A Mid-Summer Night's Dream----William Shakespeare

The desire for well-matched love and the struggle to achieve it drives the plot of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. The play opens on a note of desire, as Theseus, Duke of Athens, waxes poetic about his
anticipated wedding to Hippolyta. The main conflict is introduced when other lovers’ troubles take center
stage. The question of who the characters should love versus who they do love drives the plot from this
point on. The audience may immediately understand that Hermia and Lysander belong together, as do
Helena and Demetrius, but the characters’ inability to pair with the appropriate partner, and the fairies’
interference, complicate the conflict. Mirroring the drama among the Athenian nobility, the monarchs of
the fairy kingdom also find themselves in a lovers’ tiff. Hoping to teach Titania a lesson, Oberon instructs
the fairy Puck to apply a charm that will make Titania and Demetrius each fall in love with the next
person they see. Lysander, under the spell of the fairies, abandons Hermia for Helena. Demetrius also falls
in love with Helena, and Titania falls in love with Bottom, who now has the head of a donkey. Oberon’s
jealousy mirrors the pettiness of the human characters, suggesting emotions like love, jealousy, and the
desire for revenge are universal.

Instead of solving the human lovers’ problems, fairy mischief make the lovers’ problems worse,
transforming friendships into rivalries. Helena and Hermia, childhood friends, become enemies,
and Demetrius battles with Lysander for Helena’s affections. The play quickly (and temporarily)
devolves from a love story to a story of hatred and ill-will, with all the characters fighting the
people they once loved. The quickness with which characters fall in love with each other, and the
ease with which they dissolve friendships, raises questions about the fickleness of emotional
attachment. The action reaches a crisis point once all the characters have been separated from
their appropriate partners, and the complications are at their limit. At this point in the play, no
one is happy, except Bottom, who enjoys Titania’s affections. But the rest of the characters have
been made miserable by love. Even Helena, who now is being pursued by both Lysander and
Demetrius, thinks they are playing a cruel trick on her. In this way, the play explores the many
ways love can bring about unhappiness as well as joy.

With the tension rising among the Athenian lovers and the night pushing toward dawn, Oberon
orders Puck to reverse Lysander’s enchantment and set things right among the lovers. By the
dawning of a new day, the night and its discord has resolved. Lysander, free of Puck’s
enchantments, falls back in love with Hermia, while Demetrius remains enchanted, and in love
with Helena. Helena’s father agrees to accept Lysander as a match for his daughter. Both the
internal and external obstacles between the lovers have been removed, and the stage is set for
weddings for all couples. The ease with which the events of the night dissolve in the light of day
suggest that nothing that has come before should actually be taken seriously. However, the
events of the play do make us question the depth and sincerity of the lovers’ devotion, especially
since Demetrius only loves Helena as a result of Puck’s enchantment.

Meanwhile, the Mechanicals have been preparing to perform their adaptation of the tragedy of “Pyramus
and Thisbe” for the duke and his bride to be. Shakespeare weaves this plot thread throughout the entire
play, so that the bumbling attempt of these unrefined commoners to rehearse a high tragedy unfolds
against the backdrop of the play’s tangle of erotic confusion. This melding of tragedy and comedy
reinforces the sense that none of the action should be taken seriously, and that matters of the heart are
ultimately of little consequence. By having the comical Mechanicals stand in for tragic lovers,
Shakespeare pokes fun at the tragic genre, including his own Romeo and Juliet . We also understand that
just as the Mechanicals’ play is ridiculous nonsense, all the action we are watching onstage is little more
than a dream-like fantasy. The play closes with Puck reassuring the audience, “Think you have but
slumbered here / While these visions did appear. / And this weak and idle theme / No more yielding but a
dream”. (V.i.)

The most significant source for A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Roman poet
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an epic poem that weaves together many Greek and Roman myths.
Shakespeare alludes to many of the stories from Metamorphoses, but the story with the most
obvious importance for his play is that of Pyramus and Thisbe. Originally appearing in Book IV
of Ovid’s poem, this story tells of two lovers who long to marry against their parents’ wishes and
who come to a tragic end in the attempt to do so. Shakespeare adapts this story for Midsummer’s
play-within-a-play, performed in the final act by a group of craftsmen. The theatrical ineptitude
of this troupe undermines the seriousness of their subject matter. What results is an ironically
comedic performance that delights rather than saddens the audience of Athenian nobles. Perhaps
the most ironic aspect of the craftsmen’s retelling is just how un-Ovidian their play is, and how
this un-Ovidian spirit contrasts with the very Ovidian nature of the rest of Midsummer. Whereas
the main storyline of Midsummer involves an engaging series of transformations and
supernatural beings, the craftsmen’s production offers a dull, bare-bones retelling.

Significantly, the craftsmen’s production of “Pyramus and Thisbe” also parallels the main plot of
Shakespeare’s play. Just as Theseus bans Hermia from marrying Lysander, so too do the fathers
of Pyramus and Thisbe ban their union. Furthermore, just as Lysander and Hermia flee Athens
and its harsh laws, so too do Pyramus and Thisbe flee Babylon to safeguard their love. One
obvious difference between Midsummer and the story of Pyramus and Thisbe is that the former
is a comedy and the latter is a tragedy. Nevertheless, Shakespeare manages to play comedy and
tragedy against each other in such a way that draws the two stories into a mirrored relationship.
Thus, just as the craftsmen set out to perform a tragedy but end up in the midst of a comedy, so
too does the main story of Midsummer begin with the threat of tragedy (i.e., unhappy marriage or
death) but ends with all of the lovers alive and in their preferred pairings.
The story of Pyramus and Thisbe also inspired another play that Shakespeare wrote around the
same time as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this time a genuine tragedy: Romeo and Juliet . In
Romeo Shakespeare makes numerous alterations to Ovid’s work, such as shifting the action from
Babylon to Venice and providing the background of feuding families. But the basic pattern of
Ovid’s original remains the same: Pyramus (i.e., Romeo) mistakenly believes that Thisbe (Juliet)
is dead and kills himself. Thisbe (i.e., Juliet) soon finds his body and, grief stricken, follows him
in death. Furthering the comparison between the two plays, in the opening scene
of Midsummer does Shakespeare introduces the theme of star-crossed lovers that drives the plot
of Romeo and Juliet. When Hermia says “If then true lovers have been ever crossed, / It stands as
an edict in destiny,” (I.i.) her words echo the prelude to Romeo and Juliet, where the chorus
describes the main characters as “a pair of star-crossed lovers.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is most obviously a play about romantic love, but the play is also
about friendship, and what happens when love comes between friends. In the play, lifelong
friends Helena and Hermia nearly sacrifice their friendship as they compete for men’s attention,
raising questions about the value of friendship versus the value of finding a life partner. In a
deeply affecting speech, Helena underscores the pain of having a wedge driven between her and
her closest confidante: “Is all the counsel that we two have shared, / The sisters’ vows, the hours
that we have spent / When we have chid the hasty-footed time / For parