost identical people seem so different and so wonderful in each other's eyes. On the
other hand, Shakespeare may have painted the young lovers as he did in order to highlight the folly,
capriciousness, and inconsistency of their love.
Helena (Character Analysis)
In the first scene of the play, we are introduced to Helena's problem: she desperately loves Demetrius, but he
is in love with her friend Hermia. Both Lysander and Helena herself reveal that Demetrius was at one time
involved with Helena. Lysander tells Theseus that Demetrius "Made love to … Helena, / And won her soul"
(I.i.107-08). Helena says that before Demetrius looked upon Hermia, "He hail'd down oaths that he was only
mine" (I.i.242-43). In an attempt to win back some of Demetrius's affection, Helena tells him of Hermia's plan
to meet in the wood and elope with Lysander. According to Helena's plan, Demetrius pursues Hermia, and
Helena follows Demetrius. Continuing to scorn her, Demetrius runs off. In the midst of her pursuit, Helena
comes upon the sleeping Lysander, who has mistakenly been anointed with the love juice by Puck. When
Lysander wakes up and sees Helena, he falls in love with her instantly. Meanwhile, Demetrius has also been
affected by the love potion and also falls in love with Helena. As the two men vie for Helena's attention,
Hermia appears and is completely confused by Lysander's sudden scorn of her. Seeing all this, Helena
becomes convinced that the others are mocking her. She asks Hermia if she has forgotten their friendship
(III.ii.201-02), apparently forgetting that she herself betrayed the friendship by revealing Hermia's plans to
Demetrius. Soon, however, Puck and Oberon rectify the situation by reversing the affect of the love juice on
Lysander, thereby removing his love of Helena and restoring his love for Hermia. Theseus announces that the
couples will be wed. In Act V, Helena watches the Pyramus and Thisby performance and is later blessed,
along with the others, by Oberon.
Critics generally agree that the four young lovers are practically interchangeable; it is nearly impossible to
distinguish one from the other. Some attribute this lack of characterization to Shakespeare's own inexperience
as a playwright. Most commentators, however, argue that this lack of individualization is central to the plot,
that Shakespeare did this on purpose. The young Athenians may seem indistinguishable to the audience, but
as objects of love to one another they are seen as sheer perfection. Arguably, it is the transformative power of
love that makes four almost identical people seem so different and so wonderful in each other's eyes. On the
other hand, Shakespeare may have painted the young lovers as he did in order to highlight the folly,
capriciousness, and inconsistency of their love.
Hermia (Character Analysis)
Hermia's dilemma is introduced early in the first scene of the play, as her father Egeus complains to the duke
that she refuses to marry Demetrius. She maintains that she is in love with Lysander, who she argues is as
worthy as Demetrius. Claiming that she does not know "by what power I am made bold'' (I.i.59), she asks
Theseus what will happen to her if she does not comply with her father's wishes by marrying Demetrius.
Theseus gives her two options: death or lifelong imprisonment in a nunnery. Remarking that she would rather
live in a convent all her life than be with Demetrius, Hermia remains constant in her love of Lysander, and
later quickly agrees to his plan to escape Athens and elope. As they are discussing this plan, Helena appears,
lamenting that Demetrius loves Hermia. Hermia tells her friend to "Take comfort; he no more shall see my
face; / Lysander and myself will fly from this place" (I.i.202-03). Helena uses this information in an attempt to
gain favor with Demetrius.
When Lysander and Hermia become lost in the woods, he suggests they stop and rest, and Hermia virtuously
insists that they do not lie next to one another. She awakens calling out to Lysander after dreaming that "a
serpent eat [ate] my heart away, / And you sate smiling at his cruel prey" (II.ii.149-50). When Lysander does
Demetrius (Character Analysis)
52
not answer, Hermia fears the worst and sets out to find him. When she does, she is confused to find that he
claims love for Helena and hatred of her. She asks: "What? Can you do me greater harm than hate? / Hate me,
wherefore? O me, what news, my love! / Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?" (III.ii.271-73)
After the four lovers insult each other and nearly resort to physical violence against each other, Oberon and
Puck resolve everything. Lysander's love for Hermia is restored, and Theseus soon appears to give his
blessing to the couple, much to Egeus's dismay. In the last act, Helena watches the play about Pyramus and
Thisby and is later blessed, along with the others, by Oberon.
Critics generally agree that the four young lovers are practically interchangeable; it is nearly impossible to
distinguish one from the other. Some attribute this lack of characterization to Shakespeare's own inexperience
as a playwright. Most commentators, however, argue that this lack of individualization is central to the plot,
that Shakespeare did this on purpose. The young Athenians may seem indistinguishable to the audience, but
as objects of love to one another they are seen as sheer perfection. Arguably, it is the transformative power of
love that makes four almost identical people seem so different and so wonderful in each other's eyes. On the
other hand, Shakespeare may have painted the young lovers as he did in order to highlight the folly,
capriciousness, and inconsistency of their love.
Hippolyta (Character Analysis)
The play opens as Hippolyta and Theseus are discussing their upcoming marriage. Theseus comments that he
woo'd thee [Hippolyta] with my sword,
And won thy love doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.
(I.i.16-19)
Theseus is referring to the fact that he conquered Hippolyta in his war with the Amazons. Hippolyta's only
lines in this act are in response to Theseus's comment that they will be wed in "Four happy days" (I.i.2). She
says simply, in a few lines, that the time will pass quickly. Hippolyta does not appear again until IV.i. She
accompanies Theseus and others on a hunt in the wood, and she fondly remembers a moment from her past as
queen of the Amazons when she was hunting "with Hercules and Cadmus" (IV.i.112). She comments on the
musical quality of the baying of the hounds on that hunt, that she had "never heard / So musical a discord,
such sweet thunder" (IV.i.116-17). Theseus then praises his own hounds, when Egeus stumbles upon the four
sleeping young lovers.
Hippolyta appears again in Act V, first discussing with Theseus the story of the young lovers, commenting
that it was "strange and admirable" (V.i.27). During the performance of "Pyramus and Thisby," Hippolyta
makes various remarks throughout the play, sometimes scoffing ("This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard''
[V.i.210]) and sometimes praising ("Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines / with a good grace"
[V.i.267-68]). In the end, she and Theseus are blessed, along with the other couples, by Oberon.
Many commentators see Hippolyta's and Theseus's relationship as providing a framework for the dramatic
action of the play, given that the couple only appears in the beginning and the end of the play. Additionally,
this relationship undergoes no change during the course of the play and arguably represents stability and
consistency, in direct contrast to the somewhat capricious relationships of the young lovers. Some
commentators, however, have observed Hippolyta's relative silence throughout Act I of the play. They believe
that this silence does not reflect Hippolyta's happy acceptance of her marriage to Theseus. Rather, her
reticence suggests that she has been coerced into the marriage (remember, she has been taken captive), and
Hermia (Character Analysis)
53
that she seems to regard it with resignation and sadness.
Lysander (Character Analysis)
Lysander first appears in I.i with his love Hermia, her father Egeus, and his competitor for Hermia's love,
Demetrius. Egeus accuses Lysander of bewitching his daughter, of writing poems for her, exchanging love
tokens with her, singing to her by moonlight at her window. After Hermia is given the choice of death or
imprisonment in a convent if she refuses to marry Demetrius, Lysander pleads his own worth to Egeus: ''I am,
my lord, as well deriv'd as he, / As well possess'd; my love is more than his; / My fortunes every way as fairly
rank'd" (I.i.99-101). Furthermore, he accuses Demetrius of having an affair with Helena, in order to
demonstrate Demetrius's inconsistency. None of this changes Egeus's mind or Theseus's decision. Lysander
then proposes to Hermia that they flee Athenian law and secretly elope, and Hermia agrees to the plan.
After losing their way in the wood, Lysander suggests to Hermia that they stop and rest and tries to convince
Hermia to let him lie next to her: "One turf shall serve as pillow for us both, / One heart, one bed, two bosoms,
and one troth" (I.ii.41-42). Hermia virtuously denies him this, so they sleep some ways apart from each other.
At this point Puck appears and, mistaking Lysander for Demetrius, squeezes the juice of the flower on his
eyes. When Helena, pausing in her pursuit of Demetrius, happens upon Lysander, she wakes him and he falls
in love with her. Confused, she flees and he follows. Meanwhile, Demetrius has also been affected by the love
potion and has also fallen in love with Helena. When the four Athenians find each other, Demetrius and
Lysander are professing love for Helena and hatred for Hermia; Helena thinks they are all cruelly mocking
her; and Hermia is confused by Lysander's rejection of her and hurt by Helena's verbal attacks. Before long,
Oberon and Puck sort things out, and Lysander's love for Helena is erased, and his love for Hermia restored.
To Egeus's dismay, Theseus approves of both couples and announces that they will be married. In Act V,
Lysander comments on the performance of Pyramus and Thisby and is later blessed, along with the others, by
Oberon.
Critics generally agree that the four young lovers are practically interchangeable; it is nearly impossible to
distinguish one from the other. Some attribute this lack of characterization to Shakespeare's own inexperience
as a playwright. Most commentators, however, argue that this lack of individualization is central to the plot,
that Shakespeare did this on purpose. The young Athenians may seem indistinguishable to the audience, but
as objects of love to one another, they are seen as sheer perfection. Arguably, it is the transformative power of
love that makes four almost identical people seem so different and so wonderful in each other's eyes. On the
other hand, Shakespeare may have painted the young lovers as he did in order to highlight the folly,
capriciousness, and inconsistency of their love.
Oberon (Character Analysis)
Oberon, the king of the fairies, first appears in II.ii. He is arguing with his queen, Titania, over a changeling (a
child exchanged by fairies for another) who she possesses and he desires. When she refuses to give up the
changeling, Oberon devises a plan to steal it from her. He sends Puck off to find a certain flower whose juices,
when squeezed on the eyes of Titania, will make her fall in love with the next creature she sees. Oberon plans
to take the child when Titania is so spellbound. After outlining this plan, Oberon observes Helena's pursuit of
Demetrius and his scornful dismissal of her. Oberon decides to use the flower to make Demetrius love Helena,
and instructs Puck to find a man wearing Athenian garments (Demetrius) and place the flower's juice on his
eyes. Meanwhile, Oberon finds the sleeping Titania and squeezes the flower on her eyelids, hoping that she
will ''Wake when some vile thing is near" (II.ii.34).
Oberon next appears in III.ii. He listens to Puck's report: Titania has fallen in love with a "monster" (III.ii.6)
whom Puck has created. Puck then relates the tale of how he came upon Bottom and the others, and how he
Hippolyta (Character Analysis)
54
transformed Bottom. When asked about the Athenian, Puck replies that he has taken care of him as well. But
Puck and Oberon almost immediately learn that Puck has not anointed Demetrius. Oberon resolves to fix the
situation by placing some of the love juice on Demetrius's eyes. The four lovers together, Oberon sees that he
must reverse the effect of the love juice on Lysander. Assessing the mess, Oberon accuses Puck, "This is thy
negligence. Still thou mistak'st, / Or else commit'st thy knaveries willfully" (III.ii.345-46). Puck denies that he
purposefully placed the love juice on Lysander's eyes instead of Demetrius's. The two finally gather the lovers
together and undo what Puck has done to Lysander, so that Lysander's love for Hermia is restored. Soon after,
Oberon reveals to Puck how Titania gave up the changeling to him. Instructing Puck to remove the ass's head
from Bottom, Oberon first restores Titania. The couple appears once more with the rest of the fairies and with
Puck at the play's end as Oberon blesses Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and
Helena.
Oberon is usually seen by audiences to be a benevolent spirit, and critics have noted that he is associated in
the play with light and with dawn even though, as Puck reminds him, he is part of the fairy world, and his
activity is limited to the night. When Puck says that they must work quickly to complete their plans because
morning is approaching, Oberon replies: "But we are spirits of another sort. / I with the Morning's love have
oft made sport …" (III.ii.388-89), and goes on to affiliate himself with the rising sun. Other critics have cited
Oberon's wish that Titania will awaken and fall in love with some "vile thing" (II.ii.34) as evidence that he
does have some malevolent tendencies.
Additionally, Oberon is typically associated with order in the play. He resolves the play's disorder, and some
critics note that this can only happen after his relationship with Titania is restored. It has also been argued that
the reappearance of Oberon and the fairies at the play's end emphasizes their divine power as they bless the
mortals, and that this providential order contrasts with the ineffectual nature of the mortals.
Puck (Character Analysis)
Puck, a sprite also known as Robin Goodfellow, first appears in II.ii as he and a fairy discuss the troubles
Oberon and Titania are having. The fairy gives us some indication of Puck's character as she describes how
Puck "frights the maidens of the villagery" (II.ii.35) among other activities. When Titania refuses to give up
the changeling Oberon wants, he comes up with a plan to steal the child, and enlists Puck's aid in doing so.
Puck's first task is to retrieve the very special flower, which he does quickly. Meanwhile, Oberon has learned
of the trouble between Demetrius and Helena, and he instructs Puck to use some of the flower on Demetrius
(described as wearing Athenian clothes) so that he may return Helena's love. But Puck mistakes Lysander for
Demetrius, and puts the juice on his eyes. Soon after, Puck comes upon Bottom, Quince, and the other
mechanicals, who are rehearsing their play. He changes Bottom's head into that of an ass, thereby scaring
away the other members of the company, who he then proceeds to taunt and chase through the wood. Before
long, Bottom and Titania find each other, and Puck reports all of this to Oberon in III.ii.
At this time, Puck's error (his mistaking Lysander for Demetrius) is revealed, and Oberon decides to place the
juice of the flower on Demetrius's eyes to rectify the situation. Puck is instructed to lead Helena toward
Demetrius, which he does, and Lysander (now in love with Helena) follows. Puck is delighted at the
entertainment that is to ensue as the four young lovers with mixed up emotions come together: ''Shall we their
fond pageant see? / Lord, what fools these mortals be!" (III.ii.114-15). Oberon accuses Puck of deliberately
causing all this trouble, an accusation which Puck denies. The two finally successfully resolve this situation
the young lovers are in and the one involving Titania and Bottom. After Oberon has taken the changeling
from Titania, she is released from her spell, and Bottom from his.
Puck appears at the end of the play and offers an apology to the theater audience for the performance. "If we
shadows have offended,'' he offers, "Think but this, and all is mended, / that you have but slumber'd here /
Oberon (Character Analysis)
55
While these visions did appear. / And this weak and idle theme, / No more yielding but a dream" (V.i.423-28).
Puck is seen by some to be simply mischievous. Others view him as frightening and dangerous, noting that he
is associated with darkness, whereas Oberon is associated with light and the dawn. In II.ii.382-87, Puck urges
that he and Oberon work quickly, as their activities must take place under the cover of the night. Oberon's
reply contrasts with Puck's speech, as he claims that they are "spirits of another sort'' and that he (Oberon)
"with the Morning's love have oft made sport" (III.ii.388-89). Additionally, it has been noted that Puck can be
seen not only as a spectator of the play's dramatic situations but as a commentator and interpreter of the play's
action. Critics often cite Puck's comment: "Shall we their fond pageant see? / Lord, what fools these mortals
be!" (III.ii.114-15) as evidence of this.
Theseus (Character Analysis)
The play opens as Theseus and his bride-to-be, Hippolyta, are discussing their upcoming marriage. Theseus
comments that he ''woo'd thee [Hippolyta] with my sword, / And won thy love doing thee injuries" (I.i.16-17),
referring to the fact that he conquered Hippolyta in his war with the Amazons. But now they are to be married,
and their discussion is interrupted by Egeus, who comes to Theseus for help in sorting out the affairs
concerning Egeus's daughter, Hermia. After hearing Egeus present his case, he points out to Hermia that she
should be obedient to her father and that Demetrius "is a worthy gentleman" (I.i.52). Hermia asks Theseus
how the law will affect her if she refuses to marry Demetrius, and Theseus outlines her options: death, or
lifelong confinement to a nunnery. He advises her to abide by her father's wishes but gives her several days to
make her decision.
Theseus does not appear again until IV.i, when he, Hippolyta, and Egeus find the four young lovers in the
wood. When Theseus hears what they have to say and after Egeus demands that Lysander be punished for his
attempted elopement of Hermia, Theseus announces that the couples will be married alongside him and
Hippolyta. He goes back on his earlier decision to support Egeus in trying to force Hermia to marry
Demetrius. As for Egeus's request that Lysander be punished, Theseus simply says, "Egeus, I will overbear
your will" (IV.i.179).
As the last act opens, Theseus and Hippolyta discuss what has happened to the four young lovers, with
Theseus attributing tales of fairies and the like to the imagination. Hippolyta responds that the lovers' stories
support each other, and that this made the combined image they painted ''something of great constancy; / But
howsoever, strange and admirable" (V.i.26-27). Theseus then requests to see "Pyramus and Thisby," despite
Philostrate's urging to the contrary. Throughout the play, Theseus and the others watching the performance
comment on the actors' abilities and interpretation of the tragedy. When everyone has gone off to bed,
Theseus and Hippolyta, along with the other couples, are blessed by Oberon.
Although Theseus has relatively few lines in the play, his role is often considered to be fairly major, for
several reasons. Firstly, many commentators see Theseus's relationship with Hippolyta as providing a
framework for the dramatic action of the play, given that the couple only appears in the beginning and the end
of the play. Additionally, this relationship undergoes no change during the course of the play and arguably
represents stability consistency, in direct contrast to the somewhat capricious relationships of the young
lovers.
Perhaps more importantly, many critics believe that Shakespeare uses the character of Theseus to discuss the
interlocking themes of imagination and art. Often cited in the discussion of this topic are two passages. The
first is Theseus's "lunatic, lover, poet" speech (V.i.2-27) in which Theseus says:
Puck (Character Analysis)
56
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination.
(V.i.7-18)
The second is the later exchange with Hippolyta as they watch "Pyramus and Thisby":
Hippolyta: This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.
Theseus: The best in this kind are but shadows;
and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
Hippolyta: It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.
Theseus: If we imagine no worse of them than they of
themselves, they may pass for excellent men.
(V.i.210-16)
Some commentators have argued that both of these passages indicate that Theseus has a lack of aesthetic
discrimination, that he cannot distinguish between superior or inferior art. And the "lunatic, lover, poet''
speech, while seeming to acknowledge the power of the imagination, at the same time appears to discount the
importance of imagination. However, others note that Theseus, especially in the second passage quoted above,
seems to understand the importance of the audience's imagination in understanding art. As some
commentators have summarized, Theseus realizes the importance of imagination to love and life, as long as it
does not undermine reason and sanity.
Other Characters (Descriptions)
Attendants
Attendants appear in several scenes during the play, and are sometimes mentioned in the stage directions as
"others" or as Theseus's train. In IV.i, Theseus addresses attendants directly, instructing them to do various
tasks. The attendants have no speaking parts.
Cobweb
Cobweb is one of Titania's fairies. Cobweb is introduced to Bottom in III.i, and in IV.i, Bottom instructs
Cobweb to kill a bumble bee and retrieve its "honey-bag" (IV.i.10-13).
Duke of Athens (Theseus, Duke of Athens)
See Theseus
Theseus (Character Analysis)
57
Egeus
Egeus is Hermia's father. He appears in I.i, complaining to Theseus that his daughter will not marry
Demetrius. Egeus explains to the duke that Lysander has "bewitch'd'' (I.i.27) Hermia with his poetry and his
moonlight serenades, among other things. Finally, Egeus comes to the point and makes his request of
Theseus: "As she is mine," Egeus says, "I may dispose of her; / Which shall be either to this gentleman
[Demetrius], / Or to her death, according to our law … " (I.i.42-44). After Theseus gives Hermia another
option, to enter a nunnery, he suggests she follow her father's wishes and marry Demetrius. Later, in the
company of Theseus and Hippolyta, Egeus finds his daughter sleeping in the wood. Nearby are Lysander,
Demetrius, and Helena. When Lysander awakens and confesses that he and Hermia were in the process of
fleeing Athens to elope, Egeus demands that Lysander be punished: "I beg the law, the law, upon his head"
(IV.i.155). But Theseus does not back him this time; instead, he insists that the two couples be wed alongside
him and Hippolyta.
Fairies
The fairies appear in several scenes, primarily as attendants of Oberon and Titania. Four of the fairies are
individually identified as Cobweb, Moth, Peaseblossom, and Mustardseed, and they serve Titania and later
Bottom. In II.i, one unnamed fairy converses with Puck. In II.ii, Oberon and Titania appear, each attended by
a train of fairies. Later in the same scene, several fairies sing Titania to sleep at her request. In III.i, the four
named fairies appear to be introduced to Bottom, and they appear again in IV.i to do Bottom's bidding
(scratch his head and fetch honey). At the play's end, the fairies appear, identified as Oberon's and Hippolyta's
train, to sing and dance.
Flute
Francis Flute, a bellows-maker, is one of a group which is often referred to as the clowns, or the mechanicals.
This group also includes Bottom, Quince, Snug, Snout, and Starveling. It is frequently noted that the names of
these common laborers reflect the work that they do. "Flute," critics explain, suggests the fluted bellows of
church organs that Flute would be likely to repair. In I.ii, Flute appears with the rest of the mechanicals, as
Quince the carpenter is assigning the roles in the "Pyramus and Thisby" play. Quince assigns Flute the role of
Thisby. Apparently unfamiliar with the play, Flute asks "What is Thisby? A wand'ring knight?" (I.ii.45), to
which Quince replies that Thisby is the lady Pyramus is in love with. Flute objects, arguing that he's got a
beard coming in. Quince will have none of it; he tells Flute to play the part wearing a mask, and that he may
"speak as small as you will'' (I.ii.50). Bottom offers to play the role of Thisby and offers a sampling of the
voice he would use to do so. But Quince insists that Bottom is Pyramus and Flute is Thisby.
Flute appears again in III.i rehearsing with the rest of the mechanicals and getting his lines wrong, much to
Quince's dismay. He runs off after Puck has given Bottom the ass's head. In IV.ii, Flute seems overjoyed at
Bottom's return, and he praises profusely Bottom's acting abilities.
In V.i, Flute appears as Thisby. With the other players, Flute comically blunders his lines, frequently getting
wrong the names of the classical references in the play.
Goodfellow (Robin Goodfellow)
See Puck
King of the Fairies
See Oberon
Lion
See Snug
Other Characters (Descriptions)
58
Moonshine
See Starveling
Moth
Moth is one of Titania's fairies. Moth is introduced to Bottom in III.i, and in IV.i, Moth appears with Cobweb,
Mustardseed, and Peaseblossom, but unlike these other fairies, Moth is not asked to do Bottom's bidding.
Mustardseed
Mustardseed is one of Titania's fairies and is introduced to Bottom in III.i. In IV.i, Bottom instructs
Mustardseed to help Cobweb in the scratching of Bottom's head. (Cobweb, however, has been sent to fetch
some honey for Bottom, and it is Peaseblossom who has initially been asked to scratch Bottom's head.)
Peaseblossom
Peaseblossom is one of Titania's fairies. Peaseblossom, along with the other named fairies, is introduced to
Bottom in III.i. In IV.i, Bottom instructs Peaseblossom to scratch his head.
Philostrate
Philostrate is identified as Duke Theseus's Master of Revels. In I.i, Theseus instructs Philostrate to "Stir up the
Athenian youth to merriments" (I.i.12) and generally to promote a festive atmosphere in Athens, in
anticipation of the duke's wedding to Hippolyta. Later, in V.i, Philostrate presents Theseus with a list of
possible entertainments for the evening. When Theseus asks about the description listed for the 'Pyramus and
Thisby' play ("'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus / And his love Thisby; very tragical mirth'"
[V.i.56-57]), Philostrate explains the "tedious" and "tragic" nature of the performance. He also tells the duke
that the play is to be performed by common working men ''Which never labor'd in their minds till now''
(V.i.72) and attempts to discourage the duke from seeing the play. Theseus, however, insists and instructs
Philostrate to bring in the players.
Prologue
See Quince
Pyramus
See Bottom
Queen of the Fairies
See Titania
Quince
Peter Quince, the carpenter, and belongs to the group which is often referred to as the clowns, or the
mechanicals. This group also includes Bottom, Flute, Snug, Snout, and Starveling. It is frequently noted that
the names of these common laborers reflect the work that they do. "Quince," critics explain, probably refers to
a wedge-shaped block of wood used in carpentry. In I.ii, the mechanicals are assembled at Quince's house,
and, at Bottom's direction, Quince is assigning the roles in the "Pyramus and Thisby" play. Quince assigns
himself the role of Thisby's father and answers questions about the play, making suggestions as to how
various parts should be played. When Bottom volunteers to play parts other than the one he was assigned (that
of Pyramus), Quince flatters Bottom until the latter agrees to play the part of Pyramus. When Bottom wants to
play the lion's part, for example, Quince argues that he will play it too well, and frighten all the ladies, and get
himself and the rest of them hanged as a result. When all parts have been assigned, Quince arranges to have a
rehearsal in the wood.
The rehearsal takes place in III.i. As the men gather, Bottom brings up his concern that the violence in the
play might frighten the female audience members. He suggests that a prologue be written explaining that the
Other Characters (Descriptions)
59
dangers in the play—Pyramus drawing his sword to kill himself, and the presence of the lion—are not real.
Quince and the others agree on this solution, and he then brings up another concern: how will they represent
the moonshine by which Pyramus and Thisby meet? It is agreed that they will use a person to represent the
moonshine and another person to represent the wall which separates the lovers (since they "can never bring in
a wall" [III.i.66]). As the group practices, Quince corrects the errors Bottom and Flute make in their lines.
They are interrupted when Puck changes Bottom's head into the head of an ass. In IV.ii, Quince seems
dismayed at Bottom's disappearance and says that there isn't anyone in Athens who can play Pyramus like
Bottom. When Bottom reappears, Quince expresses his relief and gladness: "Bottom! O most courageous day!
O most happy hour!" (IV.i.27). In V.i, Quince reads the part of the Prologue.
Robin Goodfettow
See Puck
Snout
Tom Snout, the tinker, is a member of a group which is often referred to as the clowns, or the mechanicals.
This group also includes Bottom, Flute, Quince, Snug, and Starveling. It is frequently noted that the names of
these common laborers reflect the work that they do. "Snout," critics explain, may suggest a spout of a kettle,
an item probably mended by the tinker. In I.ii, Snout appears with the rest of the mechanicals as Quince the
carpenter is assigning the roles in the "Pyramus and Thisby" play. Quince assigns the role of Pyramus's father
to Snout. However, it is decided by the group in III.i that a person will have to play the wall which in the play
separates Pyramus and Thisby. In V.i we learn that Snout plays the role of the Wall. Snout also appears in
IV.ii, when Bottom returns from his interlude with Titania, but he does not speak.
Snug
Snug is one member of a group which is often referred to as the clowns, or the mechanicals. This group also
includes Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snout, and Starveling. It is frequently noted that the names of these common
laborers reflect the work that they do. "Snug," critics explain, suggests his work as a joiner, one who joined
pieces of wood together to make furniture. In I.ii, Snug appears with the rest of the mechanicals as Quince the
carpenter is assigning the roles in the "Pyramus and Thisby" play. Quince assigns Snug the role of the Lion.
Snug appears again in III.i rehearsing with the rest of the mechanicals, but he does not speak. He runs off after
Puck has given Bottom the ass's head. In IV.ii, Snug enters and announces to Quince, Flute, Snout, and
Starveling that the duke has just come from the temple and that ''there is two or three lords and ladies more
married" (IV.ii.15-17).
In V.i, Snout appears as the Lion. When he comes on stage, he announces to the ladies that he is Snug the
joiner so that they will not fear him. Of his performance, Demetrius comments "Well roar'd Lion" (V.i.265).
Starveling
Robin Starveling is one member of a group which is often referred to as the clowns, or the mechanicals. This
group also includes Bottom, Quince, Flute, Snug, and Snout. It is frequently noted that the names of these
common laborers reflect the work that they do. "Starveling," critics explain, suggests the proverbial skinniness
of tailors. In I.ii, Starveling appears with the rest of the mechanicals as Quince the carpenter is assigning the
roles in the "Pyramus and Thisby" play. Quince assigns Starveling the role of Thisby's mother. However, it is
decided by the group in III.i that a person will have to play the moonshine by which Pyramus and Thisby
meet, and in V.i we learn that Starveling plays the role of Moonshine. Starveling also appears in IV.ii, when
he suggests that Bottom, who still can't be found, has been "transported" (IV.ii.4), or taken by the fairies. In
V.i, when Starveling appears as Moonshine, he receives this accolade from Hippolyta: ''Well shone, Moon.
Truly, the moon shines with a good grace" (V.i.267- 68).
Other Characters (Descriptions)
60
Titania
Titania, queen of the fairies, first appears in II.i when she and Oberon are arguing. Puck has already outlined
their disagreement for us: Titania has a changeling (a child exchanged for another by the fairies) whom she
adores. Oberon wants the boy for himself. Titania refuses to give the child to him. As part of a plan to steal
the child from her, Oberon instructs Puck to fetch a certain flower. The juice of this flower, when squeezed on
Titania's eyes, will make her fall in love with whatever creature she first sees.
Titania next appears in II.ii asking her fairies to sing her to sleep, which they do to Oberon's advantage. He
uses this opportunity to squeeze the juice on her eyes, and he hopes that when she wakes "some vile thing is
near" (II.ii.34). The "vile thing" happens to be Bottom, who Puck has transformed from an ordinary man into
a man with an ass's head. As expected, Titania is in love. She praises Bottom and gives him several of her
fairies to attend to him. In IV.i, we see Titania and Bottom seated together on her "flow'ry bed" where she is
caressing him and kissing him (IV.i.1-4). They fall asleep together, after which Oberon tells Puck that he has
successfully retrieved the child. Oberon then releases Titania from the power of the potion. She awakens,
saying she thought she'd been in love with an ass. When Oberon points out Bottom lying next, Titania says
"O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!" (IV.i.78-79). In Act V, Titania appears with Oberon and the
rest of the fairies as they bless the sleeping couples.
Some commentators have noted that Titania, like Hippolyta, is ruled by her husband. Her defiance in not
yielding the child to him does not get her very far, since Oberon gets what he wants in the end. Additionally,
it has been observed that Titania's rebellion against Oberon's authority parallels Hermia's rebellion against her
father and Athenian law. Critics have also noted that order in the play is not restored until Oberon regains his
relationship with Titania.
Thisby
See Flute
Wall
See Snout
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Principal Topics
Focusing on such issues as love, dreams, and reality, A Midsummer Night's Dream has been regarded by
critics as Shakespeare's first mature comedy, a work which addresses fundamental questions about life. Since
love triumphs at the end of the play, dispelling the chaotic magic of the night, the drama seems almost
conventional. Thus a traditional reading of the play tends to emphasize the joyful outcome, regarding the
supernatural elements as the natural background for a story which celebrates life. However, a rather different
interpretation was suggested in 1961 by the eminent Polish scholar Jan Kott, who in his seminal Szekice o
Szekspirze (Shakespeare, Our Contemporary) drew attention to the sinister undercurrents of this seemingly
charming and gentle love story. Unlike earlier critics who only touched upon the dark side of A Midsummer
Night's Dream, Kott dismisses the romantic view of Shakespeare's work, maintaining that the play essentially
focuses on brutal eroticism and explores a range of violent sexual fantasies. Furthermore, Kott argues, love is
debased by the interchangeability of objects of desire, reaching its lowest ebb in Titania's erotic attraction to a
beast.
Kott's reading of the play points to the battle of the sexes as a major topic. As feminist critics have observed,
the tensions among the antagonists—such as Hermia and her father—do not stem from a blind urge to inflict
pain, but reflect the efforts of a male-dominated society to safeguard its laws and values. Not only are the
women in the play debased in love and treated as objects of desire and/or possession, but female bonds—such
as the friendship between Hermia and Helena—are undermined by male suspicion, insecurity, and fear of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Principal Topics
61
possible exclusion from a world ruled by women such as Hip-polyta, the queen of a tribe of women warriors,
who was defeated by Theseus and claimed as the spoils of war. Some critics maintain that this male anxiety
reflects a dread of sexual powerlessness. As a result, the male characters feel secure only when they are able
to divide and conquer their women.
But the ambiguities of love, critics contend, do not exhaust the vast universe of Shakespeare's comedy: A
Midsummer Night's Dream also attempts to grasp the elusive nature of reality. The boundaries between the
real world, represented by the Athenians, and the supernatural world of Oberon and Titania are sometimes
fluid, as evidenced by the many instances when a protagonist, such as Bottom, seems caught somewhere
between the two levels of existence. According to some critics, Shakespeare, while describing both reality and
fantasy as relative, identifies poetry as the lasting, imperishable result of the perilous journey through the
fantastic worlds of apparitions, dreams, and nightmares. Based on this understanding of the function of poetry
in the drama, some critics contend that it is the playwright himself who directly imparts a sense of wonder to
his audience, thus rendering the universe of his play meaningful and inspiring. In fact, Hippolyta
acknowledges the audience's aesthetic experience by declaring,
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.
(V.i.23-7)
Another remarkable feature closely associated to the theme of reality versus illusion in A Midsummer Night's
Dream is the work's self-consciousness. In other words, the characters not only discuss the nature of drama
but also comment indirectly on the play in which they perform. As critics explain, Shakespeare accomplishes
this by employing a well-known theatrical device: the play-within-the-play. The performance of "Pyramus
and Thisby" can be interpreted as a triple parody: of itself, of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and of theater as
an aesthetic experience.
The magic wand which conjures up Shakespeare's world is, as critics generally agree, peerless poetic
language. Finding the right type of language, metrical framework, allusion, and figure to fit every character
and situation, Shakespeare enriches his play with memorable examples of literary virtuosity. For example, a
character's psychological changes are illustrated by variations in tone or meter. In addition, there are many
moments when the characters' eloquence soars high above the confines of dramatic discourse to the realm of
pure poetry. The verbal brilliance of the play was particularly emphasized by Peter Brook's seminal 1970
Royal Shakespeare Company production, which focused on the text and drastically reduced the visual
dimension by staging the dramatic action in a set resembling a white box.
Rich, allusive, melodious, and multi-layered, Shakespeare's dramatic poetry not only fully employs all of the
resources of the English language but also conjures up the power of mythology. Within the complex
mythological background of A Midsummer Night's Dream, one finds interwoven strands of pre-Classical,
Classical, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic folklore, particularly in the poet's descriptions of the fairy
world. Some of the supernatural figures Shakespeare introduces in the drama represent formidable archetypes
which appear in different traditions under various names and form. Such a figure, according to scholars, is
Diana, the triple goddess, who performs her celestial role as a moon divinity, lives on earth as the virginal
Diana—the hunting deity (called Titania once by Ovid)—and haunts the underworld as the witch-goddess
Hecate. The moon, one of the goddess's domains, operates as a potent poetic symbol suggesting possible
pathways connecting higher realms and our own world, which the Elizabethans called "sublunar" or "under
the moon." In the last act, Theseus mentions "the lunatic, the lover and the poet" (V.i.7), using the
"moon-word" "lunatic" to underline the connections between madness, love, and poetry. Critics who suggest
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Principal Topics
62
an entirely different genealogy of Shakespeare's fairy-world, however, argue that the Elizabethan fairies of A
Midsummer Night's Dream are not characters from folklore, but figures from literary and religious tradition.
Tracing the origins of Shakespeare's supernatural world in Arthurian legend and in the Christianized form of
Cabala, a Jewish system of reading the Scriptures based on the mystical interpretation of words, these
commentators identify the moon goddess as the Virgin Queen, or Elizabeth I. As a result, Shakespeare's
references to the lunar divinity could be understood as an homage to the existing cult of Queen Elizabeth.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Essays
What Fools They Be—An Analysis of Puck and Bottom
Puck and Bottom are the two fools of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck is a fool in the traditional sense of
the word—it is his job to entertain Oberon, the fairy king, with his tricks and jokes. Bottom, however, is a fool
in the contemporary sense of the word, as his stupidity often gets in the way of what he is trying to
accomplish. However, both characters, despite their "foolishness," serve practical functions in the play and
also make several intelligent observations about life and love.
Bottom is the first of the fools to appear in the play. We first meet Bottom in Act I, scene ii, when the
"mechanicals" (the tradesmen who plan to put on a play for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta) are first
beginning to plan their performance. Although Peter Quince is the stage manager of the play, Bottom quickly
takes over and offers more than his share of advice. Bottom begins by telling Quince how to call the roll and
how to organize the actors. He then proclaims the play, Pyramus and Thisby, to be "a very good piece of work
... and a/merry," although he is not even familiar enough with the play to recognize Pyramus' role (ll.13-14).
All of this demonstrates an important aspect of Bottom's character: he is often full of good advice, but he has
no idea how to use it. Bottom is also convinced that he is a superb actor and can act any part. In fact, he
becomes so excited about his acting prowess that he volunteers to take on every part in the play. By the end of
the scene, it is clear that the mechanicals are hopelessly incapable of putting on a good play, and Bottom only
complicates the situation further.
Puck makes his entrance into the play in the next scene, Act II, scene i. It is Puck who explains the fight
between Titania and Oberon, and his speech helps the fairy he is talking to recognize him. The fairy, who
knows Puck's reputation, goes on to list just a few of Puck's pranks:
... [Y]ou are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm? (ll. 33-39).
Puck cheerfully admits to all of these tricks and more. He also states that he plays these tricks, in part, to
entertain Oberon and "make him smile" (l. 44). It is this obedience to Oberon and his desire to play tricks on
humans that lead Puck to gather the "love-in-idleness" flower whose juice creates the love spell that
complicates the play.
Puck's desire to entertain both himself and his king as well as follow Oberon's orders is what causes the main
complications of the play, and it is also what leads him to his encounter with his human fool counterpart,
Bottom. It is Oberon's command that makes Puck use the love juice on Lysander, who Puck mistakenly
believes is the "Athenian" to whom Oberon is referring to in Act II, scene i. While doing so, Puck
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Essays
63
demonstrates his sympathy for Hermia, who, unbeknownst to Puck, does not need it:
This is he (my master said)
Despised the Athenian maid;
And here the maiden, sleeping sound
On the dank and dirty ground.
Pretty soul, she durst not lie
Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy,
Churl, upon thy eyes I throw<
All the power this charm doth owe... (ll. 72-70).
Although he is following his master's orders, Puck does indeed feel pity for Hermia, even though she is only a
mortal. Puck, then, is more than just a "knavish sprite"—he is loyal and does have pity on occasion.
Puck has no sympathy, however, for foolish mortals. When Puck and Bottom encounter each other in Act III,
scene i, the "smart" fool, Puck, wins. Bottom begins this scene in much the same manner as Act I, scene ii: he
is bossy and pretends to know more about acting and staging than he can actually demonstrate. Because of
Bottom's foolishness in this scene, Puck cannot resist playing a trick on him—Puck gives Bottom the head of
an ass. Shakespeare drives the irony of this trick home with Bottom's reactions to his friends' exclamations:
Snout: O bottom, thou art changed. What do I see on thee?
Bottom: What do you see? You see an ass-head of your own, do you? [Exit Snout]
Quince: Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated. [Exit]
Bottom: I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of me... (ll.104-108).
Bottom makes several more references to being an ass, even going so far as to note that his face has become
very hairy, but because he is a fool, he never realizes that he is, indeed, an ass. Puck's trick has an additional
benefit when Titania awakes to Bottom's terrible singing and falls instantly in love with him because of the
potion. Puck's delight in trickery and Bottom's stupidity combine in this scene, then, to further the action of
the play as well as to provide some extra comedy.
Puck's tricks do not always turn out so well, however. In Act III, scene ii, Oberon discovers that Puck has
used the love juice on the wrong Athenian. As Puck points out to his master throughout the scene, Lysander
should have seen Hermia first, which would not have altered his feelings at all. Puck does not know that
Lysander first sees Helena while under the influence of the spell. Puck also reminds Oberon that the only
description given to Puck was that the man wears "Athenian garments," which Lysander, as a native of
Athens, wears. Oberon complicates the situation further by ordering Puck to find Helena and then using the
love juice on Demetrius. Puck's desire to trick humans creeps back out at this point, and he is determined to
enjoy the problems that the love triangle between Demetrius, Lysander, and Helena will cause. Oberon,
however, realizes that the situation will become violent, and orders Puck to prevent any battle between
Demetrius and Lysander. Oberon also orders Puck to apply the remedy to the love juice to Lysander so that
the couples can go back to Athens and live "happily ever after." Puck, who is not foolish enough to anger his
king, reminds Oberon that day is quickly approaching, and then goes off to follow his master's instructions.
Although he plays foolish tricks to entertain Oberon, Puck is no fool—he knows what must be done, and he
does so.
Bottom, on the other hand, is still a fool by the time his experience in the woods has ended. He does manage
to make an intelligent comment about Titania's love for him in Act III, scene i. When Titania swears her love
for the transformed Bottom, he replies:
What Fools They Be—An Analysis of Puck and Bottom
64
Methinks, mistress, you should have little
reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and
love keep little company together nowadays. The more
the pity that some honest neighbors will not make them
friends (ll. 129-133).
After this insightful statement, Bottom gloats in his own ability to make clever remarks. Despite this
"cleverness," Bottom never figures out what has happened to him. When he awakens in Act IV, scene i, he
thinks he must have had a vision, as there is no possible way that he could have become an ass. His friends,
who are no smarter than Bottom, then spend half of the next scene lamenting their friend, who, in their
opinion, most certainly would have performed brilliantly for Theseus' nuptial celebration. The comic idiocy of
Bottom and his friends is epitomized in the Pyramus and Thisbe performance, but Theseus has mercy on the
mechanicals.
Once the play is "notably discharged," Puck comes to "clean up" after the play. The fairies have come to
Theseus' palace to bless the married couples, which will make amends for the problems they have caused.
Puck is featured one last time in the epilogue to the scene, where he tells the audience that if they do not enjoy
the play, they should think of it as nothing more than a dream. If the audience does enjoy the play, they should
give Puck "their hands," or applaud. Thus Puck is cleaning up for more than just the fairies in this last
speech—he cleans up for the entire play as well. Both of the fools are necessary to this play. Puck's tricks and
his obedience to Oberon make Oberon's goals and the happiness of the lovers possible. Bottom's silliness
provides for comedy for both the characters in the play and the audience, and it is his transformation that
enables Oberon to obtain the Indian boy from Titania. Puck, Oberon's fool, and Bottom, the fool of the play,
both provide comedy and intelligent observations, which make them an integral part of A Midsummer Night's
Dream.
Love's Course in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Romantic love appears in several different ways in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hermia and Lysander
demonstrate young love, while Helena's love is that of desperation. Demetrius' love is fickle. Theseus gains
his "love," Hippolyta, as a trophy of war. Titania and Oberon, married for ages, inflict pain and trickery on
each other regularly. While there is no one common definition of love that suits all of the characters, the
romantic relationships in this play all comply to one simple rule laid out by Lysander in Act I—the course of
true love does not run smooth.
The first romantic couple in the play is Theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus' opening lines in the play demonstrate
his impatience for his wedding day to come. However, Theseus and Hippolyta do not have a "normal"
courtship. When Theseus defeated the Amazons, he took Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, as one of the spoils of
the war. Taking a member of a conquered royalty as a wife was a common practice in European wars, and it is
not, therefore, unusual that Theseus decides to take Hippolyta for his wife. This, however, creates two
problems for Hippolyta. Not only does she have to marry the man who is responsible for the defeat of her
people, but also, as an Amazon, Hippolyta is devoted to the goddess Diana and had intended to lead a chaste
life. Because of the loss to Theseus, Hippolyta must sacrifice her lifestyle and her throne. Although he has no
regard for Hippolyta's sacrifices, he does not seem to hold any ill will towards his fiancée:
Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling (ll. 16-19).
Love's Course in A Midsummer Night's Dream
65
Although Theseus does not intend to treat Hippolyta badly, he does not seem to hold a great deal of respect
for her opinion, either. When Hippolyta and Theseus discuss the lovers' story in Act V, scene i, Hippolyta
notes that even though the story is too fantastic to believe, all four lovers give the same information. Theseus,
however, is still convinced that the events in the woods are nothing more than an "antique fable" (l. 3).
Theseus shows his disregard for Hippolyta's opinion once again in Act V, scene i. Theseus, determined to hear
the mechanicals' play, ignores the Philostrate's warning that no one will like it. Hippolyta tells Theseus that
she cannot stand to watch the play if it is going to be wretched, and reminds Theseus that the Philostrate has
already warned him that it would be. Theseus overrules her by declaring that the sincerity of the mechanicals
and the duties of kindness and respect dictate that they watch the play. Of course, both Hippolyta and the
Philostrate are correct—the play comes off terribly, and the lovers and Hippolyta ridicule the mechanicals
throughout the performance. Even Theseus stops the mechanicals before the epilogue. While the marriage of
Theseus and Hippolyta will succeed in the sense that they will most likely not divorce each other, the lack of
love and respect between them will not lead to a happy relationship.
The next romantic situation that appears in the play begins badly as well. Hermia and Lysander, who are in
love with each other, cannot be together because of the wishes of Hermia's father, Egeus, who wants his
daughter to marry Demetrius. Athenian law gives Egeus the right to "dispose of her" as he pleases, and if
Hermia does not marry Demetrius, she can be put to death. Egeus believes that the love Hermia bears for
Lysander is nothing more than the product of witchcraft because Lysander has written Hermia love poems,
serenaded her, and sent her many romantic presents. Egeus cannot conceive of the idea that his daughter has
her own feelings that will not be dictated by his direction. Thus, to Egeus, love is simply the product of
flattery and attention, and he has no regard for it. Theseus does offer Hermia another option—the life of a
priestess of Diana, goddess of chastity, which is ironic considering that he took this option away from
Hippolyta. Because Hermia is "made bold" by her love for Lysander, she states that she would rather be a nun
than let her father dictate who she will love. Once Theseus, Egeus, and Demetrius leave, Lysander calms
Hermia by reminding her that true love is destined to encounter obstacles. Hermia then realizes that these
problems must then be borne with patience. For Hermia and Lysander, love means overcoming problems, but
they both know that love can do so. After this realization, Lysander creates the plan that will allow the two of
them to marry and be happy (without sacrificing any money, either).
Egeus and Demetrius are not the only obstacles, however, to the happiness of Hermia and Lysander. In Act II,
scene ii, Puck mistakenly uses the love juice on Lysander, and the love Lysander has sworn to Hermia
suddenly dissipates in favor of the spell. It is important to note that although Hermia and Lysander have a
strong, passionate, and physical love (as is evident when Hermia tells Lysander to sleep farther away from her
so that she can keep her modesty before their wedding), their love is by no means invincible because the love
potion overpowers it. The fact that true love cannot conquer all is an important theme in the play. Other
factors always mitigate love, whether it is the desires of others (Egeus), the laws of the land, or magical
powers. In order for true love to succeed, these problems must be acknowledged and overcome.
In no other relationship is the need to deal with outside problems and people more evident than in that of
Helena and Demetrius. Although Helena and Demetrius had once been betrothed, Demetrius breaks his oath
to Helena and pursues Hermia. The first obstacle that this couple must overcome, then, is attraction to others.
Demetrius, however, succumbs to this first problem and spurns Helena. At this point, Helena's love becomes
obsession. She needs to be near Demetrius, even though he says mean and spiteful things to her at every turn.
She even betrays the trust of her best friend, Hermia, in order to gain his attention, despite the fact that if
Hermia and Lysander are successful in their elopement, Demetrius will not be able to wed Hermia. Because of
love, Helena has no pride, no loyalty, and no reason. When Helena regains these feelings due to Lysander's
declarations of love and Demetrius' change of heart (both due to the potion), she is free of her obsession and
can have a healthy romantic relationship again.
Love's Course in A Midsummer Night's Dream
66
The last pair of lovers who appear in the play are the king and queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania. They
differ from the other couples in the play not only in that they are immortal, but that they have been married for
some time. Oberon and Titania have been married so long, in fact, that they have had several affairs and care
more for their individual comfort and feelings than they do for their spouse. Their relationship has recently
become a power struggle over an Indian boy who is the child of Titania's deceased priestess. Although Titania
tries to make Oberon understand why she is keeping the child, Oberon is so determined to obtain the boy that
he is willing to use the love potion to humiliate his wife into giving him the child. In this relationship, power,
lust, and greed are the outside forces that have affected the love of Titania and Oberon, and they have chosen
to follow their own desires instead of attempting to overcome the problems.
Due to a well-timed trick from Puck, Oberon gets his wish. Titania, under the influence of the love potion,
falls in love with Bottom, who has the head of an ass because of Puck's spell. Like Helena, Titania spoils her
love, no matter what idiotic statement Bottom may have to offer. However, Titania is under a spell, while
Helena dotes by choice. Eventually Oberon does take pity on his queen (after she gives him the boy), and
releases her from the spell. Not quite content with his revenge, Oberon makes certain that Titania knows she
has not been dreaming by showing her that she was, indeed, in love with an ass. However, in an effort to
create peace and harmony, Oberon suggests that they reconcile and bless the human lovers.
A Midsummer Night's Dream centers on love and loving, but it offers very few answers as to how to have a
successful romantic relationship. Power, selfishness, and obsession clearly cause problems, but healthy love
has problems, too. Helena notes the problems with love in Act I, scene i:
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled (ll. 232-239).
Because most of the characters in this play are so consumed by their love, they do not see the reality around
them. It is only when the problems of the real world are successfully dealt with that true love can triumph.
The World of Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream and
Elizabethan England
One of the most noticeable and entertaining elements of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is the
presence of the fairies. Titania, Oberon, Puck, and the attendant fairies all affect the human beings in the
woods, and provide glimpses into the fairy realm. Although Shakespeare applies several important aspects of
the Elizabethan belief in fairies to A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare alters the conception of fairies
not only within the context of the play, but for all time.
Fairies in Elizabethan England were of the same basic size and shape as humans. People were often mistaken
for fairies because the size of a fairy was thought to be that of a short human, so there would be no noticeable
difference in physical size. Since Elizabethan fairies looked like humans, they, of course, did not have wings.
Elizabethan folk also thought that fairies were beautiful and of dark complexion, which reflected their
association with wickedness. They often dressed in green due to their association with nature. Shakespeare,
who was of course familiar with these ideas of fairies, presents the fairies of A Midsummer Night's Dream as
beautiful and associated with nature, but this is where the physical similarities to Elizabethan folk beliefs
The World of Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Elizabethan England
67
ends. In the play, Shakespeare describes his fairies as tiny creatures with wings, and this is the first time in
literature that fairies are described in this manner. It is not the last, as the poets and playwrights of his time
adopted Shakespeare's diminutive description of fairies.
Shakespeare also alters the Elizabethan conception of the identity and behavior of fairies. One of the most
striking aspects of Elizabethan fairy behavior was that fairies were linked closely with the home and the farm.
Elizabethan fairies loved cleanliness enough to reward humans for keeping their homes clear of dirt and
clutter, and they often punished messy people. They also needed humans for beef, bread, drink, and bath
water, which people, fearful of fairy wrath, willingly supplied. What fairies wanted most, however, was milk
and cream. Because of this, fairies were often associated with the dairy industry, and were frequently
possessed herds of cattle because of their fondness for dairy.
Fairy reward and retribution was often swift and significant because of their wickedness. The Elizabethans
thought that fairies either were fallen angels, the souls of dead humans, or beings without souls that existed
between Heaven and Hell. Because of this supernatural status, fairies had magical powers that they put to use
for their own benefit. When humans followed fairy dictates, fairies were known to cure diseases, bring an
abundance of food (including fairy bread, which was considered to be nearly divine), clean houses, protect,
bring fortune, and tell the future. However, the foolish mortals who did not appease the fairies could suffer a
variety of punishments. The most popular fairy punishment was pinching, which often left victims with blue
bruises all over their bodies. Fairies were also known to create changelings (babies who were born one gender
and changed to the other), to abduct both children and adults, blight crops, destroy livestock, and bring
disease. The "commoners" of the Elizabethan period were afraid of fairies and tried to appease them. This
representation of fairies as malicious beings is quite different from A Midsummer Night's Dream, where
fairies are harmless sprites who may play tricks on humans, but eventually help them without being bribed to
do so. Titania cares for the Indian boy out of love for her priestess, and Oberon orders Puck to resolve the
Athenians' love situation without any kind of reward. Both rulers even bless the bridal beds at the end of the
play. This beneficence is a far cry from the fear-inspiring fairies to which Shakespeare's Elizabethan
audiences were accustomed.
One aspect of fairies that Shakespeare left intact was their enjoyments. Shakespeare's fairies in A Midsummer
Night's Dream enjoy dancing and music, which was the favorite pastime of the fairies of Elizabethan folklore.
Fairies were thought to dance in fairy circles, which humans were forbidden to see. Any person spying on
fairy circles would be punished by pinching. Shakespeare's correlation of fairies to night is also consistent
with the folklore of his time. Although the fairy "hours" were midnight and noon and fairies were occasionally
known to work magic in the day, the main time for fairies was night. Fairies were also active in the summer,
and not known to appear after All Hallows' Eve (Halloween). Shakespeare is consistent with this idea of "fairy
time" in the play.
Shakespeare departs again from the Elizabethan conception of fairies, however, when it comes to the
characterizations of his fairies. While the idea of Oberon as the fairy king was familiar to the Elizabethans, the
name of Titania for the fairy queen was not. Titania's name was probably taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis,
which describes the fairy queen in a similar vein to the moon goddess Diana. Despite this difference, Titania's
train is consistent with the folklore—her time is from midnight to sunrise, she and her fairies sing and dance,
she has jewels, and she has possession of a changeling. Shakespeare does add flowers to Titania's image,
which had not been previously associated with fairies. It should be noted that although Oberon was a familiar
name to the Elizabethans, the fairy queen was considered to be the reigning monarch of the fairies. Oberon's
character in the play appears to be consistent with the folklore in the beginning, but changes significantly by
the end of the play. When Oberon and Titania meet, Oberon's anger over Titania's refusal to give him the
Indian boy has caused Oberon to take his frustrations out on the weather and on the humans around him. He
also wants to use the love juice in order to make Helena run away from Demetrius. This lack of regard for
mortals is exactly what the Elizabethans would have expected from the fairy king. By the end of the play,
The World of Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Elizabethan England
68
however, Oberon orders Puck to cure Lysander while leaving Demetrius under the love spell. Oberon has
changed from the stereotypical fairy into a benevolent one for no reason other than to avoid any further
conflict.
Another difference in the depiction of fairy characters is Robin Goodfellow, or Puck. Robin Goodfellow was a
familiar figure to the Elizabethans. His laugh, sense of humor, and reputation as a prankster made him a
popular folk character. He was not, however, a fairy, because his tricks were never fatal. Only practical jokes
and humorous accidents were attributed to him. Robin Goodfellow was also a spirit of the home, and was
often depicted with a candle and a broom because he loved to clean houses as a reward for bread and cream.
(This is the reason why he is shown with a broom at the end of the play). While Shakespeare maintains Robin
Goodfellow's mischievous personality, he completely changes some significant facets of his character. As
mentioned previously, Robin Goodfellow was not a fairy. Shakespeare not only makes him a fairy in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, but he also makes him Oberon's jester and servant. The change of Robin
Goodfellow's name to Puck is also significant. A "puck" is a devil, not a joker, which directly contrasts Robin
Goodfellow's character not only in Elizabethan folklore but in the play as well. Robin has no interest in the
humans in the play other than for sport, and he has no association with the home save for carrying the broom.
Although A Midsummer Night's Dream marks Robin Goodfellow's first appearance on the English stage, only
his sense of humor and prankish nature remain from the famous figure of Elizabethan folklore.
Shakespeare, then, transforms the whole conception of "fairy" from wicked tricksters to harmless "shadows."
Robin highlights this transformation in the epilogue to the play:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended.
That you have but slumb'red here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream (V, i, ll. 412-417).
For the first time, fairies are no longer to be feared but dismissed as nothing more than a dream. Because of
the beauty of the fairy imagery and the immense popularity of both Shakespeare and the play, Shakespeare's
literary contemporaries perpetuated his descriptions of fairies given in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The fact
that we now see fairies as tiny, harmless creatures with wings and magical powers that live in the woods is
due to this play. Although Shakespeare gives prominence to the Elizabethan folk belief of fairies by
highlighting them in the play, he changes the popular idea of fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream from
wicked spirits to shadows and dreams, a transformation which lasts to this day.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Criticism
Overviews
Wolfgang Clemen
[Clemen provides a general introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream, identifying and analyzing the play's
historical background, language, themes, dramatic structure, characterization, and literary significance.
Remarking that the transitory nature of love is the principal theme of the play, this critic praises
Shakespeare's masterful use of language, particularly images representing the contrast of light and darkness,
to suggest the atmosphere of a fantastic dream world. Shakespeare's language, Clemen maintains, is not only
remarkably visual but also possesses a certain musical quality, clearly discerned in repetitive patterns of
sounds and effects. Not only is A Midsummer Night's Dream a great comedy, the critic concludes, but it also
offers, using the device of the play-within-the-play, profound insights into the limitations of dramatic art.]
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Criticism
69
A study of Shakespeare's development as a dramatic artist shows that one of his supreme achievements during
his "middle period" consists in combining heterogeneous elements in a single play. The dramas of
Shakespeare's predecessors all exist on a smaller scale, mostly adhering to one particular type and keeping
within more limited resources of style and subject matter. However, even in his very first comedies, The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, and Love's Labor's Lost, we see Shakespeare widening the
scope of the dramatic genre to which these plays belong and introducing new elements taken over from other
sections of the literary tradition of the past. A Midsummer Night's Dream, then, which must have been written
about 1595, combines for the first time totally disparate worlds into one unified whole; the sharp contrasts
brought together there would have destroyed the play's balance in the hands of any lesser playwright. For,
indeed, it required Shakespeare's genius to bring together Bottom and Puck, the crude realism of the artisans
and the exquisite delicacy of the fairy world, the stylized and pointed repartee of the Athenian lovers and the
dignified manner of Theseus and Hippolyta. What we find are contrasts on many levels, exemplified by
diversified means. Yet Shakespeare strikes an equilibrium between these contrasts, reconciling and fusing the
discordant factors within the organic body of his comedy. A Midsummer Night's Dream, therefore, not only
exhibits bold contrasts and divergent elements of plot, atmosphere, and character; it also illustrates the
unifying power of the spirit of comedy and the poetic imagination. We further find that the play's unity is
reinforced by a subtle technique of counterpoint and juxtaposition, a skillful contrasting of different strands of
plot, and the creation of an atmosphere full of illusion, wonder, and strangeness, all of which facilitate the
many transitions occurring during the course of the play.
Some facts about its origin and title may help us better to understand the particular nature of the play. A
Midsummer Night's Dream is clearly related to the practices of midsummer night, the night before June 24,
which was the date of St. John the Baptist's festival and hence connected with merry-making, various
superstitions and folk customs, dances, pageants, and revels. More than any other night in the year,
midsummer night suggested enchantment and witchcraft, something which Shakespeare has superbly
embodied in his fairy world. To an Elizabethan audience, moreover, the play's title would have immediately
called to mind the so-called "midsummer madness," which was a state of mind marked by a heightened
readiness to believe in the delusions of the imagination that were thought to befall the minds of men after days
of great summer heat. Thus, by means of his highly suggestive title, Shakespeare has firmly planted the
dream-like action of his drama in the popular beliefs and customs of his time. Furthermore the title gives
theatergoers and readers a clue as to how the work should be understood—namely, as an unrealistic creation of
the imagination, a series of dream images containing all the contradictions and inconsistencies that dreams
normally possess, but containing too their symbolic content Indeed, the dream-like character of what takes
place is repeatedly alluded to. In Puck's epilogue, for instance, the audience themselves are explicitly
addressed:
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend ...
[V. i. 427-29]
In short, the play's title makes significant allusion to the nature and meaning of the work, though it makes no
reference to the period of time during which the events of the drama occur. In fact, the action takes place
between April 29 and May 1, the latter date, being that of May Day, demanding of course particular
celebrations, and for that reason it is perhaps a suitable day for the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta.
Now the wedding of the princely pair is not only the destination of the action; it is also the occasion for which
the play itself was written. A Midsummer Night's Dream was undoubtedly intended as a dramatic
epithalamium [a bridal song] to celebrate the marriage of some aristocratic couple. (The attempts made to fix
on a definite historical marriage, however, must remain conjectural.) Plays written for such festive occasions
addressed themselves to an aristocratic audience. They were mostly performed on private stages rather than in
Overviews
70
public theaters and revealed an entirely different style of performance from the popular dramas. The
relationship of A Midsummer Night's Dream to the court masque—something which Act V, Scene i, line 40
draws attention to—also comes in here. The masques formed a central part of the entertainments that were
always given at court celebrations, and several noticeable features in A Midsummer Night's Dream clearly
relate to the genre of the court masque. The music and dances, the appearance of fairy-like creatures
possessed of supernatural qualities, the employment of motifs involving magic and metamorphosis, and the
vigorous stylization and symmetrical structure of some parts do indeed remind one of the court masque.
Finally, the scenes with Bottom, Quince, and company may be compared to the anti-masque, which formed
the burlesque and realistic counterpart performed together with the masque itself.
In referring to the masque, one is only pointing out a single aspect of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We must
also remember that Shakespeare has similarly taken over stylistic and formal elements from his own early
comedies, popular drama, the romantic play, and the mythological dream plays of John Lyly. Shakespeare has
tapped many sources, but he has nevertheless been able to create an original and independent form of drama
that includes skillful organization of plot—involving the manipulation of three subplots that run parallel to one
another—as well as a rich suffusion of the whole by both the atmosphere of nature and that of magic. Between
a descriptive and retrospective kind of dramatic method and one that makes us see the process of things in
action Shakespeare has struck a perfect sense of balance.
A study of the interrelation of the four plots reveals how their contrasts, juxtapositions, and dovetailing help to
disclose the meaning of the drama. The play begins with a scene between Theseus and Hippolyta, who do not
appear again until Act IV. In Act V their wedding is celebrated. The plot involving Theseus and Hippolyta can
therefore be styled an "enveloping action" that provides the play with a definite framework and a firmly
established temporal scaffolding; it stands outside the world of dream, enchantment, and love entanglements,
suggesting the sphere of everyday reality out of which the events of the drama first develop and to which they
then ultimately return. The section in Scene i with Egeus, Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius relates the
Theseus-Hippolyta plot to that of the lovers, for Theseus himself appears as arbitrator in the love dispute and
it will be on his wedding day that the harsh verdict he passes on Hermia is to take effect, should she not have
changed her mind by that date. This verdict is the cause of Hermia and Lysander's decision to flee into the
wood near Athens, so that with this the events of the second and third acts have already been determined. The
comic subplot, moreover, beginning in Scene ii with the gathering of the artisans to prepare themselves for
rehearsal, is also announced in Scene i, insofar as we learn of the entertainments to be presented on Theseus'
wedding day. Theseus' promise to woo Hippolyta "With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling" [I. i. 19] can
also be understood as an allusion to the dramatic entertainments that are to come later. From the very
beginning, then, our expectations are raised in connection with the wedding day, which is to bring with it the
artisans' play, the decision regarding the love dispute between the Athenian couples, and the festive marriage
of Theseus and Hippolyta.
If this were all that Shakespeare had given us, we would have had a comedy little different from his early
ones. The plot connected with the fairies, however, with Oberon and Titania at its center, not only brings
considerable complications into the course of the above-mentioned matters, but also adds to the whole drama
a new feature that Shakespeare had never employed before. For the supernatural, which intervenes in the
activities of the characters, turns their intentions upside down, and directs their actions. It is the fairies who
are responsible for the confusion, and also for the final reconciliation, thus substituting enchantment and
arbitrariness for the lovers' own responsibility and power of will. Yet these influences also have repercussions
on the fairies themselves, because Titania thereby falls in love with the ass-headed Bottom.
Thus the world of the fairies is linked with that of the artisans, and we get those incomparably comic
situations that are themselves the outcome of the fairies' intervention. Finally, a link between the plots dealing
with the fairies and Theseus emerges in the conversation between Oberon and Titania in which the fairy
rulers' earlier connections with Theseus and Hippolyta are recalled; and this is a moment that accelerates the
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pair's mutual jealousy and estrangement.
Since the fairies remain always invisible to the other members of the dramatis personae (only Bottom is
ironically allowed the privilege of seeing Titania), and their deeds are accomplished without the knowledge of
the other characters, Shakespeare has been able to achieve a highly dramatic effect of "double awareness." We
as audience are aware of Puck's magic juice and therefore look forward with pleasure to what might develop.
We know even more than the usually omniscient Oberon, who does not realize till some time later the
confusion that Puck has caused by mistake. This error on Puck's part bears deeper significance, for it shows
that even the fairies can err and that the influences they exert as supernatural agents in the play do not in the
least answer to anything providential, but rather contain filaments of arbitrariness, self-deception, and folly.
An insight into the peculiar nature of the fairy world in A Midsummer Night's Dream helps us to understand
the entire play, for although the fairies certainly possess supernatural qualities, they are nevertheless closely
linked to the world of mankind and have their share of human frailties. Their capriciousness and irrationality,
indicate which forces and qualities Shakespeare wanted us to see as conditioning and influencing human love
relationships; for the haphazard and arbitrary game that love plays with the two Athenian couples appears as a
projection of the irrationality, irresponsibility, and playfulness characterizing the nature of the fairies
themselves. However, the fairies not only make other people behave in a way that corresponds, as it were, to
their own fairy natures; they also strengthen and reinforce people's latent tendencies. Previous to the fairies'
intervention, we learn from Demetrius that he has loved Helena before bestowing his affections on Hermia [I.
i. 106-07, 242-43]; it is not for nothing that he is termed "spotted and inconstant man" [I. i. 110].
Shakespeare has interspersed his text with numerous illuminating hints referring to the fairies' peculiar traits
of character and sphere of existence, so that we are able to get a vivid picture of the type of creatures they are.
Although the world of the fairies exhibits several characteristics common to popular belief and folklore
tradition, it is to a considerable extent a new creation of Shakespeare's own. This is particularly true when we
think of Puck, whose descent from Robin Goodfellow or Hobgoblin, as he is called by one of the fairies when
he first appears [II. i. 34,40], only accounts for one aspect of his being. If one examines the numerous
statements that Puck utters about himself and that the other characters utter about him, one immediately
realizes that Shakespeare has created a complex dramatic figure to whom is assigned a key position within the
fabric of the play. Not only is Puck the comically rough and earth-bound goblin with his mischievous pranks,
blunt speech, and intervention in day-to-day affairs; he is also a spirit closely linked with the elements, having
command over supernatural powers and capable of moving at incredible speed. As "Oberon's jester" he is
close to the fools of Shakespeare's later comedies, enjoying his own jests and possessing the gift of sharp,
critical observation. Keeping this last point in mind, we see that Shakespeare has assigned him the role of
spectator several times during the course of the play, and as such he comments on the action and aptly
characterizes the people taking part. Hence it is he who, in view of the confusion he has caused among the
lovers, cries out:
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
[II.ii. 114-15]
Thus Puck becomes the interpreter of the play's dramatic situations and intermediary between stage and
audience as he places himself at a distance from events that have depended on and been influenced by him,
and to which in the epilogue, significantly spoken by him, he is able to look back, as from a higher vantage
point. Indeed, it is remarkable how many motives determining the play's action derive from Puck, how many
invisible wires he holds in his hand. Yet his interventions in the development of the plot are as much the result
of a casual mood or mischievous whim as they are the result of premeditated instructions from his master,
Oberon. This is shown, for instance, in the case of Bottom's transformation in the first scene of Act III. It is a
paradox of the dramatic action that Oberon's well-meaning intention is turned into its opposite through Puck's
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mistake [Lysander, instead of Demetrius, is anointed with the magic herb], so that the activity of the
supernatural forces seems to be largely conditioned by error and coincidence. Still, it is precisely this
fickleness and inconstancy of fate that Puck acknowledges in his laconic answer to Oberon when the latter
reproves him for the mistake: "Then fate o'errules ... "[in. ii. 92]. With these words Puck gives utterance to a
basic motif in the drama.
It has often been stressed that in A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare wanted to portray the irrational
nature of love, the shifting and unstable "fancy" that continually falls prey to illusion, regards itself as being
playful and short-lived, and is accompanied by a certain irresponsibility; whereas in Romeo and Juliet, written
during the same period, love appears in quite a different shape, as a fateful and all-consuming force making
claims to absolute authority and demanding that the whole of the self be yielded up to it.
But Shakespeare makes clear to us in several ways that the love between the Athenian couples is not rooted in
actuality. Puck's magic juice, operating as a supernatural medium, is of course only one of the means by
which Shakespeare places the relationships of the four Athenian lovers outside of reality. The love
entanglements occur during a night full of dreams and enchantment, of which only an imprecise picture
afterward remains in the memory of those concerned. Furthermore, it is undoubtedly the poet's deliberate
intention (contrary to his practice in other plays of the same period) that the lovers should be so weakly
characterized that it is impossible for us to retain them in our memory as real and differentiated human beings.
We may likewise take it for granted that their symmetrical grouping and their appearance in pairs is the result
of conscious stylization on Shakespeare's part. And if the style of their dialogues, together with the handling
of the verse, often seems to be flat, trite, and frankly silly, this neither signifies Shakespeare's lack of skill nor
justifies the contention that passages have been left in from an earlier version of the same play. Rather it gives
evidence that Shakespeare intended the four lovers to be just what they are, puppets and not fully realized
characters. Even the spectator to those scenes of confusion in the wood soon has no idea where he is or who
precisely is in love with whom.
Above all, however, the dream-like atmosphere of such scenes accentuates our feeling that the four lovers
appear to be quite removed from any criteria applicable to reality. "The willing suspension of disbelief" that
[Samuel Taylor] Coleridge designated as one of the poet's chief aims Shakespeare achieves by creating a
world of illusion that manifests itself from the first scene onward. Dream world and reality merge
imperceptibly, so that the persons concerned are not sure themselves in which sphere they move, nor whether
what they have experienced has been imagination or truth. The idea that what has happened has been a dream,
illusion, or "vision" is often expressed from various standpoints by the characters themselves. "Dream" is a
key word in the drama, and the idea that everything is based on imagination is given frequent and subtle
variation. The art with which Shakespeare shifts from the dream world to reality is unique. This is evident in
the first scene of Act IV, where both the lovers and Bottom are depicted as awaking out of their dreams—a
scene in which all four plots are brought together for the first time, whereby the mind of the spectator is made
to see the boundaries separating them as being simultaneously nonexistent and yet firmly fixed. Finally, as if
in a series of flashbacks, the incidents that have occurred during the night of dreams are lit up once again from
a distance by means of Theseus' famous speech describing "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet" as being "of
imagination all compact" [V. i. 7-8]. These words refer once more to that faculty which lies behind not only
dreams, but the poet's own creations as well and under whose spell we, as spectators, have been kept during
the whole course of the play; for we too have been enchanted, responding eagerly to the call of the poetry and
accepting the play as an organism that conforms to its own rules, a world where strange and real things mingle
in a curious way.
The illusion of a dream sequence scurrying past is also enhanced by a sense of the forward surge of time. Not
only is the passing of night into morning given expression through the shifting movement of light and dark
within a series of superb images and subtle allusions: the impatience and longing with which the different
characters look forward to the future are perceptible from the very start, thus making time flow in an
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anticipatory way. Again, the language of the play is rich in images and expressions indicating quick
movement, lightness, and transitoriness, thereby contributing to the over-all atmospheric impression. How
delicately and accurately the play's particular atmosphere, together with its theme and leitmotifs, is rendered
from the very beginning, an examination of the first scene of the play alone would show, although we can
permit ourselves only a few observations here.
The very first exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta conveys to us a two-fold awareness of time, from the
standpoint of which we contemplate a time span that culminates in the wedding day, the date of which is fixed
immediately at the outset. This emerges when Hippolyta's "Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; /
Four nights will quickly dream away the time" [L i. 6-8] is contrasted with Theseus' "... but, O, methinks, how
slow / This old moon wanes!" [I. i. 3-4]. During this initial dialogue Shakespeare skillfully puts us in tune
with the moonlit scenes that follow by means of Theseus' comparison of the "old moon" with "a stepdame, or
a dowager / Long withering out a young man's revenue" [I. i. 4-6]. In this scene alone "moon" and "night"
each occur five times, "dream" three times. The lines just quoted also suggest the aristocratic world of the
court, where a part of the action is to take place. A further element is introduced when, immediately
following, we read these instructions to Philostrate:
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments,
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth ...
[I. i. 13-14]
Yet the entry of Egeus immediately afterward, leading in his daughter Hermia and, "full of vexation,"
bringing accusations against Lysander because the latter "hath bewitched the bosom of (his) child" |cf. I. i.
22-3], ushers in the radically contrasting note of discord, deception, and trickery, something that is never
missing in any Shakespearean comedy and is always present as an undercurrent In A Midsummer Night's
Dream; for the final state of harmony reached at the end of the play both in the world of the fairies and that of
the court turns out to be a resolution of previously opposed forces, a reconciliation attained after former
estrangement, and "the concord of this discord" [V. L 60).
The main theme of the drama—namely, the transitoriness and inconstancy of love—is also anticipated in this
first scene when Lysander describes love as:
... momentary as a sound.
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collled night.
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!"
The jaws of darkness do devour It up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
[I. i. 143-49]
This passage is illuminating because it shows how Shakespeare not only bodies forth the themes and motifs of
his drama in terms of action, but also gives them expression through imagery. In no other play of
Shakespeare's middle period do we find so much poetry and verse melody, or indeed nature imagery, with its
references to plants, animals, and other natural phenomena; nature itself even enters the drama as a
participating agent alongside the characters. A Midsummer Night's Dream should therefore be apprehended as
poetry and music, and not only be absorbed and endorsed by the eye and intellect as a connected series of
actions. For the play's language, by means of its images, its subtle allusions and suggestions, its verbal
repetitions and rhythmic patterns, has built up a complex and finely varied tissue of ideas, impressions, and
associations that constantly act on our powers of imagination and stimulate them to participate. The great
range and delicacy of impact that poetic drama possesses, as opposed to prose drama, can be perfectly
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witnessed in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The degree to which the language, with its proliferation of allusions, ironies, and ambiguities, creates the
over-all dramatic effect is made clear by those prose scenes with the artisans, where the lyrical and poetic are
completely lacking. Apart from suggesting a wealth of gestures, the language used by Bottom and company is
rich in implications and evokes delightful misunderstandings; it gives expression to the artisans' ludicrous
ambition for higher things as well as to their rustic limitations. All this gives rise to that constant incongruity
which is the prerequisite for great comedy—the incongruity existing between the basic natures of the
characters and their pretensions. The scenes with Bottom, Quince, and company provide a comic and realistic
contrast to the poetry of the fairies and the artificial and stylized love scenes of the Athenians. Thus the
delicacy, polished bearing, and lightness inherent in all other sections of the play are counter-balanced by the
uncouthness, the heavy solidity of everyday life, and a naive roughness that the artisans bring into the magical
fairy world of the moonlit scenes. Puck, the shrewd onlooker, at one stage justly calls them "hempen
homespuns." But Shakespeare has made far more out of this anti-masque than a merely amusing subplot filled
with clown-like figures; during the course of the play one of them has come to be the most unforgettable
character in the entire drama. For the lack of vitality and pronounced individuality noticeable in the other
personages we are fully recompensed in Bottom, who has justly been described as the greatest comic creation
in the dramatist's early work. Abundantly endowed with remarkable qualities, Bottom is continually putting
himself in a comic light. There are no features of his character that at one point or another do not lead to some
ridiculous situation, some unforgettable moment of contrast or unintentionally provoked comparison.
Bottom's supreme satisfaction with himself and his sense of ease remain with him even in his transformed
state, while his stage ambitions (he wants to play the part of the lion as well as that of Pyramus, Thisby and
the tyrant) parody the profession of acting and yet at the same time form a characteristic trait that fits him
remarkably well. That his ambitions are fulfilled even before the Pyramus and Thisby drama takes place,
insofar as Bottom has to play the parts of both ass and lover, is significant, just as is the marked irony that
Bottom alone, out of all the persons in the play, is permitted to come into contact with the fairies—though this
encounter does not impress him in the least or signify for him any unusual experience. In Titania's presence he
discards nothing at all of his own personality; the ass's head, which with other people would have resulted in
monstrous caricature, in his case is something that illuminates for us his real nature.
If the story of the craftsmen forms a satirical counter-balance to the plot of the lovers, then it is also true to say
that the drama of Pyramus and Thisby initiates a two-fold, even three-fold kind of awareness. For what we get
in this parody of the love tragedy is an exaggerated depiction of the four lovers' sentimentality, their
highflown protestations of love, and their pseudo-solemnity—a depiction in the form of a flashback that they
themselves are now able to contemplate as spectators, serenely calm and reconciled with one another. The
lovers' own relationships have likewise been a play that the fairies have found highly amusing, and these
entanglements parallel the quarrel between Oberon and Titania, the quarrel from which the confusion among
the lovers originated.
"The play within the play," superbly worked out by Shakespeare, makes us particularly aware that the entire
drama has indeed been a "play," summoned into life by the dramatist's magic wand and just as easily made to
vanish. When Puck refers in the first line of his epilogue ("If we shadows have offended" [V. i. 423]) not
merely to the fairies, previously termed "shadows," but also to all the actors who have taken part, we realize
that Shakespeare is once more making it clear to us that we have been watching a "magic-lantern show,"
something where appearance, not reality, is the operative factor.
It is peculiarly ironic that Bottom, Quince, and company perform the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisby as an
auspicious offering on behalf of the newly established love union, thereby, one might say, presenting the
material of Romeo and Juliet in a comic and grotesque manner. Thus an exaggerated form of tragedy is
employed so that the preceding scenes may be parodied as comedy. The play of Pyramus and Thisby parodies
not only the torments of love, which the Athenian lovers can now look back on with serene calmness, but also
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the Senecan style of Elizabethan tragedy with its melodrama and ponderous conventions. Shakespeare
parodies these conventions here by means of exaggeration or clumsy and grotesque usage—the too explicit
prologue, for instance; the verbose self-explanation and commentaries; the stereotyped phrases for expressing
grief; and the excessive use of such rhetorical devices as apostrophe, alliteration, hyperbole, and rhetorical
question.
Even the elements of comedy and parody in the Pyramus and Thisby performance appear in a two-fold light.
Though they themselves are being mocked, the lovers smile at these awkward efforts on the part of the
craftsmen, and Theseus even adds a highly suggestive commentary.
In the craftsmen's play, Shakespeare is also parodying the whole life of the theater. He calmly takes the
shortcomings of all theatrical production and acting, drives them to absurd lengths, and holds them up for
inspection. The lantern, which is supposed to represent the moon, makes us conscious of how equally
inadequate Pyramus and Thisby are in their roles and suggests that such inadequacy may time and again have
made its appearance on the Elizabethan stage. For those Elizabethan playgoers who viewed a play
superficially, without using their own powers of imagination, much in Shakespearean drama must have
remained completely unintelligible. It is at such narrow-minded theatergoers as these that Shakespeare is
indirectly poking fun. And he enables us to see the limitations of his own stage, which had to portray a large
world and create atmosphere without the elaborate scenery and technical equipment that we have today.
But the very inadequacy of the artisans' production gives emphasis to the true art of dramatic illusion and
magic, as we have witnessed it in the preceding scenes, in which the evocative power of Shakespeare's
language, assisted by our imagination, enables us to experience moonlight and nighttime in the woods.
Theseus himself makes this point when, in answer to Hippolyta's remark, "This is the silliest stuff that ever I
heard," [V. i. 210] he says: "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination
amend them." [V. i. 211-12]. (pp. xxiii-xxxvii)
Wolfgang Clemen, in an introduction to A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, edited by
Wolfgang Clemen, New American Library, 1987, pp. xxiii-xxxvii.
Jack A. Vaughn
[Vaughn outlines the narrative composition of A Midsummer Night's Dream and presents a summary of the
plot. Characterizing the comedy as an eminently poetic work, this critic discusses Shakespeare's language,
with particular attention to eye imagery, such as the blindness of love, which "suggests and reinforces
thematic concerns about love, the principal subject of the comedy." He then provides a brief historical
overview of memorable productions of Shakespeare's play, focusing on Peter Brook's famous 1970 rendition.
According to Vaughn, "through the visual austerity and actor-centered focus of his production, Brook was
able to redirect the audience's attention to Shakespeare's text—to its lyricism, its imagery, its fantasy."]
One could hardly imagine a more unlikely combination of comic plot materials than that of classical Greek
mythology, English fairy lore, Italianate love intrigue, and Elizabethan amateur theatricals. Yet that is
precisely the melange that Shakespeare concocted in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the play that most critics
agree is his first wholly satisfactory comedy.
The virtue of the piece lies partly in Shakespeare's successful blending of disparate plot elements into a
unified whole, and partly in the poetic advances that he made here over his four previous comedies. In A
Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare wove the threads of four distinct actions into a tapestry of magical
enchantments and courtly festivity, creating a complexity in multi-plotting far greater than that of any of his
earlier comedies. And in its verse and imagery he achieved a successful union of poetry and drama—a
considerable advancement over, for example, the mannered formalism and self-conscious badinage of Love's
Labor's Lost.(p. 61)
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The impending marriage of the Athenian King Theseus to the Amazon Hippolyta constitutes the first thread of
plot, one that forms a framing action for the entire play ... The opening and closing scenes of A Midsummer
Night's Dream are dominated by the royal couple. Theseus' first-act decree that Hermia must comply with her
father's wishes and marry Demetrius, against her will, causes the lovers' plot of Acts II-IV to come about. It is
in order to escape the parental and royal edicts that Hermia and Lysander, followed by Demetrius and Helena,
flee to the enchanted wood where they fall under the influence of the "watery moon" and the fairies' spell.
It is generally accepted that Shakespeare wrote this comedy in celebration of some noble marriage, although
critics cannot agree on exactly which one. Thus, Theseus and Hippolyta serve as surrogates for the noble
couple before whom the work is being played. They stand largely outside the action; the events of the plot
happen for them, rather than to them. Therefore, after the opening scene we do not see them again until Act
IV. They reappear only after all the confusions, transformations, and love madness have been set aright, and
they preside over the play-within-a-play of "Pyramus and Thisbe" in Act V. Because A Midsummer Night's
Dream, like Love's Labor's Lost, was played before a courtly audience, the play-within-a-play is once again a
royal-entertainment-within-a-royal-entertainment.
The setting of our play, then, is technically ancient Athens, but this is (as in so many of Shakespeare's
"period" plays) of little consequence. Their names notwithstanding, the characters are, throughout, thoroughly
English. This is especially true of the fairies, whose actions constitute a second major thread of the plot.
The fairies—principally King Oberon, Queen Titania, and Robin Goodfellow (called Puck)—derive from native
English folklore. They control the action of the play once it shifts to the enchanted wood, and their activities
serve as the adhesive that binds the four subplots together. This is not to say, however, that they lack direct
involvement or are themselves immune from magic. Titania—charmed into loving an ignorant weaver with the
head of an ass—is as much a victim of enchantmerit as Lysander and Demetrius. Still, the fairies, particularly
Oberon and Puck, exercise almost complete control over the Athenian lovers.
It is precisely because we know that the fairies are in control that we are able to enjoy the confusions and
distress of the four lovers: Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena. If a supernatural, external force is
causing the entanglements, cannot it also untie them? Puck himself assures us, when the love madness is at its
most confusing state, that "Jack shall have Jill, / Nought shall go ill; / The man shall have his mare again, and
all shall be well" [III. ii. 461-63].
Puck is the most purely entertaining of the fairy band. His proper name, from traditional English fairy lore, is
Robin Goodfellow, "puck" being a generic term for a mischievous sprite. Robin Goodfellow was known as a
tricky but essentially harmless household spirit. At his first entrance, another fairy asks him:
Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
[III. i. 34-9]
And Puck replies:
Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night ...
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
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And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And "tailor" cries, and falls into a cough.
[II. i. 42-54]
Clearly, Robin Goodfellow evolved in fairy lore as a supernatural explanation for the many trivial mishaps
and accidents so commonplace in domestic living.
Puck is instrumental in the movement of the plot. It is he who mistakenly administers the love potion intended
for Demetrius to Lysander, thinking him the "disdainful youth" Oberon has described. This sets in motion the
love chain of cross-wooings that make up the central action of the comedy. It is also Puck who, out of pure
mischief, transforms Bottom into an ass.
In addition to his direct involvement in these plot complications, Puck serves as a raisonneur, or chorus
figure. He observes the love madness of the Athenians as an outsider and comments on their folly, sometimes
directly to the audience and sometimes to them through Oberon:
Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand;
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
[III. ii. 110-15]
The fairy king Oberon and his consort Titania, unlike Puck, maintain a certain royal bearing and dignity, the
exception being Titania's infatuation with the grotesque Bottom. They do not indulge in mischievous trickery,
although their magic is potent. We first see them engaged in a jealous quarrel, exchanging accusations of
infidelity. This lovers' altercation and their wrangling over possession of the "little changeling boy" [II. i. 120]
precipitate not only the enchantment of the Athenian mortals but also, as Titania states, a "progeny of evils"
[II. i. 115] in the natural world:
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock; ...
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
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The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
[II. i. 88-114]
It is in order to punish and torment Titania that Oberon drops the liquor of the "little western flower" [II. i.
166] on her eyes, effecting the enchantment that causes her to fall in love with the "translated" Bottom. This
flower, the same whose juices Puck mistakenly administers to Lysander, is thematically significant. Oberon
tells us that it came into being when Cupid once "loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow" [II. i. 159] at a
"fair vestal" but missed his target:
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound.
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
[II. i. 165-68]
It is the juice of love-in-idleness, then, that afflicts Lysander, Demetrius, and Titania (and indirectly Hermia,
Helena, and Bottom). "Idleness" to the Elizabethans was nearly synonymous with "madness," and it is love
madness that dominates the center of this comedy. Sudden passion and overwhelming desire replace rational
love, as when Titania dotes on Bottom or Lysander abruptly switches courtship from one lady to another.
The antidote to love-in-idleness is the juice of yet another flower, one that Oberon calls "Dian's bud" (Diana
being, of course, the goddess of chastity). When this antidote is applied to the eyes of the enchanted, their love
madness is dispelled. The night's "accidents" are remembered by the lovers as but "the fierce vexation of a
dream" [IV. i. 69]. Titania, cured of the "hateful imperfection of her eyes" [IV. i. 63], is reconciled to Oberon
and the two go with their fairy band to bless the nuptials at the Athenian palace.
The four lovers—and their chaotic night of love in idleness—constitute the third major thread of action in the
comedy. As in The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the source of these intrigues is
Italianate romance ... But in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare gave the material the ultimate in
complications, making Lysander's prophetic observation that "the course of true love never did run smooth"
[I. i. 134] the understatement of all time.
Quartets of lovers were to become commonplace in Shakespeare's comedies [Much Ado about Nothing,
Twelfth Night, and As You Like It to name a few), but we never again find the elaborate variations of
cross-wooing present here in our Athenian quartet. As the plot develops, we have five distinct states of affairs
in the love intrigues:
1. At some point before the play opens, Demetrius was betrothed to Helena, and Lysander and Hermia loved
each other.
2. As the play opens, Demetrius has shifted his affections and now loves Hermia, as does Lysander. Helena,
still in love with Demetrius, is forsaken.
3. In the wood, Puck mistakenly administers the love potion to the sleeping Lysander who awakes, sees
Helena, and falls in love with her. Now Lysander loves Helena and Demetrius loves Hermia—the
opposite of the original pairing or norm.
4. Oberon administers the potion to Demetrius who, awaking, sees Helena and falls in love with her. Now
both Demetrius and Lysander love Helena, and Hermia is forsaken—the reverse of situation 2.
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5. Puck administers the antidote to Lysander, who awakes and once more loves Hermia. Demetrius remains in
love with Helena, and the original pairings once again prevail, bringing the plot full circle.
It is somewhat atypical of Shakespeare that most of the plot complication is caused by an external force (the
juice of love-in-idleness) and that the four lovers are simply ignorant victims, unaware of the cause of their
distresses. But the force is a benevolent one, for although it makes the true lover (Lysander) love falsely it
also causes the false lover (Demetrius) to return to true love. Upon finally waking and beholding Helena,
Demetrius claims:
To her, my lord,
Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia:
But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food;
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will for evermore be true to it.
[IV. i. 171-76]
Demetrius and Helena are reunited; Theseus consents (for no apparent reason) to the marriage of Lysander
and Hermia; and three weddings are celebrated in the fifth act.
Obviously the three threads of action considered thus far reinforce one another in their "nuptials" themes. In
addition, the nuptial celebration extends beyond these three marriages to encompass the reconciliation of
Oberon and Titania, a kind of remarriage. It is fitting, then, that our fourth thread of action, that of the "rude
mechanicals," as Puck calls them, should deal with a love story: "The Most Lamentable Comedy, and Most
Cruel Death of Pyramus andThisbe" [I. ii. 11-12], enacted by "bully Bottom" and his band.
Shakespeare was undoubtedly well acquainted with the behind-the-scenes activities of amateur theatricals,
and his delight in spoofing them is obvious. In the performance by Bottom and the other "hempen
homespuns" he gives us a wonderfully entertaining subplot that provides most of the low comedy in A
Midsummer Night's Dream. So appealing are the mechanicals, in fact, that their plot was (and is, even today)
frequently extracted and performed as a playlet in its own right.
An amateur theatrical capped the closing scene of Love's Labor's Lost, but with "Pyramus andThisbe" we
enjoy not only the performance [V, i] but also the selection and casting of the script [I, ii] and a rehearsal [III,
i], including a hilarious discussion of stage props and settings.
Our amateur Thespians (Bottom the weaver, Quince the carpenter, Snug the joiner, Flute the bellows-mender,
Snout the tinker, and Starveling the tailor) choose for their play a love tragedy, a singularly inappropriate
choice for a wedding celebration. This "very tragical mirth" [V. i. 57] of the deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe
parodies Shakespeare's own Romeo and Juliet (written probably a year earlier) and serves as a ludicrous
counterpoint to the love entanglements of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Bottom the weaver is one of Shakespeare's finest clowns and a favorite with audiences whenever the play is
performed. His portrait had been lightly sketched before in Launce (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) and
Costard (Love's Labor's Lost). He serves, vis a vis the fairy spells and lovers' fantasies, as a touchstone of
prosaic reality. So lacking in creative imagination is this simple weaver that he transmutes the imaginative
(the theater) into the hopelessly literal—the reverse of A Midsummer Night's Dream's world. Bottom is the
antidote to the dream.
In preparing the play [III, i], Bottom cannot conceive of an audience's ability willingly to suspend its disbelief.
He fears that "the ladies cannot abide" [III. i. 11-12] Pyramus's killing himself and that the appearance of the
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lion will be "a most dreadful thing" [III. i. 31], the terror of which must be allayed by a prologue:
Nay, you must name his [the actor's] name, and half his face must be seen through the lion's
neck: and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect,—"Ladies,"—or
"Fair ladies,—I would wish you,"—or "I would request you,"—or "I would entreat you,—not to
fear, not to tremble: my life for yours ..." And there indeed let him name his name, and tell
them plainly he is Snug the joiner.
[III. 1. 36-46]
The play calls for a moon; Bottom wants to know if the moon will shine the night they play. When Quince
assures him that it will, the problem is solved:
Why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber window, where we play, open, and
the moon may shine in at the casement.
[III. i. 56-8]
It is Bottom's immunity to imagination that makes his transformation into an ass and subsequent encounter
with the Queen of the Fairies so amusing. He is the only mortal in the play who has converse with the fairy
world, and it doesn't faze him in the least. When his fellows run away in terror at his "translated" form, he
cannot conceive that he has changed; it must be a trick on their part:
Why do they run away?
This is a knavery of the in to make me afeard ...
I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me;
to fright me, if they could.
[III. i. 112-13, 120-21]
He is singularly unimpressed with Titania's overtures of love toward him; he might as well be chatting with
the village milkmaid. His introduction to her fairy attendants—Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and
Mustardseed—occasions only some feeble jokes upon their names. They are of use to him only for scratching
his hairy face and bringing him some hay. Presented with a unique opportunity to commune with the fairy
world, he addresses himself to the supernatural as though it were the commonplace, just as he denigrates the
fantasy world of the theater with practical considerations and reality.
It is ironic that Bottom is the only one of the enchanted mortals who remembers his transformation. Upon
awaking in the morning [IV, i], the four lovers can barely recall how they came to be in the enchanted wood,
but Bottom seems to have a distinct, if unsettling, impression of his "dream":
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it
was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no
man can tell what Methought I was,—and methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if
he will offer to say what methought I had.
[IV. i. 204-10]
For Bottom, clearly, the strange is best not tampered with.
The language of A Midsummer Night's Dream is richly varied and laden with imagery. The dialogue of its
royal personages—Theseus, Hippolyta, Oberon, and Titania—is blank verse, although Oberon speaks in rhyme
when discussing magical subjects. Puck's spells are cast in a sing-song verse form, usually trochaic tetrameter.
Nearly all of the Athenian lovers' lines are rhymed, occasionally quite artificially so. The effect of this,
especially at the height of enchantment and cross-wooing, is to prevent us from taking matters too seriously.
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The mechanicals speak prose, but their playlet is cast in doggerel and sing-song rhymes that parody medieval
romance.
A Midsummer Night's Dream represents Shakespeare's initial achievement, in comedy, in creating and
sustaining patterns of poetic imagery that enhance the meaning and mood of the play. Although the subject of
imagery here deserves extended treatment, a single example must suffice.
Beginning with the opening scene, an image cluster based upon eyes, looking, and seeing is established.
Loving Lysander against her father's will, Hermia protests, "I would my father look'd but with my eyes" [I. i.
56], to which Theseus replies, "Rather your eyes must with his judgement look" [I. i. 57]. Later in the scene,
Hermia despairs of her father's preference for Demetrius: "O hell! to choose love by another's eyes" [I. i. 140].
Helena describes Hermia's eyes as "lode-stars." And Hermia tells Lysander that they must "from Athens turn
away our eyes" [I. i. 218] and "starve our sight / From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight" [I. i. 222-23].
This eye imagery continues throughout the play in various forms. According to a count by Ralph Berry [in his
Shakespeare's Comedies], the word "eye" (including compounds and plurals) occurs sixty-eight times in the
play, "see" is used thirty-nine times, and "sight" appears ten times.
The eye imagery suggests and reinforces thematic concerns about love, the principal subject of the comedy.
Put most simply, "Love is blind." But on a more complex level, the eyes are treated as the betrayers of
judgment and of the rational. Conventionally, of course, love enters through the eyes, but in this comedy it is
usually false love—love-in-idleness. Potions and antidotes are squeezed onto the eyes of the sleepers, causing
them to see "with parted eye, / When every thing seems double" [IV. i. 189]. Even Titania cannot "see" how
ugly Bottom is.
In the first four acts of this comedy, love is a disordered condition of the imagination—a sort of romantic
astigmatism. It is so, of course, because the flight to the wood and its fairy world is a retreat from the rational
and ordered world of the Athenian court, where parental and societal authority prevails. When morning comes
and all the characters return to Athens, order is again restored and each lover returns to the correct beloved.
Each lover now "sees" clearly. It is largely through the use of imagery like this that Shakespeare embodied in
the language of A Midsummer Night's Dream its thematic concerns about love, natural order, rational
judgment, and creative fantasy.
Possibly because of its intense appeal to the imagination, A Midsummer Night's Dream has been one of
Shakespeare's more successful comedies on the stage, particularly in modern times. It was fashionable in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to play the work in adapted form. A 1661 version, for example, utilized
only the mechanicals' plot, as a "droll" or light entertainment called "The Merry Conceited Humours of
Bottom the Weaver." David Garrick turned A Midsummer Night's Dream into a full-scale opera in 1755, with
some twenty songs and with lavish scenic spectacle.
Shakespeare's original text was more or less restored to the stage by Charles Mathews in his 1840 production,
the one that introduced Felix Mendelssohn's famous overture to the play. Other notable nineteenth-century
mountings of the comedy were those of Samuel Phelps (who played Bottom) at Sadler's Wells in 1853, of
Augustin Daly in New York in 1887, and of F. R. Benson in 1889. All of these productions, typical of their
time, emphasized lavish scenic spectacle, pageantry, and music in an attempt to render Shakespeare's
extravagant fantasy through concrete, visual opulence of the most literal kind.
In our own century there have been two productions worth noting here for their opposing approaches to the
realm of poetic fantasy. Max Reinhardt staged the play a number of times, leading to his 1935 film version for
Warner Brothers. Reinhardt, in both the stage and the film versions, took literalism as far as it could go,
trusting nothing to the imagination. Dozens of gossamer fairies with glittering wings skipped about on golden
moonbeams, through a lush and detailed forest to an Athenian palace rivaling the Parthenon. Unfortunately,
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much of Shakespeare's text was cut and what poetry remained seemed only to interfere with the visual effects.
Reinhardt was as scrupulous in his approach to the magic of A Midsummer Night's Dream as Bottom was in
rendering the true tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe.
The other version earned world-wide critical acclaim as a breakthrough in Shakespearean stage production. It
was staged by Peter Brook for the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1970 and
subsequently toured America. Brook stripped away all preconceived notions about fairies and fantasy,
throwing out production tradition accumulated over some three hundred years, and rendered his Athenian
world in singularly Spartan terms. His setting was a pure white rectangular room with cushions for the actors
to sit upon and ropes and trapezes for them to climb; his lighting was white, bright, and constant; his fairies
wore uniforms suggesting jogging suits; and supernatural effects were replaced by full emphasis upon the
actors' voices and bodily movements, which included calisthenics and gymnastics.
Through the visual austerity and actor-centered focus of his production, Brook was able to redirect the
audience's attention to Shakespeare's text—to its lyricism, its imagery, its fantasy. Therein lay his success. If
there is magic in A Midsummer Night's Dream (and decidedly there is), it is the magic not of let's-pretend
sprites prancing about in gauze-and-glitter fairy suits, but of the English language, raised by the fertile
imagination of its greatest poet to full suggestive power. (pp. 62-76)
Jack A. Vaughn, "The Comedies: 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'," in his Shakespeare's Comedies, Frederick
Ungar Publishing Co., 1980, pp. 61-76.
Gender and Sex Roles
Shirley Nelson Garner
[Describing A Midsummer Night's Dream as similar to a fertility rite, Garner discusses the sexual,
psychological, and social implications of Shakespeare's comedy. More than a simple celebration of erotic
love, the play, Garner maintains, reflects certain attitudes characteristic of male-dominated societies. For
example, a woman's entire existence, particularly her sexual and emotional life, is controlled by a powerful
male figure, as illustrated by Egeus's almost incestuous possessiveness toward his daughter Hermia. Further,
the extent of a woman's sexual and emotional freedom, Garner argues, is determined by male desire. Thus
conventional heterosexual love flourishes only if certain conditions, determined by the male protagonists, are
satisfied. For example, a woman must sever all her emotional ties with other women to assuage her husband's
fears of possible rejection. As Garner concludes, "the male characters think they can keep their women only if
they divide and conquer them. Only then will Jack have Jill; only then will their world flourish."]
More than any of Shakespeare's comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream resembles a fertility rite, for the
sterile world that Titania depicts at the beginning of Act II is transformed and the play concludes with high
celebration, ritual blessing, and the promise of regeneration. Though this pattern is easily apparent and has
often been observed, the social and sexual implications of the return of the green world have gone unnoticed.
What has not been so clearly seen is that the renewal at the end of the play affirms patriarchal order and
hierarchy, insisting that the power of women must be circumscribed, and that it recognizes the tenuousness of
heterosexuality as well. The movement of the play toward ordering the fairy, human, and natural worlds is
also a movement toward satisfying men's psychological needs, as Shakespeare perceived them, but its cost is
the disruption of women's bonds with each other. Regeneration finally depends on the amity between Titania
and Oberon. As she tells him, their quarrel over possession of an Indian boy has brought chaos, disease, and
sterility to the natural world:
And this same progeny of evils
from our dissension;
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83
comes
From our debate.
We are their parents and original.
[II. i. 115-17]
The story of the "lovely boy" is told from two points of view, Puck's and Titania's. Puck tells a companion
fairy that Oberon is "passing fell and wrath" [II. i. 20] because Titania has taken as her attendant "a lovely
boy, stolen from an Indian king" [II. i. 23]; he continues:
She never had so sweet a changeling.
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild.
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy.
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But they do square, that all the elves for fear
Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.
[II. i. 23-31]
Shortly afterward, when Oberon tells Titania that it is up to her to amend their quarrel and that he merely begs
"a little changeling boy" [II. i. 120] to be his "henchman," she retorts, "Set your heart at rest. / The fairy land
buys not the child of me" [II. i. 121-22]. Then she explains the child's origin, arguing her loyalty to the child's
mother to be the reason for keeping him:
His mother was a vot'ress of my order,
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossiped by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood;
When we have laughed to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following—her womb then rich with my young squire
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again.
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.
[II. i. 123-37]
Both accounts affirm that the child has become the object of Titania's love, but the shift in emphasis from one
point of view to the other is significant. Puck describes the child as "stolen from an Indian king" [II. i. 22],
whereas Titania emphasizes the child's link with his mother, her votaress. Puck's perspective, undoubtedly
close to Oberon's, ignores or suppresses the connection between Titania and the Indian queen, which, in its
exclusion of men and suggestion of love between women, threatens patriarchal and heterosexual values.
Titania's attachment to the boy is clearly erotic. She "crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy" [II.
i. 27-8], according him the same attentions as those she bestows on Bottom when, under the spell of Oberon's
love potion, she falls in love with the rustic-turned-ass. She has "forsworn" Oberon's "bed and company" [II. i.
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62]. Whatever the child is to her as a "lovely boy" and a "sweet" changeling, he is ultimately her link with a
mortal woman whom she loved. Oberon's passionate determination to have the child for himself suggests that
he is both attracted to and jealous of him. He would have not only the boy but also the exclusive love of
Titania. He needs to cut her off from the child because she is attracted to him not only as boy and child, but
also as his mother's son. Oberon's need to humiliate Titania in attaining the boy suggests that her love for the
child poses a severe threat to the fairy king.
Puck's statement that Oberon wants the child to be "knight of his train" [II. i. 25] and Oberon's that he wants
him to be his "henchman" have led some critics to argue that the fairy king's desires to have the boy are more
appropriate than the fairy queen's. Oberon's wish to have the boy is consistent with the practice of taking boys
from the nursery to the father's realm so that they can acquire the character and skills appropriate to manhood.
But Puck describes Oberon as "jealous," and his emphasis on the "lovely boy," the "sweet" changeling, and
the "loved boy" [II. i. 23-7] suggests that Oberon, like Titania, is attracted to the child. There is no suggestion
that Oberon wants to groom the child for manhood; he wants him rather "to trace the forests wild" [II. i. 25]
with his fairy band. Those critics who attribute moral intentions to Oberon, arguing for his benevolent motives
in taking the boy from Titania, overlook that Oberon has no intention of returning him to his father, with
whom he, as a human child, might be most properly reared. When we last hear of the boy, Titania's fairy has
carried him to Oberon's "bower" [IV. i. 61].
Oberon's winning the boy from Titania is at the center of the play, for his victory is the price of amity between
them, which in turn restores the green world. At the beginning, Oberon and Titania would seem to have equal
magical powers, but Oberon's power proves the greater. Since he cannot persuade Titania to turn over the boy
to him, he humiliates her and torments her until she does so. He uses the love potion not simply to divert her
attention from the child, so that he can have him, but to punish her as well. As he squeezes the love flower on
Titania's eyes, he speaks a charm—or rather a curse—revealing his intention:
What thou see'st when thou dost wake,
Do it for thy truelove take;
Love and languish for his sake.
Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,
Pard, or boar with bristled hair,
In thy eye that shall appear
When thou wak'st, it is thy dear.
Wake when some vile thing is near.
[II. 11. 27-34]
When Puck tells him that Titanla is "with a monster in love'' [III. ii. 6], he is obviously pleased: "This falls out
better than I could devise" [III, ii. 35].
Though the scenes between Titania and Bottom are charming and hilarious, Titania is made ridiculous.
Whereas her opening speech is remarkable for its lyric beauty, and her defense of keeping the Indian boy has
quiet and dignified emotional power, now she is reduced to admiring Bottom's truisms and his monstrous
shape: "Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful" [III. i. 147]. However enjoyable the scenes between her and
Bottom, however thematically satisfying in their representation of the marriage of our animal and spiritual
natures, Titania, free of the influence of Oberon's love potion, says of Bottom, "O, how mine eyes do loathe
his visage now!" [IV. i. 79]. By his own account, Oberon taunts Titania into obedience; he tells Puck:
See'st thou this sweet sight?
Her dotage now I do begin to pity:
For, meeting her of late behind the wood,
Seeking sweet favors for this hateful fool,
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85
I did upbraid her, and fall out with her.
For she his hairy temples then had rounded
With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;
And that same dew, which sometime on the buds
Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flouriet's eyes,
Like tears, that did their own disgrace bewail.
When I had at my pleasure taunted her,
And she in mild terms begged my patience,
I then did ask of her her changeling child;
Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent
To bear him to my bower in fairy land.
And now I have the boy, I will undo
This hateful imperfection of her eyes.
[IV. i. 46-63]
Oberon gains the exclusive love of Titania and also possession of the boy to whom he is attracted. But his
gain is Titania's loss: she is separated from the boy and, in that separation, further severed from the woman
whom she had loved. Oberon can offer ritual blessing at the play's end because he has what he wanted from
the beginning: Titania obedient and under his control and the beautiful Indian boy in his bower.
Like the fairy king, the two men in power in the human world, Theseus and Egeus, want to attain the
exclusive love of a woman and, also, to accommodate their homoerotic desires. In order to do so, they, like
Oberon, attempt to limit women's power, and their success or failure to do so affects their participation in the
comic world.
The opening of A Midsummer Night's Dream puts Hippolyta's subjugation in bold relief as Theseus reminds
his bride-to-be:
Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.
[I. i. 16-19]
Capturing Hippolyta when he defeated the Amazons, Theseus has abducted her from her Amazon sisters to
bring her to Athens and marry her. Though most directors play Hippolyta as a willing bride, I once saw San
Francisco's Actors' Workshop, following the cues of Ian Kott, bring her on stage clothed in skins and
imprisoned in a cage. The text invites such a rendering, for almost immediately it sets her apart from Theseus
by implying that she sides with Hermia and Lysander against Egeus and Theseus, when he sanctions Egeus's
authority. After Theseus tells Hermia to prepare to marry Demetrius or "on Diana's altar to protest / For aye
austerity and single life" [I. i. 89-90] and then beckons Hippolyta to follow him offstage, he undoubtedly
notices her frowning, for he asks, "What cheer, my love?" [I. i. 122]. Shakespeare heightens her isolation by
presenting her without any Amazon attendants.
Though Theseus is less severe than Egeus, he is, from the outset, unsympathetic toward women. The first
words he speaks, voicing the play's first lines and first image, must be taken as a sign: the moon "lingers" his
desires, he tells Hippolyta, "Like a stepdame, or a dowager, / Long withering out a young man's revenue" [I. i.
4-6]. He utterly supports Egeus as patriarch, telling Hermia:
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86
To you your father should be as a god,
One that composed your beauties; yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.
[Li. 47-51]
As a ruler, he will enforce the law, which gives Egeus control over Hermia's sexuality and embodies
patriarchal order. Though he has heard that Demetrius has won Helena's heart but now scorns her, and has
meant to speak to him about it, "My mind did lose it" [I. i. 114]. A lover-and-leaver of women himself, he
undoubtedly identifies with Demetrius and forgets his duty toward Helena. He exits inviting Egeus and
Demetrius to follow and talk confidentially with him, suggesting his spiritual kinship with them.
Whatever other associations Theseus had for Shakespeare's audience, he was notorious as the first seducer of
Helen. As early as Act II, Oberon recalls Theseus's reputation as a deserter of women. When Titania accuses
Oberon of infidelity, asking rhetorically why he was in Athens if not to see Hippolyta, "the bouncing Amazon,
/ Your buskined mistress and your warrior love" [II. i. 70-1], he accuses her of loving Theseus:
Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa?
[II. i. 77-80]
It is significant that the woman whom he at last will marry is not traditionally feminine. She has been a
warrior, and in her new role as the fiancee of the Athenian Duke, we see her as a hunter. Nostalgically, she
recalls her past experiences:
I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta.
Never did I hear Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
[IV. i. 112-18]
Her androgynous character appears to resolve for Theseus the apparent dissociation of his romantic life, the
sign of which is his continual desertion of women who love him.
Having found an androgynous woman, Theseus captures her and brings her home to be his wife. By
conquering and marrying this extraordinarily powerful woman, he fulfills his need for the exclusive love of a
woman while gratifying his homoerotic desires. Unlike Oberon, however, he finds satisfaction for his desires
merged in one person. If we imagine Hippolyta played by a male actor who, though cast as a woman, dresses
and walks like a man ("buskined mistress," "bouncing Amazon"), Hippolyta and Theseus must have looked
more like homosexual than heterosexual lovers; Hippolyta's androgynous appearance is further confirmed by
the fact that in Renaissance fiction and drama men were occasionally disguised as Amazons, e.g., lovers, like
Sidney's Zeknane, in the Arcadia, who wished to be near his lady. Hippolyta, like Viola and Rosalind in
disguise [in Twelfth Night and As You Like It], fulfills a male fantasy, and more happily so since she is not in
disguise. Because Theseus's romantic life is fortunately resolved once the young lovers have paired
themselves off anew, with Demetrius loving Helena, he can sanction their preferences and ignore Egeus's
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persistent demand that Hermia marry Demetrius.
By insisting that Hermia marry Demetrius, Egeus hopes to keep his daughter rather than lose her and to have
Demetrius near him as well. Shakespeare makes Egeus's motives suspect by creating him foolishly comic,
treating him more harshly than he does his other controlling and possessive fathers—Lear, Capulet [in Romeo
and Juliet], Brabantio [in Othello], Shylock [in The Merchant of Venice], Prospero [in The Tempest]. Unable
to make his daughter marry where he wishes, Egeus turns to the law to enforce his will. More outrageous than
Brabantio, he turns Lysander's courtship of his daughter into a series of crimes: Lysan-der has "bewitched the
bosom" of Hermia, "stol'n the impression of her fantasy," "filched" her heart [I. i. 27-36]. As Shakespeare
depicts the two lovers who compete over Hermia, he is careful to draw them so that Egeus's choice is
irrational and not in Hermia's best interests. Lysander states his case before Theseus:
I am, my lord, as well derived as he (Demetrius),
As well possessed; my love is more than his;
My fortunes every way as fairly ranked
(If not with vantage) as Demetrius';
And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am beloved of beauteous Hermia.
[I. i. 99-104]
Lysander continues to accuse Demetrius of making love to Helena, who now "dotes in idolatry, / Upon this
spotted and inconstant man" [I. i. 109-10]. His accusation is evidently founded, for Theseus confesses that he
has "heard so much" [I. i. Ill] and Demetrius does not deny it or defend himself. Later, Demetrius admits that
he was betrothed to Helena before he saw Hermia [IV. i. 172-73]. Egeus chooses badly for his daughter unless
he wishes to keep her for himself, as I think he does. By insisting that she marry a man whom she does not
love and one who may be unfaithful to her besides, if his present conduct is a gauge, Egeus assures that she
will always love her father; that she will never really leave him.
There are suggestions, as well, that Egeus has a particular affection for Demetrius. Shakespeare does not leave
us to assume that Egeus's preference for Demetrius is simply proprietary, i.e., since Hermia is his, he may give
her as he chooses; or that it is simply an affirmation of male bonding, like Capulet's demand that Juliet marry
Paris, "And you be mine, I'll give you to my friend" [Romeo and Juliet, III. v. 191]. Lysander's sarcasm
defines Egeus's feeling for Demetrius:
You have her father's love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.
[I. i. 93-4]
And Egeus immediately affirms:
True, he hath my love,
And what is mine, my love shall render him.
[I. i. 95-6]
Even after Demetrius has fallen in love with Helena, Egeus continues to pair himself with him. When the
lovers are discovered asleep in the forest coupled "right" at last and Lysander begins to explain what Theseus
calls their "gentle concord," Egeus urges:
Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough.
I beg the law, the law, upon his head.
They would have stol'n away; they would, Demetrius,
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Thereby to have defeated you and me,
You of your wife and me of my consent,
Of my consent that she should be your
[IV. i. 154-59]
Egeus would draw Demetrius back to him, realigning the original we against them.
Egeus, then, has hoped to have the exclusive love of Hermia and to accommodate his homoerotic feelings by
binding Demetrius to him. To give up Hermia and accept that Demetrius loves Helena would defeat him
doubly. Consequently, he leaves the stage unreconciled. Had it been left to him to affirm the comic resolution,
we would have none.
Whereas the separation of Hippolyta and Titania from other women is implied or kept in the background, the
breaking of women's bonds is central in the plot involving the four young lovers. Demetrius and Lysander are
divided at the outset, but the play dramatizes the division of Hermia and Helena. Furthermore, their quarreling
is more demeaning than the men's. And once Demetrius and Lysander are no longer in competition for the
same woman, their enmity is gone. Hermia and Helena, on the contrary, seem permanently separated and
apparently give over their power to the men they will marry. Once their friendship is undermined and their
power diminished, they are presumably "ready" for marriage.
Hermia's fond recollection of her long-standing and intimate friendship with Helena calls attention to Helena's
disloyalty, occasioned by the latter's desire to win Demetrius's thanks and to be near him. Telling her friend
that she intends to run away with Lysander, Hermia recalls:
And in the wood, where often you and
I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet.
[I. i. 214-17]
Just as Helena breaks her faith with Hermia to ingratiate herself with Demetrius, so later she will believe that
Hermia has joined with men against her. Deeply hurt, Helena chastizes Hermia:
Is all the counsel that we two have shared.
The sister's vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us—O, is all forgot?
All school days friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries molded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,
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To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly.
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.
[III. ii. 198-219]
In a scene that parallels in its central position Titania's wooing of Bottom, the rupture of their friendship
becomes final. They accuse and insult each other, with Hermia calling Helena a "juggler," "canker blossom,"
"thief of love," "painted maypole"; and Helena naming her a "counterfeit" and a "puppet" [III. ii. 282-96].
Their quarrel becomes absurd as it turns on Hermia's obsession, taken up by both Lysander and Helena, that
Lysander has come to prefer Helena because she is taller. Though no other women characters in Shakespeare's
plays come close to fighting physically, Hermia threatens to scratch out Helena's eyes [III. ii. 297-98]. Her
threat is serious enough to make Helena flee [III. ii. 340-43]. Lysander is made equally ridiculous in his
abrupt change of heart; yet he and Demetrius are spared the indignity of a demeaning quarrel and leave the
stage to settle their disagreement in a "manly" fashion, with swords. Even though Puck makes a mockery of
their combat through his teasing, they are not so thoroughly diminished as Hermia and Helena.
In the course of the play, both Hermia and Helena suffer at the hands of their lovers. Betrothed to Helena,
Demetrius deserts her for Hermia. When she pursues him, he tells her that she makes him sick [II. i. 212] and
threatens to rape her [II. i. 214-19]. By doggedly following him, she maintains a kind of desperate power over
him .... Consequently, he cannot sustain the image of the romantic rake, whose women pine and die, commit
suicide, or burn themselves on pyres when he leaves them. Disappointed in his love for Hermia, he cannot get
loose from Helena. Yet her masochism undercuts her power:
I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love—
And yet a place of high respect with me—
Than to be used as you use your dog?
[II. i. 203-10]
When Helena is in a position of positive power with both Lysander and Demetrius in love with her, she cannot
take advantage of it because she assumes that she is the butt of a joke. And of course, in a sense, she is right:
she is the victim of either Puck's prank or his mistake. Hermia must also bear Lysander's contempt. In the
forest, he insists that he "hates" her [III. ii. 270, 281] and calls her outrageous names: "cat," "burr," "vile
thing," "tawny Tartar," "loathed med'cine," "hated potion," "dwarf," "minimus, of hind'ring knotgrass made,"
"bead," "acorn" [in. ii. 260-64, 328-30]. While both women protest their lovers' treatment of them, neither can
play Beatrice to her Benedick [in Much Ado about Nothing]. Both more or less bear their lovers' abuses.
After the four lovers sleep and awaken coupled as they will marry, Hermia and Helena do not reconcile. Once
they leave the forest, they lose their voices. Neither of them speaks again. Recognizing that it is difficult for
an actor to be on stage without any lines, as Helena and Hermia are for almost all of Act V, Shakespeare was
undoubtedly aware that he was creating a portentous silence. Since Helena and Hermia are evidently married
between Acts IV and V, their silence suggests that in their new roles as wives they will be obedient, allowing
their husbands dominance.
The end of A Midsummer Night's Dream is as fully joyous as the conclusion of any of Shakespeare's
comedies. No longer angry with each other, Oberon and Titania bring blessing to the human world:
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Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place.
[V. i. 399-400]
Though Oberon calls up dark possibilities, he offers a charm against them. The prospect of love, peace, safety,
prosperity is as promising as it ever will be. The cost of this harmony, however, is the restoration of
patriarchal hierarchy, so threatened at the beginning of the play. This return to the old order depends on the
breaking of women's bonds with each other and the submission of women, which the play relentlessly exacts.
Puck's verse provides the paradigm:
Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again,
and all shall be well.
[fin. ii. 461-63]
If we turn to some of Shakespeare's comedies in which women's bonds with each other are unbroken and their
power is left intact or even dominates, the tone of the ending is less harmonious or even discordant. In The
Merchant of Venice, for example, where Portia is in control and she and Nerissa triumph over Gratiano and
Bassanio, there is no ritual celebration. Portia directs the scene and carefully circumscribes her marriage with
Bassanio to close out Antonio. When she and Nerissa reveal their identities as the doctor and the clerk, they
make clear their extraordinary power to outwit and deceive, calling up women's ultimate destructive power in
marriage and love—to cuckold. The final moments of the play move toward reconciliation, but not celebration.
The last line, a bawdy joke, is spoken by Gratiano, the most hate-filled character in the play, and reminds us
of men's fear of women and their need to control them: "While I live I'll fear no other thing / So sore, as
keeping safe Nerissa's ring" [V. i. 306-07].
In Love's Labor's Lost, where the women remain together and in control, there is no comic ending. Echoing
Puck, Berowne makes the point as he speaks to the King of Navarre:
Our wooing doth not end like an old play;
Jack hath not Jill. These ladies' courtesy
Might well have made our sport a comedy.
[V. ii. 874-76]
When the King replies, "Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, / And then 'twill end," Berowne
answers, "That's too long for a play" [V. ii. 872-76]. The refrains of the closing songs call forth images of
cuckolding and of "greasy Joan" stirring the pot.
The pattern of these comic endings suggests that heterosexual bonding is tenuous at best. In order to be
secure, to enjoy, to love—to participate in the celebration that comedy invites—men need to maintain their ties
with other men and to sever women's bonds with each other. The implication is that men fear that if women
join with each other, they will not need men, will possibly exclude them or prefer the friendship and love of
women. This is precisely the threat of the beautiful scene that Titania describes between herself and her
votaress. This fear may be based partially on reality, but it is also partially caused by projection: since men
have traditionally had stronger bonds with other men than with women and have excluded women from
participation in things about which they cared most, they may assume that women, granted the opportunity,
will do the same. Given this possibility or likelihood, Shakespeare's male characters act out of a fear of
women's bonding with each other and a feeling of sexual powerlessness. The male characters think they can
keep their women only if they divide and conquer them. Only then will Jack have Jill; only then will their
world flourish. (pp. 47-61)
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Shirley Nelson Garner, "'A Midsummer Night's Dream': 'Jack Shall Have Jill; /Nought Shall Go Ill'," in
Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1981, pp. 47-63.
Jan Kott
[In Kott's view, A Midsummer Night's Dream is the most erotic of Shakespeare's plays. Rejecting the
traditional interpretation of the play as a romantic love comedy, Kott focuses on the undercurrents of sexual
violence and bestiality which in many ways determine the protagonists' actions. Kott identifies the female
characters as the principal victims of sadistic sexual behavior, noting their masochistic tolerance of their
lovers' cruelty. The confused lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream, with their brusque shifts from one object
of affection to another, resemble exchangeable puppets. According to the critic, the protagonists are not
depicted as individuals in Shakespeare's play; rather, they are merely objects defined by their desires. What
seemed to be a night of love, Kott concludes, was really a nightmare for the protagonists. "But that night," he
adds, "liberated them from themselves. They were their real selves in their dreams."]
The Dream is the most erotic of Shakespeare's plays. In no other tragedy, or comedy, of his, except Troilus
and Cressida, is the eroticism expressed so brutally. Theatrical tradition is particularly intolerable in the case
of the Dream, as much in its classicist version, with tunic-clad lovers and marble stairs in the background, as
in its other, operatic variation, with flowing transparent muslin and rope-dancers. For a long time theatres
have been content to present the Dream as a Brothers Grimm fable, completely obliterating the pungency of
the dialogue and the brutality of the situations.
LYSANDER
Hang off, thou cat, thou burr!
Vile thing, let loose,
Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent!
HERMIA
Why are you grown so rude?
What change is this, Sweet love?
LYSANDER
Thy love? Out, tawny Tartar, out!
Out, loathed med'cinel
O hated potion, hence!
[III. ii. 260-64]
Commentators have long since noticed that the lovers in this love quartet are scarcely distinguishable from
one another. The girls differ only in height and in the colour of their hair. Perhaps only Hermia has one or two
individual traits, which let one trace in her an earlier version of Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost, and the later
Rosalind in As You Like It. The young men differ only in names. All four lack the distinctness and uniqueness
of so many other, even earlier Shakespearean characters.
The lovers are exchangeable. Perhaps that was his purpose? The entire action of this hot night ... is based on
the complete exchangeability of love partners. I always have the impression that Shakespeare leaves nothing
to chance. Puck wanders round the garden at night and encounters couples who exchange partners with each
other. It is Puck who makes the observation:
This is the woman; but not this the man.
[III. ii. 42]
Helena loves Demetrius, Demetrius loves Hermia, Hermia loves Lysander. Helena runs after Demetrius,
Demetrius runs after Hermia. Later Lysander runs after Helena. This mechanical reversal of the objects of
desire, and the interchangeabiliry of lovers is not just the basis of the plot. The reduction of characters to love
partners seems to me to be the most peculiar characteristic of this cruel dream; and perhaps its most modern
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quality. The partner is now nameless and faceless. He or she just happens to be the nearest. As in some plays
by [Jean] Genet, there are no unambiguous characters, there are only situations. Everything has become
ambivalent.
HERMIA
... Wherefore? O me! what news, my love?
Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?
I am as fair now as I was erewhile.
[III. ii. 272-74]
Hermia is wrong. For in truth there is no Hermia, just as there is no Lysander. Or rather there are two different
Hermias and two different Lysanders. The Hermia who sleeps with Lysander and the Hermia with whom
Lysander does not want to sleep. The Lysander who sleeps with Hermia and the Lysander who is running
away from Hermia. (pp. 218-20)
If Love's Labour's Lost, the transparent comedy about young men who determined to do without women, is
rightly considered to have been a play with a secret meaning to the initiated, how much more must this be true
of the Dream. The stage and auditorium [of its first performance] were full of people who knew one another.
Every allusion was deciphered at once. Fair ladies laughed behind their fans, men elbowed each other,
homosexuals giggled softly.
Give me that boy, and I will go with thee.
[II. i. 143]
Shakespeare does not show the boy whom Titania to spite Oberon has stolen from the Indian king. But he
mentions the boy several times and stresses the point. For the plot the boy is quite unnecessary. One could
easily invent a hundred other reasons for the conflict between the royal couple. Apparently the introduction of
the boy was essential to Shakespeare for other, non-dramatic purposes. It is not only the Eastern page boy who
is disturbing. The behaviour of all the characters, not only the commoners but also the royal and princely
personages, is promiscuous:
... the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love, ...
[II. i. 70-1]
The Greek queen of the Amazons has only recently been the mistress of the king of the fairies, while Theseus
has just ended his liaison with Titania. These facts have no bearing on the plot, nothing results from them.
They even blur a little the virtuous and somewhat pathetic image of the betrothed couple drawn in Acts I and
V. But these details undoubtedly represent allusions to contemporary persons and events.
I do not think it is possible to decipher all the allusions in the Dream. Nor is it essential. I do not suppose it
matters a great deal whether we discover for whose marriage Shakespeare hastily completed and adapted his
Midsummer Night's Dream. It is only necessary for the actor, designer, and director to be aware of the fact
that the Dream was a contemporary play about love. Both "contemporary" and "love" are significant words
here. The Dream is also a most truthful, brutal, and violent play. (pp. 220-22)
The metaphors of love, eroticism, and sex undergo some essential changes in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
They are completely traditional to start with: sword and wound; rose and rain; Cupid's bow and golden arrow.
The clash of two kinds of imagery occurs in Helena's soliloquy which forms a coda to Act I, scene i. The
soliloquy is about her intellectual capacities and for a while singles her out from the action of the play. It is
really the author's monologue, a kind of Brechtian "song" in which, for the first time, the philosophical theme
Gender and Sex Roles
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of the Dream is stated; the subject being Eros and Tanatos.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind
[I. i. 232-35]
(p. 223)
Starting with Helena's soliloquy Shakespeare introduces more and more obtrusively animal erotic symbolism.
He does it consistently, stubbornly, almost obsessively. The changes in imagery are in this case only an
outward expression of a violent departure from the Petrarchian idealization of love.
It is this passing through animality that seems to us the midsummer night's dream, or at least it is this aspect of
the Dream that is the most modern and revealing. This is the main theme joining together all three separate
plots running parallel in the play. Titania and Bottom will pass through animal eroticism in a quite literal,
even visual sense. But even the quartet of lovers enter the dark sphere of animal love-making:
HELENA
... I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel—spurn me, strike me, ...
[II. i. 203-05]
And again:
What worser place can I beg in your love ...
Than to be used as you use your dog?
[II. i. 208-10]
Pointers, kept on short leashes, eager to chase or fawning upon their masters, appear frequently in Flemish
tapestries representing hunting scenes. They were a favourite adornment on the walls of royal and princely
palaces. But here a girl calls herself a dog fawning on her master. The metaphors are brutal, almost
masochistic.
It is worth having a closer look at the "bestiary" evoked by Shakespeare in the Dream. As a result of the
romantic tradition, unfortunately preserved in the theatre through Mendelssohn's music, the forest in the
Dream still seems to be another version of Arcadia. But in the actual fact, it is rather a forest inhabited by
devils and lamias, in which witches and sorceresses can easily find everything required for their practices.
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blindworms, do no wrong,
Come not near our Fairy Queen.
[III. ii. 9-12]
Titania lies down to sleep on a meadow among wild thyme, ox-lips, musk-roses, violets, and eglantine, but the
lullaby sung by the fairies in her train seems somewhat frightening. After the creatures just quoted they go on
to mention long-legged poisonous spiders, black beetles, worms, and snails. The lullaby does not forecast
pleasant dreams.
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The bestiary of the Dream is not a haphazard one. Dried skin of a viper, pulverized spiders, bats' gristles
appear in every medieval or Renaissance prescription book as drugs to cure impotence and women's
afflictions of one kind or another. All these are slimy, hairy, sticky creatures, unpleasant to touch and often
arousing violent aversion. It is the sort of aversion that is described by psychoanalytic textbooks as a sexual
neurosis. Snakes, snails, bats, and spiders also form a favourite bestiary of Freud's theory of dreams. Oberon
orders Puck to make the lovers sleep that kind of sleep when he says:
... lead them thus
Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.
[III. ii. 363-65)
Titania's fairies are called: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed. In the theatre Titania's retinue is
almost invariably represented as winged goblins, jumping and soaring in the air, or as a little ballet of German
dwarfs. This sort of visual interpretation is so strongly suggestive that even commentators on the text find it
difficult to free themselves from it. However, one has only to think on the very selection of these names to
realize that they belong to the same love pharmacy of the witches.
I imagine Titania's court as consisting of old men and women, toothless and shaking, their mouths wet with
saliva, who sniggering procure a monster for their mistress.
The next thing then she, waking, looks upon
I Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull.
On meddling monkey or on busy ape.
She shall pursue it with the soul of love.
[III. i. 179-82]
Oberon openly announces that as a punishment Titania will sleep with a beast. Again the selection of these
animals is most characteristic, particularly in the next series of Oberon's threats:
Be it ounce or cat or bear,
Pard, or boar with bristled hair ...
[II. ii. 30-l]
All these animals represent abundant sexual potency, and some of them play an important part in sexual
demonology. Bottom is eventually transformed into an ass. But in this nightmarish summer night, the ass does
not symbolize stupidity. From antiquity up to the Renaissance the ass was credited with the strongest sexual
potency and among all quadrupeds was supposed to have the longest and hardest phallus. (pp. 224-27)
The scenes between Titania and Bottom transformed into an ass are often played for laughs in the theatre. But
I think that if one can see humour in this scene, it is the English kind of humour, "humeur noire" ["black
comedy"], cruel and scatological, as it often is in [the works of Jonathan] Swift.
The slender, tender, and lyrical Titania longs for animal love. Puck and Oberon call the transformed Bottom a
monster. The frail and sweet Titania drags the monster to bed, almost by force. This is the lover she wanted
and dreamed of; only she never wanted to admit it, even to herself. The sleep frees her from inhibitions. The
monstrous ass is being raped by the poetic Titania, while she still keeps on chattering about flowers:
TITANIA
The moon, methinks, looks with a wat'ry eye;
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,
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Lamenting some enforced chastity.
Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently
[III. i. 198-201]
Of all the characters in the play Titania enters to the fullest extent the dark sphere of sex where there is no
more beauty and ugliness; there is only infatuation and liberation. In the coda of the first scene of the Dream
Helena had already forecast:
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
[I. i. 232-33]
The love scenes between Titania and the ass must seem at the same time real and unreal, fascinating and
repulsive. They are to rouse rapture and disgust, terror and abhorrence. They should seem at once strange and
fearful.
Come, sit thee down upon this now'ry bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.
[IV. i. 1-4]
Chagall has depicted Titania caressing the ass. In his picture the ass is sad, white, and affectionate. To my
mind, Shakespeare's Titania, caressing the monster with the head of an ass, ought to be closer to the fearful
visions of Bosch and to the grotesque of the surrealists. (pp. 228-29)
The night is drawing to a close and the dawn is breaking. The lovers have already passed through the dark
sphere of animal love. Puck will sing an ironic song at the end of Act III. It is at the same time a coda and a
"song" to summarize the night's experiences.
Jack shall have Jill; Naught shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.
[III. ii. 461-63]
Titania wakes up and sees a boor with an ass's head by her side. She slept with him that night. But now it is
daylight. She does not remember ever having desired him. She remembers nothing. She does not want to
remember anything.
TITANIA
My Oberon, what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.
OBERON
There lies your love.
TITANIA
How came these things to pass?
O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!
[IV. i. 76-9]
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All are ashamed in the morning: Demetrius and Hermia, Lysander and Helena. Even Bottom. Even he does
not want to admit his dream:
Methought I was—there is no man can tell what.
Methought I was, and methought I had—
But man is but a patch'd fool if he will offer to say what methought I had.
[IV. i. 207-11]
In the violent contrast between the erotic madness liberated by the night and the censorship of day which
orders everything to be forgotten, Shakespeare seems most ahead of his time. The notion that "life's a dream"
has, in this context, nothing of baroque mysticism. Night is the key to day!
... We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; ...
[The Tempest, IV. i. 156-57]
Not only is Ariel an abstract Puck with a sad and thoughtful face; the philosophical theme of the Dream will
be repeated in The Tempest, doubtless a more mature play. But the answers given by Shakespeare in A
Midsummer Night's Dream seem more unambiguous, perhaps one can even say, more materialistic, less bitter.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
[V. i. 7-8]
The madness lasted throughout the June night. The lovers are ashamed of that night and do not want to talk
about it, just as one does not want to talk of bad dreams. But that night liberated them from themselves. They
were their real selves in their dreams, (pp. 233-35)
Jan Kott, "Titania and the Ass's Head," in his Shakespeare, Our Contemporary, translated by Boleslaw
Taborski, 1964. Reprint by W. W. Norton & Company, 1974, pp. 213-36.
Between Fantasy and Reality
George A. Bonnard
[In his discussion of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bonnard's principal thesis is that the worlds, fantastic and
mundane, represented in the play, exist apart from each other, never meeting at any given point. The
inhabitants of the fairy world, the critic explains, are indeed ethereal in the sense that they lack true feelings
and intelligence. But the dream world, Bonnard argues, although beyond the mortals' comprehension,
nevertheless strongly influences the entire realm of ordinary life. Although separated by a veritable social
chasm, the Athenian aristocrats and the common players are all vulnerable to Oberon's power by the very
nature of their humanity. Yet this fairy kingdom is essentially a dream which appears whenever reason goes
to sleep. Such illusions and dreams, Bonnard remarks, can be dangerous if they block our perception of
reality, but there they nevertheless perform an important function in life, as the playwright eloquently
demonstrates.]
Shakespeare, as we all know, loved to bring together in the same play a variety of diverse and even
incongruous elements. Of none of his plays is this truer than of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It would be
difficult to imagine a more fantastic combination of heterogeneous elements drawn from all kinds of sources.
Chaucer gave him Theseus and Hippolyta and suggested the festivities that marked their wedding, as well as
the idea of connecting with the story of the Duke of Athens and his fair captive another story of young men
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who are rivals in love. Ovid provided him with Pyramus and Thisbe. Out of a blend of classical
reminiscences, notions derived from folklore, a literary and dramatic tradition he evolved his own fairy-world.
To those borrowed elements he freely added others out of his personal experience. But whatever he chose to
use he altered to suit his purpose. His Theseus is wholly different from Chaucer's. The love story of his young
Athenians is a parody of the love story of Palamon and Arcite. Quince's "Pyramus and Thisbe" is a ludicrous
caricature of Ovid's touching narrative. Oberon and Titania, elves and fairies, Puck himself are essentially
different from the King and Queen and inhabitants of any traditional fairy land. And neither had Bottom and
his friends exact prototypes in actual life nor was there ever such court performance of a play as theirs. The
poet's fancy holds undisputed sway over all his material. Whatever is, in the world of facts or fiction, is his to
do what he likes with. But the originality of A Midsummer-Night's Dream is not merely due to the manner in
which Shakespeare used what he freely borrowed; it also lies in the combination itself of all those elements
into a comedy. For there can be no doubt that he alone was responsible for bringing together the wedding of
the Duke of Athens and the Queen of the Amazons, the story of young men in love with the same girl, the
staging and acting of a tragedy by humble mechanics, and a fairy world. And he can hardly have done so
merely for the sake of making sure that every one in his audience would be sure to get something to his taste,
or simply because it amused him to concoct a successful hotch-potch. He must have had some definite
purpose. To find out what that purpose may have been may not add to our enjoyment of the play. It may help
us to a fuller understanding of it. I propose to try and bring it to light by briefly discussing first each of four
main elements and then the structure of the comedy.
Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and his captive Hippolyta whom he marries are no longer young people. As
Oberon reminds Titania, Theseus has had a long and varied experience as a lover before conquering the
Queen of the Amazons. And the long war Hippolyta has sustained against Theseus compels us to imagine her
past her youth. There is something matter of fact about their union. There is no conventional love-making
between them, they never even speak of their love. They remind us of Petruchio and Katharina in the latter
part of The Taming of the Shrew. Not only do they stand for good honest human love shorn of any romantic
nonsense, but what does Theseus tell his bride?
Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love doing thee injuries.
[I. i. 16-17]
Could not Petruchio have addressed his wife in the same words? But one thing is certain: their deep
happiness, the strong quiet joy they find in each other. Every word of Theseus bespeaks his satisfaction at
having found a true mate at last, one that he feels sure will be a good wife to him, a helpful companion
through life, one also that will know how to keep her place, as her silence proves when he discusses Hermia's
marriage with Egeus and the young lovers. Throughout that scene the Duke acts the sovereign judge of course
and Hippolyta knows she has no business to interfere, which is not only tactful but highly sensible of her. And
how full of common sense they are when they come upon the lovers asleep in the wood, when they watch the
play performed in their honour! In fact, whenever they are present, the air we breathe is light, invigorating,
and healthy; the atmosphere is clear, and in it all things appear in their true outlines and colours, in their due
proportions and just relations; a wholly sane view of life seems to prevail. In their eyes, the fairy world does
not exist. The King and Queen of the fairies may have come to Athens to bless their wedding: they are totally
unaware of it. When they come to the wood with their hounds and huntsmen, their arrival is enough to restore
sober reality to that scene of so many delusions, to chase all supernatural beings away. Neither Oberon, nor
Titania nor the fairies, nor Puck can possibly meet them; they all vanish "into thin air"; and at the clear, shrill
sound of the hunting-horns the lovers wake up, all their dreams at once dispelled. With Theseus and Hippolyta
reality reasserts itself, and triumphs over a world from which reason had fled. But large-minded as he is, full
of gentle forbearance for the limitations and absurdities of other people, the Duke is no enemy to imagination.
He has no desire to suppress it or curb its activity, for he knows its value. He merely wishes it not to usurp the
place of reality. For him there must be no confusion between its creations and the actualities among which we
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live. His outlook is as broad as can be, and eminently reasonable. Hippolyta's is just as sensible, but narrower.
Together they stand for experience, intelligent use of it, good sense and reason.
In full contrast to them, Shakespeare has placed his fairies, with their kingdom in that vague, dream-like East
from which legends and myths and impossible stories seem to be forever coming, with their motion that takes
no account of space and time, their love of the moon and her beams, their delight in the dusk and the twilight,
that is in the season for dreams, whether one is awake or asleep. For the fairies are essentially the bringers of
dreams to mortals, as Mercutio tells Romeo. And ... Shakespeare has given his fairies a character in harmony
with their function. Just as in our dreams we lose all sense of responsibility, all moral impulse, so Oberon,
Titania and all their subjects have no morality, no delicate feelings. Puck feels no compunction at the effects
of his mischievousness, no sympathy for the affliction of the lovers:
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be! ...
Then will two at once woo one;
That must needs be sport alone.
[III. ii. 14-19]
And again when Lysander and Demetrius, sword in hand, step aside to fight their quarrel out, and the comedy
suddenly takes on a sinister aspect, Puck not only proclaims himself blameless but adds
And so far am I glad it so did sort,
As this their jangling I esteem a sport.
[III. ii. 352-53]
Or take Titania: on awaking from her delusion, she feels no regret, no shame; and there is no scene of
reconciliation with her husband: her resentment makes her forsake him, and they make it up in a dance; there
is no trace of a real feeling in her. And just as our fairies know no moral impulse, so they never think. They
are exquisite, but brainless creatures. The means they use to exert their influence on men are strictly material:
changing the lovers' eyes, turning Bottom into an ass-headed monster, counterfeiting voices. Where they reign
sense impressions, uncontrolled by reason or common sense, develop unchecked and fancy is allowed free
play. No wonder that their life should be all given up to the pleasures of the senses. And because their senses
must be for ever delighted, their desire is for all that is most choice, finest and pleasantest; singing and
dancing best expresses their unchanging mood of thoughtless happiness. Were it not for that sense of beauty,
they would form but an ugly little world, what with their heartlessness, their moral insensitiveness, their
thorough materialism, their lack of brains. But their instinctive love of whatever pleases their delicate senses,
their natural association with flowers and butterflies, nightingales and glow-worms, their hostility towards all
repulsive creatures, spiders and bats, snakes and black-beetles, redeem them in our eyes and lend them a
power of enchantment from which there is no escape. Still the atmosphere in which they live and move is, to
men in their senses, disquieting, even oppressive. All the laws, moral and material, that govern the world of
reality, have no existence in the dream-world of the fairies. In it therefore we no longer know where we are,
we have lost our bearings, our sense of being in harmony with our eyes and lend them a power of
enchantment from which there is no seem to hover on the brink of lunacy, we feel that at any moment some
irresistible delusion, some overpowering image may seize hold on us. Helpless in the grip of lawless fancy,
we feel driven here and there ... until Theseus and Hippolyta, models of human dignity, arrive unexpectedly
and, by their mere presence, deliver us of the "nothings" that were tormenting us, and we can exclaim with
Demetrius
These things seem small and undistinguishable
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.
[IV. i. 187-88]
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Dreams, says Mercutio,
are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind.
[Romeo and Juliet, I. iv. 97-100]
At no point do they really meet. But the two pairs of lovers and the simple-minded artisans waver between
them and fall under the influence now of the one and now of the other. Sound sense and the delusions born of
vain fantasy struggle for the possession of their souls, and in this they are alike.
But in every other respect how far apart the lovers and the hard-handed men, Bottom and his companions,
appear to be. The lovers belong to the upper ranks of Athenian society; Hermia's father, Egeus, is admitted to
the ducal presence whenever he likes, and addresses Theseus almost like an equal; the young man whom he
wishes his daughter to marry is one of those young men whose doings cannot leave the sovereign indifferent;
the Duke who had heard of Demetrius' breach of faith with Helena had meant to speak to him about it; and no
one thinks of disputing Lysander's claim to be as well derived, as well possessed [I. i. 99-100] as his rival;
they are courtiers all. After delivering his sentence on Hermia, Theseus bids Egeus and Demetrius come along
with him. I must employ you in some business ... and confer with you [I. i. 124-25]. No wonder therefore that
Egeus should be in attendance on the Duke when, on the morning of his wedding-day, he goes hunting with
his bride, that the two couples, at Theseus' order, should be married in the same temple and at the same time
as he and Hippolyta. Peter Quince and his friends stand at the other extremity of the social scale. Weaver,
bellows-mender, tailor, tinker, theirs is the humblest class of respectable citizens. Between them and the court
circles there is a gulf. Listen to Snug the joiner rushing in to tell the others that the Duke is coming from the
temple: Masters, he exclaims, the Duke is coming from the temple, and there is two or three lords and ladies
more married [IV. ii. 15-16]. His excitement is that of one whose only source of information is public rumour.
And when they hear their play has been chosen and they must perform it before the Court, they tell one
another, in a highly perturbed state of mind in which dismay mixes with elation, not to forget to put on clean
linen, and Bottom adds: And, most dear actors, eat no onions, nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath [IV.
ii. 42-3]. Clearly garlic and onions are articles of daily consumption with them, and clean linen an unusual
experience. This contrast between the lovers and the artisans as regards their social status is carried out in
their speech. Lysander and Demetrius, Hermia and Helena, are always made to use verse and even rhymed
verse—they use blank verse when their feelings are roused—they are fond of conceits and quibbles, of delicate
images, many of them exquisite poetry. Their language is the outcome of a refined education. Bottom, on the
opposite, uses prose, in spite of his pretensions; for he is fond of big words, of words smacking of books and
learning; but he neither knows their true form nor exactly what they mean, and his ridiculous misuse of them
is evidence of his illiteracy. And his companions naturally speak good simple English prose.
But however different they may be, our young aristocratic lovers and our poor mechanics all suffer from
delusions. Imagination or fantasy makes fools of them all. They all enter the dream-world of the wood where
the fairies have them at their mercy. But it is not by mere chance that they fall under their baneful influence.
They are partly responsible for their misfortunes. For what is our poor uneducated artisans' ambition to act a
play, and act it in the presence of the Duke, but clear evidence that, for the time being, they have lost their
common sense? What is Bottom making of himself if not an ass when he confidently proposes to take all the
main parts in the tragedy? And as to the lovers, is not love and fancy one and the same thing in their eyes?
What the brief examination of the four main elements of which our comedy is composed is perhaps enough to
suggest, namely that the poet did not bring them together without some other purpose than merely to please
his audience, an analysis of the structure of the play may bring out more plainly. As its title implies, A
Midsummer-Night's Dream is a dream, such a dream as one might dream on the very night when, according to
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popular superstition, every one was more or less threatened with lunacy. But it is not altogether a dream. It
neither begins nor ends as such. It begins in a world in which people are not only wide awake, but quite
normal and it ends in the same matter-of-fact atmosphere. There is a definite entrance into the dream-world,
and a no less definite coming out of it. Before we enter it, we are in the everyday world of realities to which
the whole of the first act belongs. Still there already one is aware of a deviation from what might be called the
straight line of common sense. So long as they are in the presence of Theseus and Hippolyta, how
clear-headed, single-minded and sensible Hermia is, how reasonable Lysander, protesting of their right to get
married against Egeus' wish. Has not their attitude convinced the Duke that theirs is the kind of love that
should not be opposed? What is the "private schooling" he says he has for both Egeus and Demetrius if not
some remonstrance by which he means to persuade them to give up their foolish opposition? Does he not, by
ordering them to come away with him, leave the lovers together free to plan their escape? But as soon as
Hermia and Lysander find themselves alone, imagination reasserts its power over them and they prettily
expatiate on the misfortunes that are bound to cross the course of true love, and decide to elope. Our grip on
the actual seems to get loose. And this impression is deepened when suddenly Helena appears, complaining of
her lover's faithlessness; she it is that, in some of the most significant lines of the play, identifies love with
imagination, the power to turn things into what they are not, the power that deprives one of all judgment:
Things base and vile, holding no quantity
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind:
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste ...
[I. i. 232-36]
In the next scene, in Quince's little house where his friends have all met to receive their parts, we are still in
wholly real surroundings, most realistically suggested. But how strongly does fantasy sway our amateur
players! Of their ability to act as well as the best professionals they have not the slightest doubt. Bottom in
particular is already living in a world of dreams and delusions. So that, when the end of the first act is reached,
we are ready to leave the world we know and enter another. And that other world is at once ushered in by the
meeting and the dialogue of Puck and a Fairy. From this moment and throughout the long night that follows
we remain in that strange unreal world where everything is different from what we are used to. We are in a
wood, the wood that Lysander and Hermia were to cross on their way to the old dowager aunt's house, the
wood that the Athenian artisans had chosen as a quiet convenient place for their rehearsal, a real wood
therefore, not far from Athens and the palace of the most reasonable of sovereigns—but the Fairies have taken
possession of it and changed it into a haunted wood. Time within it is no longer what it is outside it: a few
hours of a single night is all that lovers and mechanics seem to be there; but for them, so long as they are the
victims of delusions, time indeed has stopped and when sanity is restored to them, we find that for Theseus
and Hippolyta four days have elapsed. Just as the physical law of time is suspended in this dream-world, so
has it nothing to do with measurable space: the wood has become illimitable; for the poor mortals that enter it,
there is no coming out; they wander in it endlessly and never find an issue; they roam or rush hither and
thither in it, only to lie down in the end, unutterably weary, and lose all consciousness in sleep. For the 2nd
Act, the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th, that place outside time and space is the sole scene of the action, and
whatever happens in that central part of the play can only be understood in reference to its illusory character.
When Demetrius, pursued by Helena, mad, as he himself says, because he has long and vainly sought for
Hermia and Lysander, wood within this wood [II. i. 192],—is not this quibble more than a mere pun?—appears
at last, Oberon is present though invisible to them, and we cannot but connect his presence with their utterly
unreasonable behaviour. Likewise, in the next scene, Lysander and Hermia seem to labour under some
baneful influence; they have lost their way and rest they must. On awaking from his sleep, his eyes anointed
by Puck with the juice of Love-in-idleness [II. i. 168], Lysander sees Helena and at once falls in love with her,
forgetting Hermia. And like many a victim of delusion, he is fully persuaded that he is acting most
reasonably:
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The will of man is by his reason swayed
And reason says you are the worthier maid ...
Reason becomes the marshal to my will,
And leads me to your eyes ...
[II. ii. 115-21]
When it is the turn of the small band of Athenian artisans to come under the spell of the enchanted wood, they
bring with them at first a breath of fresh air from the normal world. Their homely manners, their naive
discussion of the problems of staging they must solve seem to dispel the distracting atmosphere in which
Hermia has just dreamt her fearful dream and woke up to find it true. For a while they do not attract the
fairies' attention. The rehearsal begins ... and Bottom undergoes his monstrification. The dream-world, in the
person of Puck, has suddenly reasserted itself. Frightened out of their wits, the simple-minded artisans scatter
in all directions, while Bottom, alone unconscious of the accident which has turned him into an ass, wonders
at their flight. He is the chief victim of Puck. And rightly so. For what is he when he advises Quince to
explain in a prologue that they will do no harm with their swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed [III. i.
18-191], when he shows how easily Snug may prevent the lion he is to impersonate from frightening the
ladies? What is Bottom the stage-manager who does his best to destroy all illusion, but an ass? For if it be
foolish to be, like Lysander and Demetrius, the slaves of mere images, it is no less foolish to reduce all life to
a hard and narrow common sense. But ass-headed Bottom serves another purpose, too. He is used to
emphasize the idea of the power of love to lead one astray by making things seem what they are not, that idea
that Helena had expressed earlier in the play. Here it is the Queen of the Fairies herself, the mother of
illusions, who is made to serve as an illustration of her own powers to seduce mortals: Titania, with her
instinctive preference for whatever is most refined, most delicate, in love with the portly weaver, a rude
unwashed fellow, the very antithesis of refinement and delicacy!
And now what with Lysander pursuing Helena, Demetrius suddenly returning to his former love, Hermia
doubly forsaken, Bottom transformed, Titania doting upon him, distraction reigns supreme in the haunted
wood. How far such distraction can go is shown in the great scene of the 3rd Act, with the human passions in
it rising to their climax in the deadly quarrel between the two young men, when the comedy assumes for a
moment, as I said, almost a tragical aspect. But for a brief moment only, for Puck parts them, and sleep
overcomes all the actors in that comedy of errors caused by the dotage of imaginary love. And in that sleep
sense will be restored to them. The effect of Love-in-idleness will be corrected by anointing their eyes with
Dian's bud, love born of idle fancy replaced by love born of the heart, real enduring affection. With Oberon
and Titania reconciled, the long night in the haunted wood comes to an end. The twittering of the morning
lark is heard and in the growing light all the Fairies trip away in sober silence. At the sound of hunting-horns,
Theseus and Hippolyta arrive and with them the world is fully restored to sanity. The lovers awake and their
long errors appear but as idle dreams to them, and they are soon able to appreciate the full absurdity of the fate
of Pyramus and Thisbe.
In the first Act, as we have seen, if owing to the Duke and his bride the outlook is generally healthy, normal
and sensible, Lysander and Hermia, despite the genuineness of the love that unites them, still preserve
romantic notions ultimately derived from the medieval idealisation of love, Demetrius suffers from a worse
delusion and the artisans really live already in the dream-world of those who, unaware of their limitations, are
guilty of presumptuousness and are likely to make fools of themselves. In the last Act, with Demetrius cured
of his sickness—the word is his—and married to Helena, with Lysander and Hermia man and wife, all trace of
romantic nonsense has disappeared from the relations of the lovers towards one another. They have become
sensible creatures as Theseus and Hippolyta were from the first. Reality has triumphed over unreality, the
world of facts over the world of dreams, the right sort of love that leads to its natural consummation in
marriage over the delusions of youthful fancy, a clear and firm apprehension of the actualities among which
we must live over the vagaries of uncontrolled imagination. But if sense thus celebrates its victory over
nonsense, illusions, dreams, fancies of all kinds cannot be suppressed but will sprout again and proliferate on
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the slightest provocation. Let cool reason go to sleep, and there they are again. After our mortals have gone to
bed, the Fairies reappear, and in the dark hall of the ducal palace dimly lighted by the glow of the wasted
brands on the hearth, hold their revels. But they have not come without a definite purpose: they will bless the
house and all its inmates. For if illusions and dreams and fancies can be harmful when they stand between
man and reality, hindering him from seeing it, they are a blessing too, and Bottom the weaver would be a poor
miserable creature if he could never leave his loom and believe himself a wonderful actor, and if they were
not a blessing the poet would never have written A Midsummer-Night's Dream to bring home to us his
conviction that they should not be mistaken for reality, to weigh, as it were, the rival claims of imagination
and sober vision and decide in favour of the latter while giving the former its due. (pp.68-79)
George A. Bonnard, "Shakespeare's Purpose in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, "in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol.
92, 1956, pp. 268-79.
Allardyce Nicoll
[A Midsummer Night's Dream, according to Nicoll, clearly reflects the poet's serious preoccupation with
dreams and reality. Shakespeare's view of the problem of being and appearance, this critic maintains, is far
from superficial, since he does not approach it as a paradox to be overcome. "Appearance and reality
interplay in [A Midsummer Night's Dream] like two themes in a symphony, rising and falling, changing
shape, momentarily coalescing and then, once more separate, producing contrapuntal music." But
Shakespeare, Nicoll contends, for all his delight in ambiguities, approaches the puzzling world of fantasy in a
level-headed manner. Nicoll concludes that the poet's common sense, which is represented by Bottom,
"embraces the imagination as well as the ordinary real."]
The lyrical sonnet-like verse of Romeo and Juliet becomes more happily allied to content and mood in A
Midsummer Night's Dream. This, the first of Shakespeare's great comedies, presents itself to us as a kind of
amalgam of much that had gone before. The lovers' changing affections give us the situation caused by
Proteus' inconstancy [in The Two Gentlemen of Verona]; the maze of errors reminds us of the comedy of that
name, and even the world of Titania is anticipated there in Dromio's
O for my heads! I cross me for a sinner.
This is the fairy land. O spite of spites!
We talk with goblins, owls and sprites.
[The Comedy of Errors, II. ii. 188-90]
For the idea of the burlesque play-within-the-play Shakespeare turns to the masque of the worthies in Love's
Labour's Lost, and perhaps even Romeo and Juliet inspires the choice of the Pyramus and Thisbe theme. It is
all a tissue of earlier material, and all magnificently new spun. Within the framework provided by Theseus
and Hippolyta are set the four lovers, the artisans and the fairies, all bound together by the theme of errors.
Through the forest the lovers blunder their distracted way, the artisans not only rehearse a playlet of errors but
themselves are carried into the maze. Oberon in his wisdom tries to set things right and only succeeds in
making confusion worse confounded, while for Puck the creating of error is his spirit food.
Here Shakespeare first clearly introduces another of his potent preoccupations—the concept of dream and
reality; and with it he first boldly sets forth the contrast between seeming and being. From both, much of the
inner quality of his later dramas, both comic and tragic, was to arise; both were to be the very stuff of his
double vision, of his common-sense view of life, of his identification with the force of Nature. Appearance
and reality interplay in these dramas like two themes in a symphony, rising and falling, changing shape,
momentarily coalescing and then, once more separate, producing contrapuntal music. Nothing in this world of
Shakespeare's is so simple as at first glance it may appear. Gently the moonlight falls on us, and we think of
the moon beloved of lovers; yet for Shakespeare the gentle loving moon is not all. If we hear Hippolyta,
dreaming of her marriage to Theseus, saying
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And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent In heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities,
[I. i. 9-11]
we listen also to Theseus' chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon and to Titania's
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods.
Pale in her anger, washes all the air.
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
[II. i. 103-05]
Like the lovers themselves we can but guess and wonder:
Demetrius: These things seem small and indistinguishable.
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.
Hermia: Methinks I see these things with parted eye.
When everything seems double ...
Demetrius: Are you sure That we are awake?
It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream.
[IV. L 187-94]
It is almost as though Shakespeare were deliberately invoking in these words the mood with which he wishes
to invest us as we listen to his play—and perhaps that is precisely what he is attempting. His epilogue, at least,
is consciously designed.
If we shadows have offended.
Think but this, and all is mended—
That you have but slumber'd here,
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme
No more yielding but a dream.
[V. i. 423-28]
Yet the theme is not so idle, after all: looked at carefully it clearly shows the maturing Shakespeare at work.
Various critics have pointed out that in Theseus we have, as it were, a level-headed commentator on the
action, one who is never likely to mistake a bush for a bear. Beyond this, however, we must certainly go. We
have just seen Oberon and Titania, and it is precisely these characters whose very existence Theseus would
deny; we have just seen young lyric love, uniting with Nature's force, triumph over man-made law, and it is
precisely lyric love that Theseus would reject. Besides Theseus there is another level-headed
character—Bottom; but Bottom has a fairy's kisses on his lips. Shakespeare's level-headedness, his sublime
common sense, cannot be restricted within the ring of Theseus' practicality: it embraces the imagination as
well as the ordinary real. (pp. 104-06)
Allardyce Nicoll, "Man and Society," in his Shakespeare, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1952, pp. 100-32.
David Richman
[Richman discusses Shakespeare's effective introduction of wonder into A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Language, the critic explains, is instrumental in creating wonderment, and the characters from the
supernatural world identify themselves by their peculiar rhetorical devices and speech mannerisms. The
obviously tragic element in the play, Richman observes, is the powerful, potentially devastating, rage
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underlying the conflict between Oberon and Titania, a dream world confrontation with possibly dire
consequences for the denizens of ordinary reality. In Richman's opinion, no director captures the sense of
wonder, power, and tragic rage better than Peter Brook, whose 1970 production of A Midsummer Night's
Dream expanded the feeling of wonder—natural in the dream realm—so it could affect the mortals in the play
and even the audience.]
[The] introduction of wonder into comedy is not original with Shakespeare. Elements of the marvelous can be
found as far back as Aristophanes, preeminently in The Birds, and indeed can be traced even further back to
the origins of comedy in ritual. In the relatively recent past of his own country, Shakespeare can find works
for the stage that combine the comic with the wondrous, namely the medieval miracle plays and moralities.
His immediate forerunners in comedy, [John] Lyly, [George] Peele, [Robert] Greene, and many lesser writers,
often mix elements of the supernatural into their comedies. Although none of them evokes the sort of wonder
that Shakespeare evokes in Twelfth Night, it can be argued that Peele, in The Old Wives' Tale, and Greene, in
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, are making serious attempts. (pp. 94-5)
[Shakespeare's] attempts to weave wonder into comedy reach their first complete success in A Midsummer
Night's Dream. The play is remarkable for many qualities, not the least of which is verse that gives full
expression to the marvels the dramatist represents. The king and queen of Fairyland astonish their spectators
with their language as well as their power. Titania's attendants and even Puck are creatures of a different order
from the contending sovereigns of fairyland, and the difference should be made clear in production. In
Shakespeare's time Oberon was played by an adult actor, Titania by the star boy, and the other fairies by
children of lesser abilities. In a 1978 [Royal Shakespeare Company] production the attendant fairies were
puppets, and in Peter Brook's famous production, as well as in several others not so well known, all the fairies,
including Oberon, became trapeze artists.
The manner in which the fairies' verse contrasts with the verse of their king and queen suggests differences of
degree and kind. The fairies and Puck characteristically speak in tetrameter or pentameter couplets. They exult
in and exalt the diminutive. Their verse is full of dewdrops, cowslips, long-legged spinners, and hedgehogs.
The mischiefs in which Puck delights are typically farcical pranks—tempting lusty horses, humiliating old
ladies, or spoiling the beer. Oberon and Titania speak mostly in blank verse that grows ever more majestic. In
describing and enacting their continuing quarrel, the king and queen make clear that their discord is reflected
in all sublunary nature. Shakespeare is here varying a rhetorical device that he uses throughout his career. But
Titania and Oberon are not mortals like Romeo or Richard II, who imagine all nature to be participating in
their grief and rage. Rather these are the very spirits of nature, the originals of natural turbulence. What they
describe is not an imagined but an actual result of their anger.
To express this turbulence, the playwright gives Oberon and Titania verse that employs striking rhythmic and
figurative resources. The ear encounters inverted iambs and spondees, which force strongly stressed syllables
into direct alignment with each other. There is also frequent enjambment and a flexible use of the caesura,
which occurs often in the middle of a foot and occasionally in the middle of an inverted foot. The rhythm of a
line like "Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose" [II. i. 108] has a two-fold effect: the juxtaposition of
strongly stressed syllables forces the speaker to retard; accented syllables and the caesura, all occurring in
surprising places, create an impression of emotional agitation. Moreover, the prosopopoeia [personification]
and antonomasia [substitution of an epithet for a proper name] in these speeches invest the unseasonal
prodigies with human passion and torment:
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest;
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air.
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
Between Fantasy and Reality
105
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
[II. i. 101-17]
A key to Titania's speech can be found in a word near its end that Shakespeare typically charges with many
meanings. The fairy queen speaks of "the mazed world," calling to mind her earlier reference to "the quaint
mazes in the wanton green" [II. i. 99]. The world in its confusion has become literally and figuratively a maze,
a labyrinth in which no right path can be found. But the word takes on also its second sense of, "amazed," that
is, astonished, struck with wonder by the alterations. The speech in performance will stand or fall on the
actress's ability to convince the audience of her character's astonishment and shame that she and Oberon are
damaging the natural world. To be sure, they are engaged in a farcical love-brawl, but love that is capable of
such effects is a great and terrible passion that evokes a Sidneyan admiration. The rage and power of Oberon
and Titania stir potentially tragic responses. Peter Brook's recognition and manipulation of these responses
may constitute his famous production's greatest achievements.
No Shakespearean comedy offers wider scope to the imagination of directors, designers, and actors, and in no
Shakespearean comedy is it more necessary to observe Bruno Walter's admonition to select from among the
limitless imaginative possibilities those essential to the play as a whole. Although many of the play's scenes
require spectacular visual display and startling or hilarious stage business, the second-act quarrel between
Oberon and Titania must guide the audience to focus on language and passion. The director's principal
responsibility in this scene is to find actors who possess the talent to speak verse with beauty and power.
Having found and worked with such actors, the director must insure that the scenery, lighting, and costumes
aid the spectators' response without competing for their attention.
Peter Brook notes that certain of Shakespeare's scenes—most often the prose scenes—can be "enriched by our
own invention. The scenes need added external details to assure them of their fullest life." But Brook warns
that passages in verse require a different sort of treatment.
Shakespeare needs verse because he is trying to say more, to compact together more meaning.
We are watchful. Behind each visible mark on paper lurks an invisible one that is hard to
seize. Technically, we now need less abandon, more focus, less breadth, more intensity.
Surely no director has given the supernatural elements in A Midsummer Night's Dream a fuller and more
astonishing life than Peter Brook. Yet, true to his own dictum, Brook stilled his acrobatic fairies during
Oberon's great speeches, and Alan Howard delivered those speeches unforgettably. I cannot now read or hear
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows" [II. i. 249] without recalling Howard's slow, deliberate cadences.
But Brook did not adhere to his own doctrine in staging Titania's speech. Sarah Kestelman was an intensely
sensual Titania. Her crimson feather bed was the only object of color in the stark white brightly lit set. But she
gave the impression that she was nothing more than a sexually indulged creature who was somehow
responsible for creating the problem that the charming and authoritative Oberon had to solve. In an interview
Between Fantasy and Reality
106
for the New York Times, Brook discussed the
most extraordinary, demonic notion of Oberon having his queen fornicate with a physically
repellent object, the ass. And why does Oberon do it? Not out of sadism, anger or revenge,
but out of genuine love. It is as though in a modern sense a husband secured the largest
truck-driver for his wife to sleep with to smash her illusions about sex and to alleviate the
difficulties in their marriage.
This assessment of the couple's marital relations was reflected in Brook's staging of their quarrel. While
Titania spoke, Oberon stroked her leg. His action commanded the audience's attention, drawing it away from
her words. To the spectators, she seemed to be merely talking about the weather while Oberon generated the
scene's true erotic power. The sense of natural turbulence growing out of the fairies' domestic discord was
lost. More important, Sarah Kestelman's Titania was diminished into a creature of sensuality without power.
The effect was astonishing, but it was astonishment different in kind and quality from the wonder that arises
out of Titania's verse. Brook's production was ruled by its Oberon and its Puck, but Titania's scenes were less
enriched by a sense of her magnitude than they could have been.
Something of the wonder that Titania's words create remain with her throughout the play. Although she is
bewitched into a ridiculous amour, she never fully loses her original stature. Funny as they are, there is a
peculiar power in her scenes with Bottom. Much of this power is drawn from her speeches in the second act,
and some of it accrues from the astonishing manner in which Oberon introduces the magic herb that will bring
about her dotage. Like his consort, he employs striking rhythmic and figurative devices:
Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music.
[II. i. 148-54]
Oberon invests the herb with the power of the musk he is describing. The playwright diverts attention from
the fact that the fairy king is actually playing a rather petty and cruel practical joke on his wife. The diversion
by no means mitigates the laughter that the trick will bring about, but it suggests that the device and its
accompanying laughter contain elements of wonder. Although what happens to Titania is similar in kind to
what happens to the quartet of human lovers, it is raised to a greater order of magnitude.
Even the human lovers, foolish, passionate, and ridiculous in their pain, are not untouched by wonder. When
Theseus's huntsman wakes them after they have been released from their enchantments, they are still
enraptured by the fading memory of the dream they have shared. "Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
/ When everything seems double" [IV. i. 188-89]. "And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, / Mine own, and
not mine own" [IV. i. 191-92]. Lysander's line to Theseus suggests to directors and actors how all four lovers
should speak and act in this scene: "My lord, I shall reply amazedly, /Half sleep, half waking" [IV. i. 146-47].
After the jangling couplets and farcical stage business of their protracted quarrel, the lovers' quiet scene of
awakening possesses a startling beauty.
Even Bottom is moved to wonder after his fashion at his night's adventures. Twisting Biblical phrases about
the wondrous works of God, he lists the particular incapacities of the various human senses and faculties to
conceive or report his vision. The speech is funny, but if the actor plays it quietly and convinces the audience
of the character's genuine amazement, wonder will mix with the laughter. Bottom realizes that his dream is
Between Fantasy and Reality
107
good enough to be made into a ballad to grace the end of the tragedy that he and his companions plan to
perform at the duke's wedding. What better thing can come at the end of a tragedy than something that moves
wonder?
All five of the humans whose lives have been touched by love-in-idleness sense that they have traveled to
terrain that lies on the far side of reason. Theseus maps and then dismisses this terrain in his famous speech
toward the play's end. But that speech takes on reverberations for the audience that go beyond his conscious
intentions because the spectators have seen and dwelt for a time with the fairies, and he has not. Even in
Brook's production, in which Theseus dreamed himself into Oberon, Alan Howard's Theseus gave the
impression that his conscious mind was tendering a stringent warning to his half-conscious fantasies. The rich
counterpoint between Theseus's skepticism and the spectators' memory of the magic can be strengthened in
production if, while the actor is talking urbanely about lovers and madmen, his bearing and movement recall
those of Oberon and the lighting subtly reminds the audience of the haunted grove.
Albertus Magnus asserts that wonder can be called forth in one who is in suspense as to a cause, the
knowledge of which will make him know instead of wonder. It follows from this assertion that reason can
dispel wonder. If reason finds out the cause of a seeming miracle, then reactions proper to a miracle are no
longer either necessary or possible. As Guildenstern argues in Tom Stoppard's play [Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead]—which owes more than its plot to Shakespeare—the miraculous unicorn shrinks to a
horse with an arrow in its forehead. Now Theseus is using his reason with just such an intent when he ascribes
the lovers' wonder to their amorous fancies. But Hippolyta speaks for the audience's larger experience when
she raises a caveat that Theseus never answers:
But all the story of the night told over
And all their minds transfigur'd so together
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy
But howsoever strange and admirable.
[IV. i. 23-7]
Her last word ... makes clear that she partakes of the lovers' wonder. The playwright contrives his action and
his verse so that the spectators share her response. (pp. 97-102)
David Richman, "Introduction: Wonder," in his Laughter, Pain, and Wonder: Shakespeare's Comedies and
the Audience in the Theater, University of Delaware Press, 1990, pp. 89-120.
Language and Poetry
Mark Van Doren
[The immense expanses created by Shakespeare's extraordinary poetic imagination, Van Doren affirms, are
vast enough to house the fairy realms and the world of ordinary reality, including all the peculiar
manifestations of either place. The critic then examines the dramatist's ability to describe the separate and
often quite dissimilar regions of the play's universe by drawing on the rich resources of poetry. Particularly in
the supernatural sphere, Shakespeare's descriptions reach a remarkable geographic precision and undeniable
suggestiveness. Referring to the playwright's depiction of both worlds, Van Doren further observes that the
"poetry of the play is dominated by the words moon and water." As a result of their enormous allusive
potential, these images engender an entire network of interlocking symbols which greatly enrich the text. In
Van Doren's opinion, this fundamental poetic symbolism affects the entire universe of the play. "Moon," Van
Doren concludes, "water, and wetflowers conspire to extend the world of A Midsummer Night's Dream until it
is as large as all imaginable life. That is why the play is both so natural and so mysterious."]
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108
A Midsummer Night's Dream shines like Romeo and Juliet in darkness, but shines merrily. Lysander, one of
the two nonentities who are its heroes, complains at the beginning about the brevity of love's course, and sums
up his complaint with a line which would not be out of place in Romeo and Juliet:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
[L i. 149]
This, however, is at the beginning. Bright will come to clarity in a playful, sparkling night while fountains
gush and spangled starlight betrays the presence in a wood near Athens of magic persons who can girdle the
earth in forty minutes and bring any cure for human woe. Nor will the woe to be cured have any power to
elicit our anxiety. The four lovers whose situation resembles so closely the situation created in The Two
Gentlemen of Verona will come nowhere near the seriousness of that predicament; they will remain to the end
four automatic creatures whose artificial and pretty fate it is to fall in and out of love like dolls, and like dolls
they will go to sleep as soon as they are laid down. There will be no pretense that reason and love keep
company, or that because they do not death lurks at the horizon. There is no death in A Midsummer Night's
Dream, and the smiling horizon is immeasurably remote.
Robin Goodfellow ends the extravaganza with an apology to the audience for the "weak and idle theme" [V. i.
427] with which it has been entertained. And Theseus, in honor of whose marriage with Hippolyta the entire
action is occurring, dismisses most of it as a fairy toy, or such an airy nothing as some poet might give a local
habitation and a name [V. i. 17]. But Robin is wrong about the theme, and Theseus does not describe the kind
of poet Shakespeare is. For the world of this play is both veritable and large. It is not the tiny toy-shop that
most such spectacles present, with quaint little people scampering on dry little errands, and with small music
squeaking somewhere a childish accompaniment. There is room here for mortals no less than for fairies; both
classes are at home, both groups move freely in a wide world where indeed they seem sometimes to have
exchanged functions with one another. For these fairies do not sleep on flowers. Only Hermia can remember
lying upon faint primrose-beds [I. i. 215], and only Bottom in the action as we have it ever dozes on pressed
posies [III. i. 162], The fairies themselves—Puck, Titania, Oberon—are too busy for that, and too hard-minded.
The vocabulary of Puck is the most vernacular in the play; he talks of beans and crabs, dew-laps and ale,
three-foot stools and sneezes [II. i. 42-57]. And with the king and queen of fairy-land he has immense spaces
to travel. The three of them are citizens of all the universe there is, and as we listen to them the farthest
portions of this universe stretch out, distant and glittering, like facets on a gem of infinite size. There is a
specific geography, and the heavens are cold and high.
Oberon.
Thou rememb'rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song,
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music?
Robin.
I remember.
Oberon. That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,
Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd. A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal throned by the west,
And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;
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109
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon a little western flower ...
Fetch me that flower, the herb I shew'd thee once ...
Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.
Robin. I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes.
[III. i. 148-76]
The business may be trivial, but the world is as big and as real as any world we know. The promontory long
ago; the rude sea that grew—not smooth, not gentle, not anything pretty or poetical, but (the prosaic word is
one of Shakespeare's best) civil; the mermaid that is also a sea-maid; the direction west; and the cold watery
moon that rides so high above the earth—these are the signs of its bigness, and they are so clear that we shall
respect the prowess implied in Robin's speed, nor shall we fail to be impressed by the news that Oberon has
just arrived from the farthest steep of India [II. i. 69].
Dr. [Samuel] Johnson and [William] Hazlitt copied [Joseph] Addison in saying that if there could be persons
like these they would act like this. Their tribute was to the naturalness of Shakespeare's supernature. [John]
Dryden's tribute to its charm:
But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be;
Within that circle none durst walk but he
has an identical source: wonder that such things can be at all, and be so genuine. The explanation is the size
and the concreteness of Shakespeare's setting. And the key to the structure of that setting is the watery moon
to which Oberon so casually referred.
The poetry of the play is dominated by the words moon and water. Theseus and Hippolyta carve the moon in
our memory with the strong, fresh strokes of their opening dialogue:
Theseus. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon; but, O, me-thinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man's revenue.
Hlppolyta. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities.
[Li. 1-11]
This is not the sensuous, softer orb of "Antony and Cleopatra," nor is it the sweet sleeping friend of Lorenzo
and Jessica. It is brilliant and brisk, silver-distant, and an occasion for comedy in Theseus's worldly thought.
Later on in the same scene he will call it cold and fruitless [1. 73], and Lysander will look forward to
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Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass.
[Li. 209-11]
Lysander has connected the image of the moon with the image of cool water on which it shines, and hereafter
they will be inseparable. A Midsummer Night's Dream is drenched with dew when it is not saturated with rain.
A film of water spreads over it, enhances and enlarges it miraculously. The fairy whom Robin hails as the
second act opens wanders swifter than the moon's sphere through fire and flood. The moon, says Titania, is
governess of floods, and in anger at Oberon's brawls has sucked up from the sea contagious fogs, made every
river overflow, drowned the fields and rotted the green corn:
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable.
[II. i. 98-100]
Here in the west there has been a deluge, and every object still drips moisture. But even in the east there are
waves and seas. The little changeling boy whom Titania will not surrender to Oberon is the son of a votaress
on the other side of the earth:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood.
[II. i. 124-27]
The jewels she promises Bottom will be fetched "from the deep" [III.i. 161]. And Oberon is addicted to
treading seaside groves
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.
[III. ii. 391-93]
So by a kind of logic the mortals of the play continue to be washed with copious weeping. The roses in
Hermia's cheeks fade fast "for want of rain" [I. i. 130], but rain will come. Demetrius "hails" and "showers"
oaths on Helena [I. i. 245], whose eyes are bathed with salt tears [II. ii. 92-3]; and Hermia takes comfort in the
tempest of her eyes [II. i. 131).
When the moon weeps, says Titania to Bottom, "weeps every little flower" [III. i. 199]. The flowers of A
Midsummer Night's Dream are not the warm, sweet, dry ones of Perdita's garden, or even the daytime ones
with which Fidele's brothers will strew her forest grave [in The Winter's Tale]. They are the damp flowers that
hide among ferns and drip with dew. A pearl is hung in every cowslip's ear [II. i. 15]; the little western flower
which Puck is sent to fetch is rich with juice; and luscious woodbine canopies the bank of wild thyme where
Titania sleeps—not on but "in" musk-roses and eglantine. Moon, water, and wet flowers conspire to extend the
world of A Midsummer Night's Dream until it is as large as all imaginable life. That is why the play is both so
natural and so mysterious.
Nor do its regions fail to echo with an ample music. The mermaid on the promontory with her dulcet and
harmonious breath sang distantly and long ago, but the world we walk in is filled with present sound.
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111
Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester,
For now our observation is perform'd,
And since we have the vaward of the day,
My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley, let them go.
Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain's top
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
Hippolyta. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind.
So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
Each under each. A cry more tuneable
Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn,
In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly. Judge when you hear.
[IV. L 103-27]
Had Shakespeare written nothing else than this he still might be the best of English poets. Most poetry which
tries to be music also is less than poetry. This is absolute. The melody which commences with such spirit in
Theseus's fifth line has already reached the complexity of counterpoint in his eight and ninth; Hippolyta
carries it to a like limit in the line with which she closes; and Theseus, taking it back from her, hugely
increases its volume, first by reminding us that the hounds have form and muscle, and then by daring the
grand dissonance, the mixed thunder, of bulls and bells. The passage sets a forest ringing, and supplies a play
with the music it has deserved.
But Shakespeare is still more a poet because the passage is incidental to his creation. The creation with which
he is now busy is not a passage, a single effect; it is a play, and though this one contribution has been mighty
there are many others. And none of the others is mightier than bully Bottom's.
Bottom likes music too. "I have a reasonable good ear," he tells Titania. "Let's have the tongs and the bones"
[IV. i. 28-9]. So does he take an interest in moonshine, if only among the pages of an almanac. "A calendar, a
calendar!" he calls. "Find out moonshine, find out moonshine" [III. i. 53-4]. When they find the moon, those
Athenian mechanics of whom he is king, it has in it what the cold fairy moon cannot be conceived as having,
the familiar man of folklore. Bottom and his fellows domesticate the moon, as they domesticate every other
element of which Shakespeare has made poetry. And the final effect is parody. Bottom's amazed oration
concerning his dream follows hard upon the lovers' discourse concerning dreams and delusions; but it is in
prose, and the speaker is utterly literal when he pronounces that it will be called Bottom's dream because it
hath no bottom [IV. i. 216]. Nor is the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as the mechanics act it anything but a
burlesque of Romeo and Juliet.
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O night, which ever art when day is not! ...
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!
Thou wall, O wall,
O sweet and lovely wall.
[V. i. 171-76]
Shakespeare has come, even this early, to the farthest limit of comedy. The end of comedy is self-parody, and
its wisdom is self-understanding. Never again will he work without a full comprehension of the thing he is
working at; of the probability that other and contrary things are of equal importance; of the certainty that his
being a poet who can do anything he wants to do is not the only thing to be, or the best possible thing; of the
axiom that the whole is greater than the part—the part in his instance being one play among many thinkable
plays, or one man, himself, among the multitude that populate a world for whose size and variety he with such
giant strides is reaching respect. Bully Bottom and his friends have lived three centuries to good purpose, but
to no better purpose at any time than the one they first had—namely, in their sublime innocence, their
earthbound, idiot openness and charity of soul, to bring it about that their creator should become not only the
finest of poets but the one who makes the fewest claims for poetry. (pp. 76-83)
Mark Van Doren, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," in his Shakespeare, Henry Holt and Company, 1939, pp.
76-83.
Mythological Background
Northrop Frye
[Frye traces the literary sources of Shakespeare's play, with particular emphasis on Classical—Greek and
Roman—and early Elizabethan comedy. According to Frye, Shakespeare does not follow classical models
closely, but relies instead on his English predecessors, especially in the treatment of supernatural elements.
The critic then touches upon possible flattering references to Queen Elizabeth I in A Midsummer Night's
Dream, explaining that the references are purely textual, and that none of the characters can be associated
with the monarch. Frye also comments on the title of the play, observing that, as the medieval calendar had
only three seasons, the eve of May Day, when the action of the comedy takes place, really is the middle of the
summer, since that season starts in March. In his discussion of the fairy world, Frye identifies the poet's
sources in Classical, Celtic, Germanic, and Anglo-Saxon folklore and mythology. The dream world of the
forest, Frye suggests, "has affinities with what we call the unconscious or subconscious part of the mind." And
only this part of our mind, Frye concludes, holds the key to this wonderful and mysterious play.]
Elizabethan literature began as a provincial development of a Continent-centred literature, and it's full of
imitations and translations from French, Italian and Latin. But the dramatists practically had to rediscover
drama, as soon as, early in Elizabeth's reign, theatres with regular performances of plays on a thrust stage
began to evolve out of temporary constructions in dining halls and courtyards. There was some influence from
Italian theatre, and some of the devices in Twelfth Night reminded one spectator, who kept a diary, of Italian
sources. There was also the influence of the half-improvised commedia dell'arte [Italian comedy of the 16th to
the 18th centuries improvised from standardized situations and stock characters], ... Behind these Italian
influences were the Classical plays from which the Italian ones partly derived.
For tragedy there were not many precedents, apart from the Latin plays of Seneca, whose tragedies may not
have been actually intended for the stage. Seneca is a powerful influence behind Shakespeare's earliest
tragedy, Titus Andronicus, and there are many traces of him elsewhere. In comedy, though, there were about
two dozen Latin plays available, six by Terence, the rest by Plautus. These had been adapted from the Greek
writers of what we call New Comedy, to distinguish it from the Old Comedy of Aristophanes, which was full
Mythological Background
113
of personal attacks and allusions to actual people and events. The best known of these Greek New Comedy
writers was Menander, whose work, except for one complete play recently discovered, has come down to us
only in fragments. Menander was a sententious, aphoristic writer, and one of his aphorisms ("evil
communications corrupt good manners") was quoted by Paul in the New Testament. Terence carried on this
sententious style, and we find some famous proverbs in him. such as "I am a man. and nothing human is alien
to me." When we hear a line like "The course of true love never did run smooth" [I. i. 134] in A Midsummer
Night's Dream, familiar to many people who don't know the play, we can see that the same tradition is still
going strong. And later on, when we hear Bottom mangling references to Paul's epistles, we may feel that
we're going around in a circle.
New Comedy, in Plautus and Terence, usually sets up a situation that's the opposite of the one that the
audience would recognize as the "right" one. Let's say a young man loves a young woman, and vice versa, but
their love is blocked by parents who want suitors or brides with more money. That's the first part. The second
part consists of the complications that follow, and in a third and last part the opening situation is turned inside
out, usually through some gimmick in the plot, such as the discovery that the heroine was kidnapped in
infancy by pirates, or that she was exposed on a hillside and rescued by a shepherd, but that her social origin
is quite respectable enough for her to marry the hero. The typical characters in such a story are the young man
(adulescens), a heavy father (sometimes called senex iratus, because he often goes into terrible rages when
he's thwarted), and a "tricky slave" (dolosus seruus), who helps out the young man with some clever scheme.
If you look at the plays of Moliere, you'll see these characters over and over again, and the tricky servant is
still there in the Figaro operas of Rossini and Mozart, ... Often the roles of young man and young woman are
doubled: in a play of Plautus, adapted by Shakespeare in The Comedy of Errors, the young men are twin
brothers, and Shakespeare adds a pair of twin servants.
In Shakespeare's comedies we often get two heroines as well: we have Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It,
Hero and Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, Olivia and Viola in Twelfth Night, Julia and Silvia in The Two
Gentlemen of Verona, Helena and Hermia in this play. It's a natural inference that there were two boys in
Shakespeare's company who were particularly good at female roles. If so, one seems to have been noticeably
taller than the other. In As You Like It we're not sure which was the taller one—the indications are
contradictory—but here they're an almost comic-strip contrast, Helena being long and drizzly and Hermia short
and spitty.
Shakespeare's comedies are far more complex than the Roman ones, but the standard New Comedy structure
usually forms part of their actions. To use Puck's line, the Jacks generally get their Jills in the end (or the Jills
get their Jacks, which in fact happens more often). But he makes certain modifications in the standard plot,
and makes them fairly consistently. He doesn't seem to like plots that turn on tricky-servant schemes. He does
have smart or cheeky servants often enough, like Lancelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, and they make
the complacent soliloquies that are common in the role, but they seldom affect the action. Puck and Ariel [in
The Tempest] come nearest, and we notice that neither is a human being and neither acts on his own. Then
again, Shakespeare generally plays down the outwitting and baffling of age by youth: the kind of action
suggested by the title of a play of [Thomas] Middleton's, A Trick to Catch the Old-One, is rare in
Shakespeare. The most prominent example is the ganging up on Shylock in The Merchant of Venice that lets
his daughter Jessica marry Lorenzo. Even that leaves a rather sour taste in our mouths, and the sour taste is
part of the play, not just part of our different feelings about stage Jews. In the late romances, especially
Pericles and The Winter's Tale, the main comic resolution concerns older people, who are united or reconciled
after a long separation. Even in this play, while we start out with a standard New Comedy situation in which
lovers are forbidden to marry but succeed in doing so all the same, it's the older people, Theseus and
Hippolyta, who are at the centre of the action, and we could add to this the reconciling of Oberon and Titania.
In the Roman plays there's a general uniformity of social rank: the characters are usually ordinary
middle-class people with their servants. The settings are also uniform and consistent: they're not "realistic,"
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114
but the action is normally urban, taking place on the street in front of the houses of the main characters, and
there certainly isn't much of mystery, romance, fairies, magic or mythology (except for farcical treatments of
it like Plautus's Amphitryon) ... [We know that the highbrows in Shakespeare's time] thought that Classical
precedents were models to be imitated, and that you weren't writing according to the proper rules if you
introduced kings or princes or dukes into comedies, as Shakespeare is constantly doing, or if you introduced
the incredible or mysterious, such as fairies or magic. Some of Shakespeare's younger contemporaries, notably
Ben Jonson, keep more closely to Classical precedent, and Jonson tells us that he regularly follows nature, and
that some other people like Shakespeare don't. Shakespeare never fails to introduce something mysterious or
hard to believe into his comedies, and in doing so he's following the precedents set, not by the Classical
writers, but by his immediate predecessors.
These predecessors included in particular three writers of comedy, [George] Peele, [Robert] Greene and
[John] Lyly. Peele's Old Wives' Tale is full of themes from folk tales; in Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay the central character is a magician, and in his James IV, while there's not much about the Scottish king
of that name, there's a chorus character called Oberon, the king of the fairies; in Lyly's Endimion the main
story retells the Classical myth of Endymion, the youth beloved by the goddess of the moon. These are
examples of the type of romance-comedy that Shakespeare followed. Shakespeare keeps the three-part
structure of the Roman plays, but immensely expands the second part, and makes it a prolonged episode of
confused identity. Sometimes the heroine disguises herself as a boy; sometimes the action moves into a
charmed area, often a magic wood like the one in this play, where the ordinary laws of nature don't quite
apply.
If we ask why this type of early Elizabethan comedy should have been the type Shakespeare used, there are
many answers, but one relates to the audience. A Midsummer Night's Dream has the general appearance of a
play designed for a special festive occasion, when the Queen herself might well be present. In such a play one
would expect an occasional nattering allusion to her, and it looks as though we have one when Oberon refers
to an "imperial votaress" in a speech to Puck. The Queen was also normally very tolerant about the often
bungling attempts to entertain her when she made her progressions through the country, and so the emphasis
placed on Theseus's courtesy to the Quince company may also refer to her, even if he is male. But if there
were an allusion to her, it would have to be nothing more than that.
Even today novelists have to put statements into their books that no real people are being alluded to, and in
Shakespeare's day anything that even looked like such an allusion, beyond the conventional compliments,
could be dangerous. Three of Shakespeare's contemporaries did time in jail for putting into a play a couple of
sentences that sounded like satire on the Scotsmen coming to England in the train of James I, and worse
things, like cutting off ears and noses, could be threatened. I make this point because every so often some
director or critic gets the notion that this play is really all about Queen Elizabeth, or that certain characters,
such as Titania, refer to her. The consequences to Shakespeare's dramatic career if the Queen had believed
that she was being publicly represented as having a love affair with a jackass are something we fortunately
don't have to think about.
An upper-class audience is inclined to favour romance and fantasy in its entertainment, because the idealizing
element in such romance confirms its own image of itself. And whatever an upper-class audience likes is
probably going to be what a middle-class audience will like too. If this play was adapted to, or commissioned
for, a special court performance, it would be the kind of thing Theseus is looking for at the very beginning of
the play, when he tells his master of revels, Philostrate, to draw up a list of possible entertainments. One gets
an impression of sparseness about what Philostrate has collected, even if Theseus doesn't read the whole list;
but however that may be, the Peter Quince play has something of the relation to the nuptials of Theseus that
Shakespeare's play would have had to whatever occasion it was used for. We notice that the reason for some
of the absurdities in the Quince play come from the actors' belief that court ladies are unimaginably fragile
and delicate: they will swoon at the sight of Snug the joiner as a lion unless it is carefully explained that he
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115
isn't really a lion. The court ladies belong to the Quince players' fairyland: Shakespeare knew far more about
court ladies than they did, but he also realized that court ladies and gentlemen had some affinity, as an
audience, with fairyland.
This play retains the three parts of a normal comedy that I mentioned earlier: a first part in which an absurd,
unpleasant or irrational situation is set up; a second part of confused identity and personal complications; a
third part in which the plot gives a shake and twist and everything comes right in the end. In the opening of
this play, we meet an irrational law, of a type we often do meet at the beginning of a Shakespeare comedy: the
law of Athens that decrees death or perpetual imprisonment in a convent for any young woman who marries
without her father's consent. Here the young woman is Hermia, who loves Lysander, and the law is invoked
by her father, Egeus, who prefers Demetrius. Egeus is a senile old fool who clearly doesn't love his daughter,
and is quite reconciled to seeing her executed or imprisoned. What he loves is his own possession of his
daughter, which carries the right to bestow her on a man of his choice as a proxy for himself. He makes his
priorities clear in a speech later in the play:
They would have stolen away, they would,
Demetrius,
Thereby to have defeated you and me:
You of your wife, and me of my consent,
Of my consent that she should be your wife.
[IV. i. 156-59]
Nevertheless Theseus admits that the law is what Egeus says it is, and also emphatically says that the law
must be enforced, and that he himself has no power to abrogate it. We meet this situation elsewhere in
Shakespeare: at the beginning of The Comedy of Errors, with its law that in Ephesus all visitors from
Syracuse are to be beheaded, and in The Merchant of Venice, with the law that upholds Shylock's bond. In all
three cases the person in authority declares that he has no power to alter the law, and in all three cases he
eventually does. As it turns out that Theseus is a fairly decent sort, we may like to rationalize this scene by
assuming that he is probably going to talk privately with Egeus and Demetrius (as in fact he says he is) and
work out a more humane solution. But he gives Hermia no loophole: he merely repeats the threats to her life
and freedom. Then he adjourns the session:
Come, my Hippolyta—what cheer, my love?
[I. i. 122]
which seems a clear indication that Hippolyta, portrayed throughout the play as a person of great common
sense, doesn't like the set-up at all.
We realize that sooner or later Lysander and Hermia will get out from under this law and be united in spite of
Egeus. Demetrius and Helena, who are the doubling figures, are in an unresolved situation: Helena loves
Demetrius, but Demetrius has only, in the Victorian phrase, trifled with her affections. In the second part
we're in the fairy wood at night, where identities become, as we think, hopelessly confused. At dawn Theseus
and Hippolyta, accompanied by Egeus, enter the wood to hunt. By that time the Demetrius-Helena situation
has cleared up, and because of that Theseus feels able to overrule Egeus and allow the two marriages to go
ahead. At the beginning Lysander remarks to Hermia that the authority of Athenian law doesn't extend as far
as the wood, but apparently it does; Theseus is there, in full charge, and it is in the wood that he makes the
decision that heads the play toward its happy ending. At the same time the solidifying of the
Demetrius-Helena relationship was the work of Oberon. We can hardly avoid the feeling not only that
Theseus is overruling Egeus's will, but that his own will has been overruled too, by fairies of whom he knows
nothing and in whose existence he doesn't believe.
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116
If we look at the grouping of characters in each of the three parts, this feeling becomes still stronger. In the
opening scene we have Theseus, Egeus, and an unwilling Hippolyta in the centre, symbolizing parental
authority and the inflexibility of law, with three of the four young people standing before them. Before long
we meet the fourth, Helena. In the second part the characters are grouped in different places within the wood,
for the most part separated from one another. In one part of the wood are the lovers; in another are the
processions of the quarrelling king and queen of the fairies; in still another Peter Quince and his company are
rehearsing their play. Finally the remaining group, Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus, appear with the sunrise. In
the first part no one doubts that Theseus is the supreme ruler over the court of Athens; in the second part no
one doubts that Oberon is king of the fairies and directs what goes on in the magic wood.
In the third and final part the characters, no longer separated from one another, are very symmetrically
arranged. Peter Quince and his company are in the most unlikely spot, in the middle, and the centre of
attention; around them sit Theseus and Hippolyta and the four now reconciled lovers. The play ends; Theseus
calls for a retreat to bed, and then the fairies come in for the final blessing of the house, forming a
circumference around all the others. They are there for the sake of Theseus and Hippolyta, but their presence
suggests that Theseus is not as supremely the ruler of his own world as he seemed to be at first.
A Midsummer Night's Dream seems to be one of the relatively few plays that Shakespeare made up himself,
without much help from sources. Two sources he did use were tragic stories that are turned into farce here.
One was the story of Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid, which the Quince company is attempting to tell, and
which is used for more than just the Quince play. The other was Chaucer's Knight's Tale, from which
Shakespeare evidently took the names of Theseus, Hippolyta and Philostrate, and which is a gorgeous but
very sombre story of the fatal rivalry of two men over a woman. So far as this theme appears in the play, it is
in the floundering of Lysander and Demetrius after first Hermia and then Helena, bemused with darkness and
Puck's love drugs. [We know] of the relation of the original Pyramus and Thisbe story to Romeo and Juliet
and the theme of the Knight's Tale appears vestigially in that play too, in the fatal duel of Romeo and Paris.
[We know] also of the role of the oxymoron as a figure of speech in Romeo and Juliet, the self-contradictory
figure that's appropriate to a tragedy of love and death. That too appears as farce in this play, when Theseus
reads the announcement of the Quince play;
Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief?
That is hot ice, and wondrous strange snow!
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
[V. i. 58-60]
Why is this play called A Midsummer Night's Dream? Apparently the main action in the fairy wood takes
place on the eve of May Day; at any rate, when Theseus and Hippolyta enter with the rising sun, they discover
the four lovers, and Theseus says:
No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May.
[IV. i. 132-33]
We call the time of the summer solstice, in the third week of June, "midsummer," although in our calendars
it's the beginning of summer. That's because originally there were only three seasons, summer, autumn and
winter: summer then included spring and began in March. A thirteenth-century song begins "sumer is i-cumen
in," generally modernized, to keep the metre, as "summer is a-coming in," but it doesn't mean that: it means
"spring is here." The Christian calendar finally established the celebration of the birth of Christ at the winter
solstice, and made a summer solstice date (June 24) the feast day of John the Baptist. This arrangement,
according to the Fathers, symbolized John's remark in the Gospels on beholding Christ: "He must increase,
but I must decrease." Christmas Eve was a beneficent time, when evil spirits had no power; St. John's Eve was
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117
perhaps more ambiguous, and there was a common phrase, "midsummer madness," used by Olivia in Twelfth
Night a play named after the opposite end of the year. Still, it was a time when spirits of nature, whether
benevolent or malignant, might be supposed to be abroad.
There were also two other haunted "eves," of the first of November and of the first of May. These take us
back to a still earlier time, when animals were brought in from the pasture at the beginning of winter, with a
slaughter of those that couldn't be kept to feed, and when they were let out again at the beginning of spring.
The first of these survives in our Hallowe'en, but May Day eve is no longer thought of much as a spooky time,
although in Germany, where it was called "Walpurgis night," the tradition that witches held an assembly on a
mountain at that time lasted much longer, and comes into Goethe's Faust. In Faust the scene with the witches
is followed by something called "The Golden Wedding of Oberon and Titania," which has nothing to do with
Shakespeare's play, but perhaps indicates a connection in Goethe's mind between it and the first of May.
In Shakespeare's time, as Theseus's remark indicates, the main emphasis on the first of May fell on a sunrise
service greeting the day with songs. All the emphasis was on hope and cheerfulness. Shakespeare evidently
doesn't want to force a specific date on us: it may be May Day eve, but all we can be sure of is that it's later
than St. Valentine's Day in mid-February, the day when traditionally the birds start copulating, and we could
have guessed that anyway. The general idea is that we have gone through the kind of night when spirits are
powerful but not necessarily malevolent. Evil spirits, as we learn from the opening scene of Hamlet are forced
to disappear at dawn, and the fact that this is also true of the Ghost of Hamlet's father sows a terrible doubt in
Hamlet's mind. Here we have Puck, or more accurately Robin Goodfellow the puck. Pucks were a category of
spirits who were often sinister, and the Puck of this play is clearly mischievous. But we are expressly told by
Oberon that the fairies of whom he's the king are "spirits of another sort" [in. ii. 388], not evil and not
restricted to darkness.
So the title of the play simply emphasizes the difference between the two worlds of the action, the waking
world of Theseus's court and the fairy world of Oberon. Let's go back to the three parts of the comic action:
the opening situation hostile to true love, the middle part of dissolving identities, and the final resolution. The
first part contains a threat of possible death to Hermia. Similar threats are found in other Shakespeare
comedies: in The Comedy of Errors a death sentence hangs over a central character until nearly the end of the
play. This comic structure fits inside a pattern of death, disappearance and return that's far wider in scope than
theatrical comedy. We find it even in the central story of Christianity, with its Friday of death, Saturday of
disappearance and Sunday of return. Scholars who have studied this pattern in religion, mythology and legend
think it derives from observing the moon waning, then disappearing, then reappearing as a new moon.
At the opening Theseus and Hippolyta have agreed to hold their wedding at the next new moon, now four
days off. They speak of four days, although the rhetorical structure runs in threes: Hippolyta is wooed, won
and wed "With pomp, with triumph and with revelling" [I. i. 19]. (This reading depends also on a reasonable,
if not certain, emendation: "new" for "now" in the tenth line.) Theseus compares his impatience to the comedy
situation of a young man waiting for someone older to die and leave him money. The Quince company
discover from an almanac that there will be moonshine on the night that they will be performing, but
apparently there is not enough, and so they introduce a character called Moonshine. His appearance touches
off a very curious reprise of the opening dialogue. Hippolyta says "I am aweary of this moon: would he would
change!" [V. i. 251], and Theseus answers that he seems to be on the wane, "but yet, in courtesy ... we must
stay the time" [V. i. 254-55]. It's as though this ghastly play contains in miniature, and caricature, the themes
of separation, postponement, and confusions of reality and fantasy that have organized the play surrounding it.
According to the indications in the text, the night in the wood should be a moonless night, but in feet there are
so many references to the moon that it seems to be still there, even though obscured by clouds. It seems that
this wood is a fairyland with its own laws of time and space, a world where Oberon has just blown in from
India and where Puck can put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. So it's not hard to accept such a world
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118
as an antipodal one, like the world of dreams itself, which, although we make it fit into our waking-time
schedules, still keeps to its own quite different rhythms. A curious image of Hermia's involving the moon has
echoes of this; she's protesting that she will never believe Lysander unfaithful:
I'll believe as soon
This whole earth may be bored, and that the moon
May through the centre creep, and so displease
Her brother's noontide with th'Antipodes.
[III. ii. 52-5]
A modern reader might think of the opening of "The Walrus and the Carpenter." The moon, in any case,
seems to have a good deal to do with both worlds. In the opening scene Lysander speaks of Demetrius as "this
spotted and inconstant man" [I. i. 110], using two common epithets for the moon, and in the last act Theseus
speaks of "the lunatic, the lover and the poet" [V. i. 7], where "lunatic" has its full Elizabethan force of
"moonstruck."
The inhabitants of the wood-world are the creatures of legend and folk tale and mythology and abandoned
belief. Theseus regards them as projections of the human imagination, and as having a purely subjective
existence. The trouble is that we don't know the extent of our own minds, or what's in that mental world that
we half create and half perceive ... The tiny fairies that wait on Bottom—Mustardseed and Peaseblossom and
the rest—come from Celtic fairy lore, as does the Queen Mab of Mercutio's speech [in Romeo and Juliet], who
also had tiny fairies in her train. Robin Goodfellow is more Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic. His propitiatory
name, "Goodfellow," indicates that he could be dangerous, and his fairy friend says that one of his
amusements is to "Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm" [II. i. 39]. A famous book a little later
than Shakespeare, Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, mentions fire spirits who mislead travellers with
illusions, and says "We commonly call them pucks." The fairy world clearly would not do as a democracy:
there has to be a king in charge like Oberon, who will see that Puck's rather primitive sense of humour doesn't
get too far out of line.
The gods and other beings of Classical mythology belong in the same half-subjective, half-autonomous world.
I've spoken of the popularity of Ovid's Metamorphosesfor poets: this, in Ovid's opening words, is a collection
of stories of "bodies changed to new forms." Another famous Classical metamorphosis is the story of
Apuleius about a man turned into an ass by enchantment, and of course this theme enters the present play
when Bottom is, as Quince says, "translated." In Classical mythology one central figure was the goddess that
Robert Graves, ... calls the "white goddess" or the "triple will." This goddess had three forms: one in heaven,
where she was the goddess of the moon and was called Phoebe or Cynthia or Luna; one on earth, where she
was Diana, the virgin huntress of the forest, called Titania once in Ovid; and one below the earth, where she
was the witch-goddess Hecate. Puck speaks of "Hecate's triple team" at the end of the play. References to
Diana and Cynthia by the poets of the time usually involved some allusion to the virgin queen Elizabeth (they
always ignored Hecate in such contexts). As I said, the Queen seems to be alluded to here, but in a way that
kicks her upstairs, so to speak: she's on a level far above all the "lunatic" goings-on below.
Titania in this play is not Diana: Diana and her moon are in Theseus's world, and stand for the sterility that
awaits Hermia if she disobeys her father, when she will have to become Diana's nun.
Puck is contemptuous of Lysander's lying so far away from Hermia, not realizing that this was just Hermia
being maidenly. According to Oberon, Cupid was an inhabitant of this wood, and had shot his erotic arrow at
the "imperial votaress," but it glanced off her and fell on a white flower, turning it red. The parabola taken by
this arrow outlines the play's world, so to speak: the action takes place under this red and white arch. One
common type of Classical myth deals with a "dying god," as he's called now, a male figure who is killed when
still a youth, and whose blood stains a white flower and turns it red or purple. Shakespeare had written the
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119
story of one of these gods in his narrative poem Venus and Adonis, where he makes a good deal of the stained
flower:
No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed,
But stole his blood and seem'd with him to bleed.
[1055-56]
The story of Pyramus and Thisbe is another such story: Pyramus's blood stains the mulberry and turns it red.
In Ovid's account, when Pyramus stabs himself the blood spurts out in an arc on the flower. This may be
where Shakespeare got the image that he puts to such very different use.
Early in the play we come upon Oberon and Titania quarrelling over the custody of a human boy, and we are
told that because of their quarrel the weather has been unusually foul. The implication is that the fairies are
spirits of the elements, and that nature and human life are related in many ways that are hidden from ordinary
consciousness. But it seems clear that Titania does not have the authority that she thinks she has: Oberon puts
her under the spell of having to fall in love with Bottom with his ass's head, and rescues the boy for his own
male entourage. There are other signs that Titania is a possessive and entangling spirit—she says to Bottom:
Out of this wood do not desire to go;
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
[III. i. 152-53]
The relationship of Oberon and Titania forms a counterpoint with that of Theseus and Hippolyta in the other
world. It appears that Titania has been a kind of guardian spirit to Hippolyta and Oberon to Theseus. Theseus
gives every sign of settling down into a solidly married man, now that he has subdued the most formidable
woman in the world, the Queen of the Amazons. But his record before that was a very bad one, with rapes and
desertions in it: even as late as T.S. Eliot we read about his "perjured sails." Oberon blames his waywardness
on Titania's influence, and Titania's denial does not sound very convincing. Oberon's ascendancy over Titania,
and Theseus's over Hippolyta, seem to symbolize some aspect of the emerging comic resolution.
Each world has a kind of music, or perhaps rather "harmony," that is characteristic of it. That of the fairy
wood is represented by the song of the mermaid described by Oberon to Puck. This is a music that commands
the elements of the "sublunary" world below the moon; it quiets the sea, but there is a hint of a lurking danger
in it, a siren's magic call that draws some of the stars out of their proper spheres in heaven, as witches
according to tradition can call down the moon. There is danger everywhere in that world for mortals who stay
there too long and listen to too much of its music. When the sun rises and Theseus and Hippolyta enter the
wood, they talk about the noise of hounds in this and other huntings. Hippolyta says:
never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for, besides the groves,
The Skies, the fountains, every region near
Seem'd all one mutual ciy; I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
[IV. i. 114-18]
It would not occur to us to describe a cry of hounds as a kind of symphony orchestra, but then we do not have
the mystique of a Renaissance prince about hunting. Both forms of music fall far short of the supreme
harmony of the spheres described in the fifth act of The Merchant of Venice. Oberon might know something
about that, but not Puck, who can't see the "imperial votaress." Neither, probably, could Theseus.
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120
So the wood-world has affinities with what we call the unconscious or subconscious part of the mind; a part
below the reason's encounter with objective reality, and yet connected with the hidden creative powers of the
mind. Left to Puck or even Titania, it's a world of illusion, random desires and shifting identities. With
Oberon in charge, it becomes the world in which those profound choices are made that decide the course of
life, and also ... the world from which inspiration comes to the poet. The lovers wake up still dazed with
metamorphosis; as Demetrius says:
These things seem small and undistinguishable,
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.
[IV. i. 186-87]
But the comic crystallization has taken place, and for the fifth act we go back to Theseus's court to sort out the
various things that have come out of the wood.
Theseus takes a very rational and common-sense view of the lovers' story, but he makes it clear that the world
of the wood is the world of the poet as well as the lover and the lunatic. His very remarkable speech uses the
words "apprehend" and "comprehend" each twice. In the ordinary world we apprehend with our senses and
comprehend with our reason; what the poet apprehends are moods or emotions, like joy, and what he uses for
comprehension is some story or character to account for the emotion:
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy.
[V. i. 18-20]
Theseus is here using the word "imagination" in its common Elizabethan meaning, which we express by the
word "imaginary," something alleged to be that isn't. In spite of himself, though, the word is taking on the
more positive sense of our "imaginative," the sense of the creative power developed centuries later by
[William] Blake and [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge. So far as I can make out from the OED [Oxford English
Dictionary], this more positive sense of the word in English practically begins here. Hippolyta is shrewder and
less defensive than Theseus, and what she says takes us a great deal further:
But all the story of the night, told over,
And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever, strange and admirable.
[V. i. 23-7]
Theseus doesn't believe their story, but Hippolyta sees that something has happened to them, whatever their
story. The word "transfigured" means that there can be metamorphosis upward as well as downward, a
creative transforming into a higher consciousness as well as the reduction from the conscious to the
unconscious that we read about in Ovid. Besides, the story has a consistency to it that doesn't sound like the
disjointed snatches of incoherent minds. If you want disjointing and incoherence, just listen to the play that's
coming up. And yet the Quince play is a triumph of sanity in its way: it tells you that the roaring lion is only
Snug the joiner, for example. It's practically a parody of Theseus's view of reality, with its "imagination" that
takes a bush for a bear in the dark. There's a later exchange when Hippolyta complains that the play is silly,
and Theseus says:
The best in this kind are but shadows;
and the worst are no worse,
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121
if imagination amend them.
[V.i. 211-12]
Hippolyta retorts: "It must be your imagination, then, and not theirs." Here "imagination" has definitely swung
over to meaning something positive and creative. What Hippolyta says implies that the audience has a creative
role in every play; that's one reason why Puck, coming out for the Epilogue when the audience is supposed to
applaud, repeats two of Theseus's words:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended.
[V. i. 423-24]
Theseus's imagination has "amended" the Quince play by accepting it, listening to it, and not making fun of
the actors to their faces. Its merit as a play consists in dramatizing his own social position and improving what
we'd now call his "image" as a gracious prince. In itself the play has no merit, except in being unintentionally
funny. And if it has no merit, it has no authority. A play that did have authority, and depended on a poet's
imagination as well, would raise the question that Theseus's remark seems to deny: the question of the
difference between plays by Peter Quince and plays by William Shakespeare. Theseus would recognize the
difference, of course, but in its social context, as an offering for his attention and applause, a Shakespeare play
would be in the same position as the Quince play. That indicates how limited Theseus's world is, in the long
run, a fact symbolized by his not knowing how much of his behaviour is guided by Oberon.
Which brings me to Bottom, the only mortal in the play who actually sees any of the fairies. One of the last
things Bottom says in the play is rather puzzling: "the wall is down that parted their fathers" [V. i. 351].
Apparently he means the wall separating the hostile families of Pyramus and Thisbe. This wall seems to have
attracted attention: after Snout the tinker, taking the part of Wall, leaves the stage, Theseus says, according to
the Folio: "Now is the morall downe between the two neighbours" [cf. V. i. 207]. The New Arden editor reads
"mural down," and other editors simply change to "wall down." The Quarto, just to be helpful, reads "moon
used." Wall and Moonshine between them certainly confuse an already confused play. One wonders if the
wall between the two worlds of Theseus and Oberon, the wall that Theseus is so sure is firmly in place,
doesn't throw a shadow on these remarks.
Anyway, Bottom wakes up along with the lovers and makes one of the most extraordinary speeches in
Shakespeare, which includes a very scrambled but still recognizable echo from the New Testament, and
finally says he will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of his dream, and "it shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom" [IV. i. 215-16]. Like most of what Bottom says, this is absurd; like many
absurdities in Shakespeare, it makes a lot of sense. Bottom does not know that he is anticipating by three
centuries a remark of Freud: "every dream has a point at which it is unfathomable; a link, as it were, with the
unknown." When we come to King Lear, we shall suspect that it takes a madman to see into the heart of
tragedy, and perhaps it takes a fool or clown, who habitually breathes the atmosphere of absurdity and
paradox, to see into the heart of comedy. "Man," says Bottom, "is but an ass, if he go about to expound this
dream" [IV. i. 206-07]. But it was Bottom the ass who had the dream, not Bottom the weaver, who is already
forgetting it. He will never see his Titania again, nor even remember that she had once loved him, or doted on
him, to use Friar Laurence's distinction [in Romeo and Juliet]. But he has been closer to the centre of this
wonderful and mysterious play than any other of its characters, and it no longer matters that Puck thinks him a
fool or that Titania loathes his asinine face. (pp. 34-50)
Northrop Frye, "A Midsummer Night's Dream, "in his Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, edited by Robert
Sandier, Yale University Press. 1986, pp. 34-50.
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122
Frances A. Yates
[Yates discusses the origins of Shakespeare's fairy world, arguing that the "Elizabethan fairies are not ...
manifestations of folk or popular tradition." According to this critic, the characters inhabiting the dream
world of Shakespeare's play stem from either Arthurian legend or the Christian variant of Cabala, a Jewish
interpretation of the Scriptures based on the mystical value of words. In her further discussion of A
Midsummer Night's Dream, Yates focuses on the "imperial theme," explaining that the poet's references to an
"imperial votaress" who resists Cupid's arrows should be viewed in the context of a cult of Queen Elizabeth I.
According to Yates, Shakespeare pictures Elizabeth as a Vestal Virgin whose triumph over Cupid affirms her
exalted status.]
Shakespearean fairies are related to the Fairy Queen [in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen] through their
loyalty and through their fervent defence of chastity ... They are defenders of chastity, of a chaste queen and
her pure knighthood. They are enjoined to perform a white magic to safeguard her and her order of
knighthood from evil influences.
These Elizabethan fairies are not, I believe, manifestations of folk or popular tradition. Their origins are
literary and religious, in Arthurian legend and in the white magic of Christian Cabala. The use of fairy
imagery in the queen cult was begun in the Accession Day Tilts [jousts], and relates to the chivalric imagery
of the Tilts. As taken up by Spenser in The Faerie Queene, the fairy imagery was Arthurian and chivalric, and
also an expression of pure white magic, a Christian Cabalist magic.
The Shakespearean fairies emanate from a similar atmosphere: they glorify a pure knighthood serving the
queen and her imperial reform. To read Shakespeare's fairy scenes without reference to the contemporary
build-up of the Virgin Queen as the representative of pure religion is to miss their purpose as an affirmation of
adherence to the Spenserian point of view, a very serious purpose disguised in fantasy.
The supreme expression of the Shakespearean fairyland is A Midsummer Night's Dream. This play was first
printed in 1600; it was probably written for a private performance at a wedding, perhaps in 1595 or
thereabouts.
This magical play about enchanted lovers is set in a world of night and moonlight, where fairies serve a fairy
king and queen. Into the magic texture is woven a significant portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.
Oberon, the fairy king, describes how he once saw Cupid, all armed, flying between the cold moon and the
earth:
A certain aim he took
At a fair vestal, throned by the West
And loos'd his love shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon,
And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy free.
[II. i. 157-64]
Shakespeare's picture of Elizabeth as a Vestal Virgin, a chaste Moon who defeats the assaults of Cupid, an
'imperial votaress', is a brilliant summing up of the cult of Elizabeth as the representative of imperial reform.
A well-known portrait of Elizabeth presents the imagery in visual form. Elizabeth holds a sieve, emblem of
the chastity of a Vestal Virgin; behind her rises the column of empire; the globe beside her shows the British
Isles surrounded by shipping, alluding to her enthronement 'in the West'. It is a portrait of the Virgin of
Mythological Background
123
imperial reform, of which Shakespeare gives a verbal picture in the lines just quoted, using the same imagery.
(pp. 148-49)
[Both] the 'Sieve' portrait and Shakespeare's word-picture in the Dream are Triumphs of Chastity ... and the
triumph refers both to purity in public life and in private life, to Elizabeth both in her public role as the
representative of pure imperial reform, and in her private role as a chaste lady. It is exactly in such a role that
Spenser presents Elizabeth, so he tells Raleigh in the letter to him published with The Faerie Queene. As
Gloriana she isa most royal queen or empress, as Belphoebe she is a most chaste and beautiful lady.
Shakespeare's word-picture presents Gloriana-Belphoebe, the Virgin of pure Empire, enthroned by the West,
the chaste lady who triumphs over Cupid.
The appearance in the sky of the Dream of this Spenserian vision strikes the key-note of the magical-musical
moonlight of the play. The moon is Cynthia, the Virgin Queen, and the words 'the chaste beams of the watery
moon' might also allude to Walter Raleigh's cult of her as Cynthia Puns on 'Walter', pronounced 'Water', were
usual in referring to Raleigh. Spenser was following Raleigh, so he says, in the 'Luna' book of The Faerie
Queene. Hence the allusions of the Shakespearean lines would be both to Elizabeth as Spenser's
Gloriana-Belphoebe, and also to Raleigh's cult of her as Cynthia, adopted by Spenser.
Thus the complex phenomenon which floats in the night sky of the Dream relates the play to the Spenserian
dream-world, the Spenserian magical cult of the Imperial Virgin, with its undercurrent of Christian Cabala.
(pp. 149-50)
Frances A. Yates, "Shakespearean Fairies, Witches, Melancholy: King Lear and the Demons," in her The
Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, 1979. Reprint by Ark Paperback 1983, pp. 147-57.
Bottom
J. B. Priestley
[Priestley identifies Bottom as "the most substantial figure" in A Midsummer Night's Dream, describing him
as earthy, quick-witted, and emphasizing his ability to laugh at the inhabitants of the fairy world. Bottom's
humor, Priestley asserts, is not fully conscious; rather, he symbolizes a peculiarly English variety of a man of
the people: ignorant, uncouth, but a brilliantly perceptive and profound humorist, ever ready to castigate the
foibles of his fellow human beings, or, for that matter, supernatural creatures. Bottom, the critic remarks, is
also a kind of comical everyman, a character symbolizing the irrepressible comical genius of humankind.
Finally, he is also a poet, "wearing the head of an ass as we all must do at such moments, the beloved of an
exquisite immortal ... coming to an hour's enchantment while the moon climbs a hand's breadth up the
sky—and then, all 'stolen hence,' the dream done and the dream left to wonder." Bottom's journey through the
supernatural realm epitomizes "the destiny of poets, who are themselves also weavers."]
On any reasonable chronology of Shakespeare's plays, Bottom is the first of his great comic figures. Once we
are through the door of Peter Quince's house, when all the company is assembled there, we are at last in the
presence of one of the foolish Immortals; we come to celebrate a staggering feat of parturition, for here, newly
created, is a droll as big as a hill. Before this, Shakespeare has shown us through a little gallery of amusing
figures, but we have seen no one of the stature of "sweet bully Bottom" [IV. ii. 19]. In The Comedy of Errors,
the two Dromios and the rest are nothing but odd curves in a whimsical design. The comedians of Love's
Labour's Lost are well enough in their way; the picked and spruce Don Armado, Holofernes with his "golden
cadence of poesy" [Love's Labour's Lost, IV. ii. 122], Sir Nathaniel and Moth, all capping one another's
fantastic phrases; but they are little more than quaint shadows that caper for an hour or so on the sunlit lawns
of that park in Navarre and then flit out of mind when the sun goes down. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
Speed and Launce (and the dog) are not so much individual creations as lively examples of an admired
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124
formula for comic relief, the Elizabethan equivalents of our crosstalk red-nosed gentry. Bottom is neither a
curve nor a shadow nor a formula, but a gigantic individual creation, the first of the really great comic figures.
(pp. 1-2)
Bottom is easily the most substantial figure in the piece. This is not saying a great deal, because A Midsummer
Night's Dream has all the character of a dream; its action is ruled by caprice and moonlit madness; its
personages appear to be under the spell of visions or to walk and talk in their sleep; its background is shadowy
and shifting, sometimes breaking into absolute loveliness, purple and dark green and heavy with the night
scent of flowers, but always something broken, inconsequent, suddenly glimpsed as the moon's radiance frees
itself for a little space from cloud and foliage; and the whole play, with its frequent talk of visions, dreams,
imagination, antique fables and fairy toys, glides past like some lovely hallucination, a masque of strange
shadows and voices heard in the night. The characters are on three different levels. There are first the
immortals, who have nothing earthy in their composition and are hardly to be distinguished from the
quivering leaves and the mist of hyacinths, tiny creatures spun out of cobwebs and moonshine. Then there are
the wandering lovers, all poetry and imagination, driven hither and thither by their passionate moods. Lastly
there is Bottom (and with him, of course, his companions), who is neither a flickering elf nor a bewildered
passionate lover, but a man of this world, comfortably housed in flesh, a personage of some note among the
artisans of Athens and, we have no doubt, in spite of certain unmistakable signs of temperament in him, a
worthy dependable householder. We suspect that he has, somewhere in the background, a shrewish wife who
spends her time alternately seeing through her husband and being taken in by him, for he is essentially one of
those large, heavy-faced, somewhat vain and patronising men, not without either humour or imagination, who
always induce in women alternating moods of irritation and adoration. Among his fellow artisans, Bottom is
clearly the ladies' man, the gallant. He it is who shows himself sensitive to the delicacy of the sex in the matter
of the killing and the lion, and we feel that his insistence upon a prologue, "a device to make all well" [II. i.
16], is only the result of his delicacy and chivalry. Snout and Starveling, who hasten to agree with him, are
simply a pair of whimpering poltroons, who have really no stomach for swords and killing and raging
melodrama and are afraid of the consequences if they should startle the audience. But Bottom, we feel, has
true sensibility and in his own company is the champion of the sex; he knows that it is a most dreadful thing
to bring in the lion, that most fearful wild-fowl, among ladies, and his sketch of the prologue has in it the true
note of artful entreaty: "Ladies, or, Fair Ladies,—I would wish you,—or, I would request you,—or, I would
entreat you,—not to jear, not to tremble: my life for yours [III. i. 39-42]". Such a speech points to both
knowledge of the sex and long practice, and given friendly circumstances, the speaker might be a very
dangerous man. We should like to see Bottom making love among his own kind; the result would have
startled some of his critics. As it is, we only see him, crowned with an ass's head, suddenly transformed into
the paramour of the queen of the fairies, and even in a situation so unexpected, so remote from his previous
experience, he acquits himself, as we shall see, very creditably. What would happen if one of the gentlemen
who call friend Bottom "gross, stupid, and ignorant," let us say the average professor of English literature,
suddenly found himself in the arms of a very beautiful and very amorous fairy, even if his head were not
discoverable by immediate sight but only by long acquaintance to be that of an ass? He would probably acquit
himself no better than would Snout or Starveling in similar circumstances, and Shakespeare took care to wave
away his Snouts and Starvelings and called the one man to that strange destiny, that "most rare vision" [IV. i.
205], who was worthy of the occasion. Bottom, as [William] Hazlitt said, is a character that has not had
justice done him: he is "the most romantic of mechanics."
Against the background of the whole play, which is only so much gossamer and moonlight, the honest weaver
appears anything but romantic, a piece of humorous, bewildered flesh, gross, earthy. He is a trades-unionist
among butterflies, a rate-payer in Elfland. Seen thus, he is droll precisely because he is a most prosaic soul
called to a most romantic destiny. But if we view him first among his own associates, we shall see that he is
the only one of them who was fit to be "translated." Puck, who was responsible for the transformation,
described him as "the shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort" [III. ii. 13], the biggest fool in a company of
fools; but Puck was no judge of character. Bottom, though he may be the biggest fool (and a big fool is no
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125
common person), is really the least shallow and thick-skinned of his group, in which he shows up as the
romantic, the poetical, the imaginative man, who naturally takes command. We admit that he is conceited, but
he is, in some measure, an artist, and artists are notoriously conceited. The company of such tailoring and
bellows-mending souls would make any man of spirit conceited. Old Quince, who obviously owes his
promotion to seniority and to nothing else, is nominally in charge of the revels, but the players have scarcely
met together and Quince has scarcely had time to speak a word before it is clear that Bottom, and Bottom
alone, is the leader. Quince ("Good Peter Quince" [I. ii. 8], as Bottom, with easy contempt and patronage,
calls him) is nothing but a tool in the hands of the masterful weaver, who directs the whole proceedings, the
calling of the roll of players, the description of the piece, the casting of the parts, and so forth, step by step.
The other members of the company not having a glimmer of imagination, the artist among them, the man of
temperament, takes charge. And he alone shows any enthusiasm for the drama itself, for the others are only
concerned with pleasing the Duke; if they do badly, if they should, for example, frighten the ladies, they may
be hanged, whereas if they do well, they may receive a little pension, (pp. 2-6).
When the players are first met together and the parts are being given out, it is not just Bottom's conceit that
makes him want to play every part himself. Of all those present, he is the only one who shows any passion for
the drama itself, the art of acting, the enthralling business of moving and thrilling an audience. The others are
only concerned with getting through their several tasks in the easiest and safest manner, with one eye on the
hangman and the other on the exchequer. But the creative artist is stirring in the soul of Bottom; his
imagination is catching fire; so that no sooner is a part mentioned than he can see himself playing it, and
playing it in such a manner as to lift the audience out of their seats. He is set down for the principal part, that
of the lover, but no sooner has he accepted it, seeing himself condoling and moving storms ("That will ask
some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms, I will
condole in some measure" [I. ii. 25-8]), than he regrets that he cannot play a tyrant, for he is familiar with
Ercles' vein and even shows the company how he would deal with it. Then when Thisbe is mentioned, he sees
himself playing her too, speaking in a monstrous little voice. The lion is the next part of any importance, and
though it consists of nothing but roaring, Bottom has no doubt that he could make a success of that too, by
means of a roar that would do any man's heart good to hear it, or, failing that, if such a full-blooded
performance should scare the ladies, a delicately modulated roar that would not shame either a suckling dove
or a nightingale. Even when he is finally restricted to one part, that of Pyramus, he alone shows an eagerness
to come to grips with the details of the part, particularly in the matter of beards, undertaking as he does "to
discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your
French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow" [I. ii. 93-6]. All this shows the eagerness and the soaring
imagination of the artist, and if it shows too an unusual vanity, a confidence in one's ability to play any
number of parts better than any one else could play them, a confidence so gigantic that it becomes ridiculous,
it must be remembered that vanity and a soaring imagination are generally inseparable. It is clear that a man
cannot play every part, cannot be lover, tyrant, lady, and lion at once; but it is equally clear that every man of
imagination and spirit ought to want to play every part. It is better to be vain, like Bottom, than to be dead in
the spirit, like Snug or Starveling. If it is a weakness to desire to play lover, lady, and lion, it is a weakness of
great men, of choice, fiery, and fantastic souls who cannot easily realise or submit to the limitations pressing
about our puny mortality. The whole scene, with our friend, flushed and triumphant, the centre of it, is droll,
of course, but we really find it droll because we are being allowed to survey it from a height and know that the
whole matter is ridiculous and contemptible. These fellows, we can see, should never have left their benches
to follow the Muses. But to the gods, the spectacle of Bottom, soaring and magnificent, trying to grasp every
part, would be no more ridiculous than the spectacle of Wagner perspiring and gesticulating at Bayreuth: they
are both artists, children of vanity and vision, and are both ridiculous and sublime. We can see how droll
Bottom is throughout this scene because Shakespeare, having seated us among the gods, has invited us to
remark the droll aspects of the situation; but to Flute and Starveling Bottom is a man to be admired and
wondered at, and probably to Flute's eldest son (that promising young bellows-mender), to whom he has
condescended on one or two occasions, our droll weaver is the greatest man in the world, a hero and an artist,
in short, a Wagner. We have but to seat ourselves again among the gods to see that "the best in this kind are
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126
but shadows" [V. i. 211], at once droll, heroic, and pitiful, capering for a little space between darkness and
darkness.
Once Bottom is metamorphosed, we no longer see him against the background of his fellow artisans but see
him firmly set in the lovely moonlit world of the elves and fays, a world so delicate that honey-bags stolen
from the bees serve for sweetmeats and the wings of painted butterflies pass for fans, and here among such
airy creatures, Bottom, of course, is first glimpsed as something monstrous, gross, earthy. It would be bad
enough even if he were there in his own proper person, but he is wearing an ass's head and presents to us the
figure of a kind of comic monster. Moreover, he is loved at first sight by the beautiful Titania, who, with the
frankness of an immortal, does not scruple to tell him so as soon as her eyes, peering through enchantments,
are open. A man may have the best wit and the best person of any handicraftsman in Athens and yet shrink
from the wizardries of such a night, being compelled to wear the head of an ass, deserted by his companions,
conjured into fairyland, bewilderingly promoted into the paramour of the fairy queen and made the master of
such elvish and microscopic attendants as Peas-blossom and Cobweb and Moth. But Bottom, as we have said,
rises to the occasion, ass's head and all; not only does he not shrink and turn tail, not only does he accept the
situation, he contrives to carry it off with an air; he not only rises to the occasion, he improves it. Now that all
the whimsies under the midsummer moon are let loose and wild imagination has life dancing to its tune, this
is not the time for the Bottom we have already seen, the imaginative, temperamental man, to come forward
and dominate the scene, or else all hold upon reality is lost; that former Bottom must be kept in check, left to
wonder and perhaps to play over to himself the lover and the lion; this is the moment for that other, honest
Nick Bottom the weaver, the plain man who is something of a humorist, good solid flesh among all such
flimsies and whimsies, madness and moonshine. Does the newly awakened lovely creature immediately
confess that she is enamoured of him, then he carries it off bravely, with a mingled touch of wit, philosophy,
and masculine complacency: "Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that: and yet, to say the
truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days; the more the pity that some honest neighbours
will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion" [III. i. 142-46]. And we can see the ass's head
tilted towards the overhanging branches, as he gives a guffaw at his "gleeking" and takes a strutting turn or
two before this astonishing new mistress.
But nothing takes him by surprise in this sudden advancement. His tone is humorous and condescending, that
of a solid complacent male among feminine fripperies. When his strange little servitors are introduced to him,
the Duke himself could not carry it off better: "I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb:
if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you"—then turning regally to the next: "Your name, honest
gentleman?" Good Master Mustard-seed is commiserated with because "that same cowardly, giantlike ox-beef
hath devoured many a gentleman of your House" [II. i. 182-93]: all are noticed and dispatched with the
appropriate word; it is like a parody of an official reception, in the next scene, we discover him even more at
his ease than before, lolling magnificently, embraced by his lady and surrounded by his devoted attendants,
who are being given their various duties. "Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur"—and indeed there was probably
something very Gallic about this Cobweb—"get your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipp'd
humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too
much in the action, monsieur; and, good monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not. I would be loth to
have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior" [IV. i. 10-16]. Bottom is clearly making himself at home in
Elfland; he is beginning to display a certain fastidiousness, making delicate choice of a "red-hipp'd
humble-bee on the top of a thistle." And if Puck won the first trick with the love philtre and the ass's head, we
are not sure that Bottom is not now winning the second, for every time he addresses one of his attendants he is
scoring off Elfland and is proving himself a very waggish ass indeed. Even his remarks on the subject of
music ("I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones" [IV. i. 28-9]) and
provender ("I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay,
sweet hay, hath no fellow" [IV. i. 31-4]) have to our ears a certain consciously humorous smack, as if the
speaker were not quite such an ass as he seems but were enjoying the situation in his own way, carrying the
inimitable, if somewhat vulgar, manner of the great Bottom, pride of handicraftsmen, even into the heart of
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127
Faerie.
If he shows no surprise, however, and almost contrives to carry off the situation in the grand manner, we must
remember that he, like Titania, is only dreaming beneath the moon-coloured honeysuckle and musk roses; the
enamoured fairy and all her attendant sprites are to him only phantoms, bright from the playbox of the mind,
there to be huddled away when a sudden puff of wind or a falling leaf brings the little drama to an end; and so
he acts as we all act in dreams, who may ourselves be "translated" nightly by Puck and sent on the wildest
adventures in elfin woods for all we know to the contrary. When Bottom awakes, yawning and stiff in the
long grass, his sense of wonder blossoms gigantically, and the artist in him, he who would play the tyrant, the
lover, the damsel, and the lion, leaps to life: "I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream,—past the wit
of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream" [IV. i. 204-07]. So
fiery and eager is that wonder and poetry in him which all the long hours at Athenian looms have not been
able to wither away, as he stands crying in ecstasy in the greenwood, that we cannot be surprised that his
style, which he very rightly endeavours to heighten for the occasion, should break down under the stress of it:
"The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to
conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was" [IV. i. 211-14], But no matter; the dramatic enthusiast
in him now takes command: Peter Quince (whom we did not suspect of authorship) shall write a ballad of this
dream, to be called Bottom's Dream, and it shall be sung, by a newly resurrected Pyramus, at the end of the
coming play; and off he goes, his head humming with plans, back to the town to put heart into his lads. There
he plays Pyramus as Pyramus was never played before; takes charge of the whole company, does not scruple
to answer a frivolous remark of the Duke's, and finally speaks the last word we hear from the handicraftsmen.
We learn nothing more of him, but perhaps when the lovers were turning to their beds and the fairies were
dancing in the glimmering light, Bottom, masterful, triumphant, was at Peter Quince's with the rest, sitting
over a jug or two and setting his fellow players agape with his tale of the rare vision. There was a poet
somewhere in this droll weaver and so he came to a poet's destiny, finding himself wearing the head of an ass
(as we all must do at such moments), the beloved of an exquisite immortal, the master of Cobwebs and
Peas-blossoms, coming to an hour's enchantment while the moon climbs a hand's-breadth up the sky—and
then, all "stolen hence," the dream done and the dreamer left to wonder. Such is the destiny of poets, who are
themselves also weavers.
It is a critical commonplace that these Athenian clowns are very English, just as the setting that frames them is
exquisitely English; and it follows very naturally that the greatest of them is the most English. There is indeed
no more insular figure in all Shakespeare's wide gallery than Bottom. A superficial examination of him will
reveal all those traits that unfriendly critics of England and Englishmen have remarked for centuries. Thus, he
is ignorant, conceited, domineering; he takes himself and his ridiculous concerns seriously and shows no
lightness of touch; knowing perhaps the least, he yet talks the most, of all his company; he cannot understand
that his strutting figure is the drollest sight under the sky, never for one instant realises that he is nothing but
an ignorant buffoon; the soulless vulgarity of his conduct among the fairies smells rank in the nostrils of men
of taste and delicacy of mind; in short, he is indeed the "shallowest thickskin of that barren sort" [III. ii. 13],
lout-in-chief of a company of louts. But something more than a superficial examination will, as we have partly
seen, dispose of much of this criticism, and will lead to the discovery in Bottom of traits that our friendly
critics have remarked in us and that we ourselves know to be there. Bottom is very English in this, that he is
something of a puzzle and an apparent contradiction. We have already marked the poetry and the artist in him,
and we have only to stare at him a little longer to be in doubt about certain characteristics we took for granted.
Is he entirely our butt or is he for at least part of the time solemnly taking us in and secretly laughing at us?
Which of us has not visited some rural tap-room and found there, wedged in a corner, a large, round-faced,
wide-mouthed fellow, the local oracle; and, having listened to some of his pronouncements, have laughed in
our sleeves at his ignorance, dogmatism, and conceit; and yet, after staying a little longer and staring at the
creature's large, solemn face, a face perilously close to vacuity, have noticed in it certain momentary twinkles
and creases that have suddenly left us a little dubious about our hasty conclusions? And then it has dawned
upon us that the fellow is, in his own way, which is not ours nor one to which we are accustomed, a humorist,
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and that somewhere behind that immobile and almost vacuous front, he has been enjoying us, laughing at us,
just as we have been enjoying him and laughing at him. It is an experience that should make us pause before
we pass judgment upon Bottom, who is the first cousin of all such queer characters, rich and ripe personages
who are to be found, chiefly in hostelries but now and then carrying a bag of tools or flourishing a paint-brush,
in almost every corner of this England, which is itself brimmed with puzzling contradictions, a strange
mixture of the heavy butt and the conscious humorist. Bottom is worlds away from the fully conscious
humour of a Falstaff, but we cannot have followed him from Peter Quince's house to the arms of Titania and
seen him in Bank Holiday humour with his Cobwebs and Mustard-seeds, without noticing that he is
something more than a rustic target. He is English, and he is conceited, ignorant, dogmatic, and asinine, but
there stirs within him, as there does within his fellow workmen even now, a poet and humorist, waiting for the
midsummer moon. And lastly, he is not dead, he has not left us, for I saw him myself, some years ago, and he
had the rank of corporal and was gloriously at ease in a tumbledown estaminet near Amiens [in As You Like It
], and there he was playing the tyrant, the lover, and the lion all at once, and Sergeant Quince and Privates
Snug and Starveling were there with him. They were paying for his beer and I suspect that they were waiting,
though obviously waiting in vain, to hear him cry once more: "Enough; hold or cut bow-strings" [I. ii. Ill],
(pp. 8-19).
J. B. Priestley, "Bully Bottom," in his The English Comic Characters, 1925. Reprint by Dodd, Mead and
Company, 1931, pp. 1-19.
The Lovers
Frederick S. Boas
[Boas considers the various groups of lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream, arguing that Shakespeare's
characterization of the couples is more whimsical than serious. The critic first examines Theseus and
Hippolyta's relationship, maintaining that although the playwright illustrates Theseus as a brave soldier who
wins Hippolyta with his sword, the Greek ruler ultimately displays a practicality that exhibits no grasp of
aesthetic beauty. In addition, Boas notes that in contrast to the generally serene fortunes of Theseus and
Hippolyta, the young lovers—Lysander, Hermia, Helena, and Demetrius—are "a troubled lot" due to their
"purely human failings." The similarity of the characters' shortcomings, the critic continues, reflects an
ambiguous interchangeability from one figure to the next that contributes to the confusion of the comic
entanglement in the Athenian wood. According to Boas, another pair of lovers—Oberon and Titania—add a
dimension of rivalry and jealousy to love and relationships in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The result of the
fairy couples' quarreling, the critic condends, is Oberon's "masterpiece of revenge" when he magically
transforms Bottom into an ass and makes him the object of Titania's affection. The critic also explores the
"Pyramus and Thisbe" episode (Act V, scene i), asserting that the play-within-the-play not only parodies love
relationships in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but also the stage conventions of Shakespeare's day.]
In its main plot [A Midsummer Night's Dream] is akin to The Comedy of Errors, for in both cases a humorous
entanglement is created out of mistakes. Already, however, Shakespere shows his extraordinary skill in
devising variations upon a given theme, for here the mistakes are those of a night and not of a day, and instead
of being external to the mind are internal ... As in The Comedy of Errors, also, the scene is nominally laid
amid classical surroundings, but the whole atmosphere of the play is essentially English and Elizabethan.
Thus Theseus, whose marriage with Hippolyta forms the setting of the story, is no Athenian 'duke,' but a great
Tudor noble. He is a brave soldier, who has wooed his bride with his sword, and, strenuous even in his
pleasures, he is up with the dawn on May-morning, and out in the woods, that his love may hear the music of
his hounds, 'matched in mouth like bells' [IV. i. 123], as they are uncoupled for the hunt. He is a true Tudor
lord also in his taste for the drama, as shown in his request for masques and dances wherewith to celebrate his
marriage. He exhibits the gracious spirit common to all Shakespeare's leaders of men in choosing, against the
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advice of his Master of the Revels, the entertainment prepared by Bottom and his fellows:
I will hear that play
For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it;
[V. i. 81-3]
and though tickled by the absurdities of the performance, he checks more than once the petulant criticisms of
Hippolyta, and assures the actors at the close, with a courteous double-entendre, that their play has been 'very
notably discharged' [V. I. 360-61 ]. But it has been urged that Theseus shows the limitations of nature which
are found in Shakespere's men of action. Though dramatic performances serve to while away the time, even at
their best they are to him 'but shadows,' and it is he who dismisses the tale of what the lovers have
experienced in the wood as 'fairy toys,' and is thus led on to the famous declaration that
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
[V. i. 7-8]
Only the practical common-sense Theseus, it has been said, would think of comparing the poet or lover to the
lunatic, and Shakespere, by putting such words into his mouth, shows by a side-stroke that the man of action
fails to appreciate the idealist nature. But such an inference from the passage is hazardous: there is a sense in
which Theseus' statement is true, for the artist and the lover do collide, like the madman, with what 'cool
reason' chooses to term the realities of life. The eloquent ring of the words is scarcely suggestive of dramatic
irony, while the description of the poet's pen as giving to 'airy nothing a local habitation and a name' [V. i.
16-17], applies with curious exactness to Shakespere's own method in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Contrasted with the serene fortunes of Theseus and Hippolyta is the troubled lot of humbler lovers, due, in its
origin, to purely human failings. The fickle Demetrius has shifted his affections from Helena to Hermia,
whose father Egeus favours the match, but Hermia is constant to Lysander, while Helena still 'dotes in
idolatry' [I. i. 109] upon her inconstant wooer. The Athenian law as expounded by Theseus ... enforces upon
Hermia obedience to her father's wishes on pain of death or perpetual maidenhood. But Lysander suggests
escape to a classical 'Gretna Green,' seven leagues from the town, where the sharp Athenian law does not run,
and fixes a trysting-place for the following night within the neighbouring wood. That Hermia should reveal
the secret to Helena, and that she in her turn should put Demetrius on the fugitive's track, merely to 'have his
sight thither and back again' [I. i. 251], is a transparently clumsy device for concentrating the four lovers on a
single spot, which betrays the hand of the immature playwright. Within the wood the power of human motive
is suspended for that of enchantment, and at a touch of Puck's magic herb, Lysander and Demetrius are
'translated,' and ready to cross swords for the love of the erewhile flouted Helena. Thus all things befall
preposterously, and reason holds as little sway over action as in a dream, though it is surely overstrained to
find ... a definitely allegorical significance in the comic entanglement, the more so that the dramatic execution
is at this point somewhat crude. Lysander and Demetrius are little more than lay figures, and the only
difference between Helena and Hermia is that the latter is shorter of stature, and has a vixenish temper, of
which she gives a violent display in the unseemly quarrel scene. But at last, by Oberon's command Dian's bud
undoes on the eyes of Lysander the work of Cupid's flower, and the close of the period of enchantment is
broadly and effectively marked by the inrush at dawn of exuberant, palpable life in the shape of Theseus'
hunting party, whose horns and 'halloes' reawaken the sleepers to everyday realities. But, as in The Errors, out
of the confusions of the moment is born an abiding result. Demetrius is henceforward true to Helena: the
caprice of magic has redressed the caprice of passion, and the lovers return to Athens 'with league whose date
till death shall never end' [in. ii. 373].
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Deep reflective power and subtle insight into character came slowly to Shakespere, as to lesser men, but fancy
has its flowering season in youth, and never has it shimmered with a more delicate and iridescent bloom than
the fairy-world of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Through woodland vistas, where the Maymoon struggles
with the dusk, elf-land opens into sight, ethereal, impalpable, spun out of gossamer and dew, and yet strangely
consistent and credible. For this kingdom of shadows reproduces in miniature the structure of human society.
Here, as on earth, there are royal rulers, with courts, ministers, warriors, jesters, and, in fine, all the pomp and
circumstance of mortal sovereignty. And what plausibility there is in every detail, worked out with an
unfaltering instinct for just and delicate gradation! In this realm of the microscopic an acorn-cup is a place of
shelter, and a cast snake-skin, or the leathern wing of a rear-mouse, an ample coat: the night tapers are
honey-bags of humble-bees lit at the glow-worm's eyes, and the fairy chorus, to whom the third part of a
moment is a measurable portion of time, charm from the side of their sleeping mistress such terrible monsters
as blindworms, spiders, and beetles black.
Over these tiny creatures morality has no sway: theirs is a delicious sense life, a revel of epicurean joy in
nature's sweets and beauties. To dance 'by paved fountain or by rushy brook' [II. i. 84], to rest on banks
canopied with flowers, to feed on apricots and grapes, and mulberries, to tread the groves till the 'eastern gate
all firey red' [III. ii. 391 ] turns the green sea into gold—such are the delights which make up their round of
existence. In Puck, 'the lob of spirits,' this merry temper takes a more roguish form, a gusto in the topsy-turvy,
in the things that befall preposterously, and an elfin glee in gulling mortals according to their folly. With his
zest for knavish pranks, for mocking practical jokes upon 'gossips' and 'wisest aunts,' this merry wanderer of
the night is indeed a spirit different in sort from the ethereal dream fairies, and it is natural that Oberon's
vision of Cupid all armed should be hid from his gross sight. Moonlight and woodland have for him no spell
of beauty, but they form a congenial sphere in which to play the game of mystification and cross-purposes.
Thus his very unlikeness to the other shadows marks him out as the ally and henchman of Oberon in his
quarrel with the fairy queen and her court. For the love troubles of mortals have their miniature counterpart in
the jealousy of the elfin royal pair, springing in the main, as befits their nature, from an aesthetic rivalry for
the possession of a lovely Indian boy, though by an ingenious touch, which unites the natural and supernatural
realms, a further incitement is the undue favour with which Oberon regards the 'bouncing Amazon' Hippolyta,
balanced by Titania's attachment to Theseus. And as the human wooers are beguiled by the power of Cupid's
magic herb, the fairy queen is in like manner victimized. But with correct instinct Shakespere makes her
deception far the more extravagant. Fairyland is the world of perennial surprise, and it must be a glaringly
fantastic incongruity that arrests attention there. But the most exciting canons of improbability are satisfied
when Titania, whose very being is spun out of light and air and dew, fastens her affections upon the unpurged
'mortal grossness' of Bottom, upon humanity with its asinine attributes focussed and gathered to a head. To
attack his queen in her essential nature, to make her whose only food is beauty lavish her endearments upon a
misshapen monster, is a masterpiece of revenge on Oberon's part. And so persuasive is the art of the dramatist
that our pity is challenged for Titania's infatuation, with its pathetically reckless squandering of pearls before
swine, and thus we hail with joy her release from her dotage, her reconciliation with Oberon, and the end of
jars in fairyland, celebrated with elfin ritual of dance and song.
In designedly aggressive contrast to the dwellers in the shadow world is the crew of hempen homespuns
headed by sweet bully Bottom. Among the many forms of genius there is to be reckoned the asinine variety,
which wins for a man the cordial recognition of his supremacy among fools, and of this Bottom is a choice
type. In the preparation of the Interlude in honour of the Duke's marriage, though Quince is nominally the
manager, Bottom, through the force of his commanding personality, is throughout the directing spirit. His
brother craftsmen have some doubts about their qualifications for heroic roles, but this protean actor and critic
is ready for any and every part, from lion to lady, and is by universal consent selected as jeune premier [lead
player] of the company in the character of Pyramus, 'a most lovely gentleman-like man.' Bereft of his services,
the comedy, it is admitted on all hands, cannot go forward: 'it is not possible: you have not a man in all Athens
able to discharge Pyramus but he' [IV. ii. 7-8]. Fostered by such hero-worship, Bottom's egregious
self-complacency develops to the point where his metamorphosis at the hands of Puck seems merely an
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exquisitely fitting climax to a natural process of evolution. And even when thus 'translated,' he retains his
versatile faculty of adapting himself to any part; the amorous advances of Titania in no wise disturb his
equanimity, and he is quite at ease with Peaseblossom and Cobweb. A sublime self-satisfaction may triumph
in situations where the most delicate tact or the most sympathetic intelligence would be nonplussed.
But Shakespere, in introducing his crew of patches into his fairy drama, had an aim beyond satirizing fussy
egotism or securing an effect of broad comic relief. It is a peculiarity of his dramatic method to produce
variations upon a single theme in the different portions of a play. Love's Labour's Lost is an instance of this,
and A Midsummer Nights Dream is further illustration, though of a less obvious kind. For in the rehearsal and
setting forth of their comedy, Bottom and his friends enter a debateable domain, which, like that of the fairies,
hovers round the solid work-a-day world, and yet is not of it. There is a point of view from which life may be
regarded as the reality of which art, and in especial dramatic art, is the 'shadow,' the very word used by
Theseus in relation to the workmen's play. Thus in their grotesque devices and makeshifts these rude
mechanicals are really facing the question of the relation of shadow to substance, the immemorial question of
realism in art and on the stage. The classical maxim that 'Medea shall not kill her children in sight of the
audience' [Horace, in his Ars Poetica] lest the feelings of the spectators should be harrowed beyond
endurance, finds a burlesque echo in Bottom's solicitude lest the ladies should be terrified by the drawing of
Pyramus' sword, or the entrance of so fearful a wildfowl as your lion. Hence the necessity for a prologue to
say that Pyramus is not killed indeed, and for the apparition of half Snug the joiner's face through the lion's
neck, and his announcement that he is not come hither as a lion, but is 'a man as other men are' [III. i. 44].
Scenery presents further difficulties, but here, as there is no risk of wounding delicate susceptibilities, realism
is given full rein. The moon herself is pressed into the service, but owing to her capricious nature, she is given
an understudy in the person of Starveling carrying a bush of thorns and a lanthorn. It is only the hypercriticism
of the Philistine Theseus that finds fault with this arrangement on the score that the man should be put into the
lanthorn. 'How is it else the man in the moon?' [V. i. 247-48].
The 'tedious belief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe' [V. i. 56-7], is more elaborated specimen of
those plays within plays, of which Shakespere had already given a sketch in Love's Labour's Lost, and for
which he retained a fondness in all stages of his career. It is a burlesque upon the dramas of the day, in which
classical subjects were handled with utter want of dignity, and with incongruous extravagance of style. The
jingling metres, the mania for alliteration, the far-fetched and fantastic epithets, the meaningless invocations,
the wearisome repetition of emphatic words, are all ridiculed with a boisterous glee, which was an implicit
warrant that, when the young dramatist should hereafter turn to tragic or classical themes, his own work
would be free from such disfiguring affectations, or, at worst, would take from them only a superficial taint.
And, ingenius which out of an incidental entertainment could frame the complex and gorgeous pagentry of A
Midsummer Night's Dream; and which, when denied, by the necessities of the occasion, an ethical motive,
could fall back for inspiration on an enchanting metaphysic, not of the schools but of the stage, whose
contrasts of shadow and reality are shot, now in threads of gossamer lightness, now in homelier and coarser
fibre, into the web and woof of this unique hymeneal masque. (pp. 184-90)
Frederick S. Boas, "Shakespeare's Poems: The Early Period of Comedy," in his Shakespere and His
Predecessors, 1896. Reprint by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902, pp. 158-96.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Selected Quotes
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
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132
And therefore is love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd
(I, i)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play where the characters often meditate on the nature of love; while
nothing they say is startingly original, Shakespeare's lyricism can be profound. Here Helena touches on the
impulsive and imaginitive nature of love, comparing it to the innocent, but not always reasoned, desires of a
child.
I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where ox-lips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight
(II, i)
Shakespeare lyricism is evident throughout Midsummer Night's Dream; this quote is a good example of the
exuberant and magical poetry found in the play. Here Oberon is speaking about his wife Titania's sleeping
quarters.
I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play
(IV, i)
The fantasic nature of Midsummer Night's Dream is puncuated by dreams and dreaming. Here Bottom
awakens from his romance with Titania, and, after explaining the ineffability of his dream, makes a pun about
the title of the dream, and the depth of its magic.
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere
(II, i)
Spoken by one of the fairy's in the play, the quote is another example of the magical and fantastic nature of
the play. The fairy is replying to Puck's inquiry as to where she has been.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear?
(V, i)
In the play's final scene, Theseus remarks on the confusion that has transpired in the woods. His words touch
on one of the play's main themes, imagination, and its effects. How often does fear distort our senses, or even
cause us to see things that don't exist?
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133
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this,--and all is mended,-That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear
(I, i)
The beginning of the play's epilogue, spoken by Puck. On the one hand, the quote is an acknowledgement on
Shakespeare's part that the play is "slight", on the other hand, it puncuates the fantastical, imaginative element
of the play.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Suggested Essay Topics
Act I, Scene 1
1. How does the exposition in Act I, Scene i seem to support Lysander’s statement that, “The course of true
love never did run smooth?”
2. Helena tells Hermia, “My ear should catch your voice; my eye your eye….” Considering Hermia’s present
relationship and Helena’s past relationship with Demetrius, explain how this exemplifies Shakespeare’s use
of the first part of Plautus’ and Terence’s three-part method of writing comedic plays.
3. How does Egeus’ statement (referring to Hermia), “And she is mine, and all my right of her I do estate
unto Demetrius,” demonstrate that Shakespeare is using this character to fulfill the role of the opposing father,
which is a typical character in the New Comedy of Plautus and Terence?
Act I, Scene 2
1. Quince admonishes Bottom that if he were to have the part of the lion and roar too loudly, he “…would
frighten the Duchess and the ladies that they would shriek….” What does this tell us about the Elizabethan
view of women? Validate your opinion with clues from the text.
2. In talking about the beard to go with his costume, Bottom says, “…either your straw-color beard, your
orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-color beard, your perfit yellow.” In
your opinion, and taking hints from his conversations with Quince, just how much experience has Bottom had
with acting?
3. The name of the play is “The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.”
Considering that Bottom has already presented himself as something of a clown, why do you think it
appropriate he play the lead in a play with this title?
Act II, Scene 1
1. How does Oberon’s instructing Puck to anoint the eye of the youth in “Athenian garments” allow
Shakespeare to introduce complications to the situation that is opposite of the “right” one?
2. Considering they are the king and queen of the fairies, explain in your own words why Titania has “…
forsworn his [Oberon’s] bed and company.”
3. “I love thee not; therefore pursue me not,” demands Demetrius of Helena, but she will not desist. How can
you explain her actions and Demetrius’ reactions in view of Plautus’ and Terence’s plot structure for love
comedies?
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134
Act II, Scene 2
1. As Oberon, king of the fairies, carefully present an argument to your wife and queen, Titania, explaining
why her past affairs (and yours) did not threaten your marriage but her insistence on keeping this changeling
boy rather than conceding to your demands is a threat.
2. Hermia, who is defying Athenian law and facing death or banishment to a nunnery in order to marry the
man she loves rather than the man her father chose as her husband, is concerned when Lysander wants to
sleep with her in the wood on their way to his aunt’s house to be married. She begs him, “Do not lie so
near.” How may her fears concerning her pristine reputation as a maid (unmarried young woman) be justified
at this point in the play?
3. Helena is dumbfounded and hurt when she awakens Lysander in the wood and he professes his love for her,
“Yet Hermia still loves you [Lysander].” Carefully, decide why she is dumbfounded and hurt that he would
mock her so. Explain this, step by step, to the newly-besotted Lysander. Remember, he is under the spell of
the love juice and will not be easily convinced.
Act III, Scene 1
1. Bottom thinks his friends are playing a trick on him, yet he maintains, “I will walk up and down here, and I
will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.” How is this consistent with his character as a sensitive, caring,
intelligent, buffoon (clown)?
2. Titania implores Bottom, “Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt
or no.” Explain her reasoning in assuming she can order Bottom to feel as she wants him to.
3. As Puck begins his incantation (lines 107–113) to place a spell upon Bottom, what do you specifically
notice about the last word in every other line and why do you think Shakespeare changes the way he uses
language for spell-casting?
Act III, Scene 2
1. As a contemporary of Helena, how would you make each of your friends understand your feelings about
what you consider their conspiracy “…to conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes with your [their] derision!”
Remember to keep the situation the same as it is in the play, even though you are modernizing Helena’s
communication methods.
2. As Hermia, you have just lost your love to your best friend who you think has “stol’n my love’s heart
from him. . ..” This would mean losing your best friend too. Which is the worse tragedy and why? Use not
only your own feelings but validations from the play to prove your point.
3. How is it possible that neither Lysander nor Demetrius took their loves’ feelings into account when each of
these men decided who they would love, as demonstrated by Lysander’s confusion when asking, “Why
should you think that I should woo in scorn?” You will need to carefully peruse the play for proof to support
your opinion.
Act IV, Scene 1
1. As Egeus, what are your particular thoughts on being robbed of what you perceive as justice from the duke
to whom you have said, “…My lord, you have enough. I beg the law, the law, upon his head.” Be certain to
include the Athenian law about a father choosing his daughter’s husband, your friendship with Duke Theseus,
your great dislike for the cheating Lysander, your bewilderment with Demetrius’ change of heart, and your
utter frustration at your daughter’s refusal to obey.
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135
2. Duke Theseus seems relieved at not having to punish Hermia, as he decrees to Egeus, “…I will overbear
your will…” Considering he is the highest authority, how can you explain these unexpected feelings. Keep in
mind that he, himself, is being married to Hippolyta that night.
3. Bottom makes many references to his ass-like behavior without ever acknowledging that his head is now
that of an ass. What are these references and how may they be interpreted as describing either the animal’s
behavior or that of a person acting as an ass—that is, poorly or stupidly? Use the text as your resource material.
Act IV, Scene 2
1. Bottom is actually making a jest when he directs his fellow actors to refrain from eating onions or garlic
before the performance so that the audience will say their play, “is a sweet comedy.” In reality, how is the
play-within-the-play “a sweet comedy”? Use documentation from within the text.
2. Upon waking, Bottom explains to himself, “I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it
was.” How is this Shakespeare’s way of having a human interpret the fairy world? Look for validations to
correctly explain Bottom’s quote.
3. Demetrius queries, “Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep, we dream.” How is
this an alternate explanation for a human’s visit to the fairy world of spells and being enchanted? Remember
to include what would be absurd behavior on Demetrius’ part were he not under a fairy spell.
Act V, Scene 1
Suggested Essay Topics
1. Theseus likens, “the lunatic, the lover, and the poet,” in his explanation to Hippolyta of why he thinks the
lovers are recounting a fantasy rather than what really happened to them in the haunted wood. Today, we
often make the same comparison in our own ways. Examine your life, or that of someone you know, to prove
either the truth or falsehood of this statement. Remember to keep referring to facts from the text to support
your argument.
2. As a modern audience member, how would you react to the comments of the audience in the
play-within-the-play and their interaction with the actors as they were on stage? Use the text for specific
examples to illustrate your opinion.
3. In the play-within-the-play, Pyramus commits suicide when he thinks his love is dead. This is a common
theme in plays (to wit, Shakespeare’s own Romeo and Juliet). How is it possible that the one committing
suicide does not verify the death of his/her lover before killing him/herself? Use the lovers in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream as examples to illustrate your thoughts on this topic.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Sample Essay Outlines
Topic #1
It is only in the last few decades that the position of women in society has been reexamined. From reading
Shakespeare’s plays, we have some information about their negative treatment in the 1500s and 1600s. What,
precisely, was this negative treatment of women to which we no longer adhere?
Outline
I. Thesis Statement: In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare demonstrates the negative
treatment women received from society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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136
II. Owned by Father
A. Father has the right to choose daughter’s husband
B. Failure of daughter to comply with father’s choice will lead to either death or banishment to a nunnery
III. Unable to Choose Husband
A. See II.
B. Hermia faces death or banishment be eloping with Lysander
C. Hippolyta won in battle by Theseus
IV. Friendships Dependent upon Mate
A. Hermia hates Helena because Lysander loves Helena
B. Helena wants to be like Hermia because Demetrius loves Hermia
V. Hypocrisy in Sexual Values
A. Hermia asks Lysander not to sleep so close to her in the wood since they are not yet married although they
are in the act of eloping
B. Although married, Oberon and Titania freely have affairs
Topic #2
People are commonly referred to as “ass” when they behave poorly or stupidly. How has William
Shakespeare exemplified such behavior by having Robin Goodfellow (Puck) replace Nick Bottom’s head
with that of the animal, an ass?
Outline:
I. Thesis Statement: In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare demonstrates the appropriateness
of certain animal labels to describe human behavior—to wit, Bottom’s having an ass’s head.
II. The Qualities of Bottom’s Character Which are Similar to Those of the Animal, An Ass
A. Stubbornness as he refuses to allow his friends to see his fear at being alone in the haunted wood
B. Casual awareness of his sexuality when Titania courts him
C. Coarse hair of which he complains to the fairies without realizing he possesses an ass’s head
III. Bottom’s Denial of his Feelings
A. Refuses to join his friends when they flee the haunted wood for fear they will know he realizes (or thinks
he realizes) they are making a jest of him
B. Whistles for courage rather than admit his fear when he finds himself in the haunted wood alone
C. Thinks his experience was a dream while probably feeling it was real
IV. Lack of Examination of New Situations
A. Blindly accepts the role of Titania’s lover
B. After being freed of Puck’s spell, doesn’t question why his body no longer has the lightness of a fairy’s
V. Mocks Others
A. Refers to a cobweb’s ability to staunch the flow of blood from a cut when introduced to Cobweb
B. Asks Peaseblossom to remember him to his vegetable family members when introduced to him
C. Refers to mustard’s ability to burn the mouth when introduced to Mustardseed
D. Uses this mockery to pay tribute to the fairies’ attributes
VI. Takes Advantage of Others
A. Tells Mustardseed and Peaseblossom to scratch his face
B. Sends Cobweb on a quest to find a particular kind of bee with a particular kind of honey on a particular
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flower and to bring the honey-bag back to him unbroken
Topic #3
In life, people will often experience trials and tribulations before they eventually arrive at their destination—be
it with their career, relationship, or family. While Egeus and Hermia do not appear reconciled at the end of the
play, each of the lovers are united or reunited with their true loves.
Outline
I. Thesis Statement: The characters in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are successful,
after many trials and tribulations, in acquiring their desired relationships.
II. Hermia and Lysander
A. Must go to Athens with Egeus for Duke Theseus’ decision
B. Demetrius competes with Lysander for Hermia’s hand in marriage and has Egeus’ approval
C. Hermia and Lysander decide to defy the law and elope
D. Their elopement is aborted
E. Lysander is temporarily charmed into loving Helena
F. Hermia accuses Helena of “stealing” Lysander’s love
III. Helena and Demetrius
A. Demetrius at one time loved Helena, but later left her
B. Demetrius is in love with Hermia and has her father’s approval
C. Helena is temporarily loved by Lysander when he is under the spell of the love juice
D. Hermia accuses Helena of “stealing” Lysander’s love
IV. Hippolyta and Theseus
A. Theseus is the Duke of Athens
B. Hippolyta is the Queen of the Amazons
C. Theseus captured her in battle
V. Titania and Oberon
A. Each has extra-marital affairs
B. Titania refuses to relinquish the changeling she’s brought with her from India
C. Oberon places a spell on his wife
D. Titania falls in love with an ass-headed human, Bottom
Topic #4
Friendship has a way of lasting despite misunderstandings, arguments, different opinions, and time. William
Shakespeare demonstrates this via the ebb and flow of the four lovers’ relationships in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream.
Outline
I. Thesis Statement: In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare demonstrates the enduring
quality of friendship
II. Helena and Hermia
A. Harmony as childhood friends and when Hermia tells Helena of her elopement so that Helena will be
reassured that Hermia will no longer be available for Demetrius to marry
B. Conflict in that Demetrius first loves Helena, then Hermia, then Helena again and also when Lysander is
charmed into loving Helena
C. Reconciliation when each is united with her proper love
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III. Lysander and Demetrius
A. No initial contact nor feeling about each other
B. Conflict in that both want to marry Hermia but Demetrius has Egeus’ approval to marry Hermia while
Lysander has her love. Lysander plans to elope with Hermia. Both men jilt Hermia, loving Helena, while
under the love-juice’s spell, which prompts them to plan a duel to win Helena’s hand
C. Reconciliation when reunited with their chosen lovers
IV. Demetrius and Hermia
A. Harmony when Demetrius had previously been wooing Hermia’s childhood friend, Helena
B.Conflict in that Demetrius plans to marry Hermia (with her father’s approval) while she plans to elope with
Lysander. Also conflict that he jilted Helena to woo Hermia
C. Reconciliation, with the love juice’s help, when Demetrius falls in love with Helena again
V. Lysander and Helena
A. Harmony when Lysander plans to elope with Helena’s closest friend, Hermia, which would no longer
allow Demetrius to marry Hermia
B. Conflict when Lysander temporarily falls in love with Helena while under the love juice’s spell and, again,
when Lysander calls Helena nasty names during her argument with Hermia
C. Reconciliation when Lysander is reunited with Hermia and Helena with Demetrius
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Modern Connections
While there are many things in A Midsummer Night's Dream that modern audiences enjoy about the play, the
theme of love is one that many people, from Shakespeare's original audiences to modern audiences, can relate
to.
The four young lovers in the play—Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius—all seem to feel love very
deeply, even before the fairies work their magic. For Lysander's love, Hermia is willing to go against her
father's wishes (he wants her to marry Demetrius). Both Hermia and Lysander would rather run away and risk
the punishment of Athenian law if they are caught. Helena, in love with Demetrius, betrays her friendship
with Hermia with the hope of gaining a little of Demetrius's favor. She hopes that in telling Demetrius of
Hermia's plan and her whereabouts, he will thank her, and that perhaps this attention will lead to something
more. Demetrius has pursued Hermia into the wood and is almost insane from not finding her ("And here am
I, and wode [mad] within this wood, / Because I cannot meet with Hermia" [II.i.192-93]).
This love which seems so strong, however, is weak in two ways: for the men, it appears to be fickle; and for
the women, it comes between them as lifelong friends. Lysander and Demetrius are both affected by the love
potion of Oberon, applied by Puck to their eyelids. Lysander, who so deeply loved Hermia, suddenly loves
Helena. Not only is he completely enamored with her, but he now violently despises Hermia. He "repent[s] /
The tedious minutes" he has spent with her (II.ii.111-12). Similarly, Demetrius, who had also loved Hermia
and so venomously despised Helena ("I am sick when I do look on thee," he told her in II.i.212), suddenly
refers to her as "goddess, nymph, perfect, divine" (III.ii.137). The thing that transforms the affections of
Lysander and Demetrius in the play is a magical potion; in real life, such seemingly deep emotions are also
easily transformed, especially among the young. Like the young lovers in the play, young people in love today
are still finding their own identities. Lysander, Demetrius, Helena, and Hermia, in fact, do not really seem to
have any identifying characteristics. As young people are still finding out who they are, what appeals to them
in a romantic sense is likely to change as they themselves change.
Helena and Hermia, on the other hand, remain constant in the sense that they each love the same person
throughout the play. However, they jeopardize their own friendship as they strive to hold on to the young men
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they love. Helena, as previously mentioned, betrays Hermia when she tells Demetrius of Hermia's planned
elopement to Lysander. Later, when Helena becomes convinced that Hermia is in on what she thinks is
Lysander's and Demetrius's cruel joke, she accuses Hermia of betraying their friendship. She asks, "O, is all
forgot? / All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?" (III.ii.201-02). Hermia denies that she has
scorned her friend, but becomes so increasingly dismayed by Lysander's professed love for Helena, and hatred
for her, and by Helena's accusations, that she finally lashes back at Helena saying, "I am not yet so low / But
that my nails can reach unto thine eyes" (III.ii.297-98). The bickering ceases when Hermia blames the whole
confused mess on Helena, after which Helena runs off. How often is this scene replayed in modern times? Do
today's teenagers, and adults, let romantic relationships come between friendships?
There is another example of love in the play: the bewitched love between Titania and the transformed Bottom.
Titania falls in love with the ass-headed Bottom. Having fallen in love with and adored this creature, Titania
awakens from this love, and from sleep, feeling a little foolish for having been so blinded by love: "O, how
mine eyes do loathe his visage now!" (IV.i.77). Again, how many times is this scene replayed in modern
times? Do people today fall in love with people who aren't what they seem to be? And don't we feel a little
like Titania did when we see what they really are?
The other romantic relationship in the play (aside from that of Pyramus and Thisby, portrayed by Bottom and
company) is that of Theseus and Hippolyta. While we don't really get to see the two interact very much during
the course of the play, their relationship does not change, perhaps attesting to its stability. Critics have also
maintained that the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta represents love balanced by reason, in
contrast to the inconstant, passionate love of the four young people.
Shakespeare presents a variety of views about love in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it is not clear which
conception of love he supports. Perhaps the point is that love is different things to different people and may
affect us in any number of ways, depending on where we are in our lives.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: FAQs
Did Shakespeare have a specific reason for writing this
play?
A Midsummer Night's Dream was probably written in 1596, making it the last of Shakespeare's early
comedies. Here he again explores the familiar themes art versus life, dreams versus reality within a stock
comedy form of young couple(s) pitted against paternal authority. Shakespeare may have incorporated bits
and pieces into A Midsummer Night's Dream that he had written years before but was unable to fit into his
other early comedies. Nevertheless, most historians believe that the occasion for both the play's composition
and of its dramatic complications is marriage. The general consensus is that A Midsummer Night's Dream was
commissioned for a performance at an aristocratic marriage at Whitehall or another of Elizabethan England's
great houses, as opposed to staging in a public theater. Although the play has its complications, it is, at
bottom, a celebration of marriage and its poetics. Its text is permeated with references to moonlight, flowers,
and birds, these image clusters creating an atmosphere conducive to nuptials. Unfortunately, we do not know
the details of the particular wedding at which the play was probably first performed.
How does the dream of the play begin?
In Act II of A Midsummer Night's Dream we are immersed in the nocturnal realm of Oberon and Titania and
we recognize at once that this enchanted forest of magic and mayhem is set apart from the daylight world of
"Athens" under its reasonable ruler Theseus. The movement into the play's dream world is both determined
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and arbitrary. It occurs as a result of discord within the daylight world of Athens when the old man Egeus
appears to block the union of Hermia to her beloved Lysander, demanding the execution of the latter for
"bewitching" his daughter. There is no real cause to Egeus's opposition, no long-standing family feud. Indeed,
when Lysander says of Egeus's choice, Demetrius that "I am, my lord, as well derived as he" (I, i., l.101), not
only do first impressions appear to bear him out, subsequent events suggest that the two male youths are
interchangeable. The dream occurs because of inevitable, unavoidable tensions in the waking world.
What part do Bottom and the other "rude mechanicals"
have in the play?
In the second scene that completes Act I, we are introduced to an extraordinary group of familiar but
outlandish comical characters who have been enlisted to perform stage interlude as part of the entertainment at
the impending marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. Led by the carpenter/director Quince, their very
names---Flute (a bellows maker), Snout (a tinker), Snug (a joiner), Starveling (a tailor), and Bottom (a
weaver)--- denote their lesser status as "mechanical" tradesmen. Their station in society makes them fair game
for gentle indignities of which they are characteristically unaware. Thus, Bottom finds himself is his own
dream world, with his every wish ministered to by Titania and her fairy entourage, but he cannot sense the
donkey's head that Puck has placed upon him, even though he finds himself hungry for hay. Collectively,
Bottom and his fellows have a gross weight to them that serves as a counterbalance to the airy quality of the
fairy world and its inhabitants.
Why is there a fifth act to this play?
By end of Act IV, the narrative line of A Midsummer Night's Dream is essentially played out. Oberon and
Titania are reconciled in their quarrel over the changeling, the young couples are paired correctly (Hermia
with Lysander and Helena with Demetrius), Theseus has over-ruled Egeus, and a triple wedding awaits.
Indeed, Acts I through IV of A Midsummer Night's Dream comprise a perfectly symmetrical pattern that
moves from court to enchanted realm and then back to daylight world in which Theseus rules. The question
naturally arises: Why is there a fifth act to the play. The short answer is that all of Shakespeare's plays have
five acts and that the playwright therefore simply appended an "extra" act to his story for the sake of
uniformity. But Shakespeare could have done this by simply stretching the plot out. Instead, he chose to insert
the staging of Pyramus and Thisbe by Quince, Bottom, and their fellows. At the end of Act IV, we are
reminded that there is an unconcluded piece of business to be conducted when Bottom's arrival for the
hilarious staging of the play "outside" the play. Here, as in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare appears to have
deliberately parted with convention, the addition of Act V being an experimental innovation in comic
structure, taking place beyond the proper boundaries of the play itself.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bibliography and Further
Reading
*If available, books are linked to Amazon.com
Barber, Cesar Lombardi . Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to
Social Custom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
Berry, Edward. Shakespeare's Comic Rites. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
How does the dream of the play begin?
141
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 1987.
Bonazza, Blaze O. Shakespeare's Early Comedies: A Structural Analysis*. The Hague: Mouton, 1966.
Briggs, Katharine M. The Anatomy of Puck. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959.
Charney, Maurice. All of Shakespeare. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Foakes, R. A. ed. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Frye, Northrop. "Characterization in Shakespeare's Comedy," Shakespeare Quarterly: Vol.IV (1953),
pp.271-277.
Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare—Volume 1. Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
Granville-Barker, Harley. Prefaces to Shakespeare. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965/1978.
Gurr, Andrew. Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Halliday, F.E. Shakespeare. New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc., 1956.
Levi, Peter. The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988.
Macdonald, Ronald R. Twayne’s English Author Series—William Shakespeare: The Comedies. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992.
Mowat, Barbara A. & Paul Werstine, ed. The New Folger Library—Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. New York: Washington Square Press, 1993.
Muir, Kenneth. Shakespeare's Comic Sequence. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979.
Nevo, Ruth. Comic Transformations in Shakespeare. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1981.
Palmer, John. Comic Characters of Shakespeare. London: Macmillan, 1946.
Rhoades, Duane. Shakespeare's Defense of Poetry: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest".
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1986.
Schoenbaum, S. William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life. New York: Oxford University Press,
Inc., 1977.
Schoenbaum, S. Shakespeare’s Lives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Tillyard, E.M.W. Shakespeare's Early Comedies. London: Athlone Press,1965.
Wells, Stanley. (Ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1986.
Wilson, J. Dover. Shakespeare's Happy Comedies. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1962.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Bibliography and FurtherReading
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Young, David. Something of Great Constancy: The Art of "A Midsummer Night's Dream". New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1966.
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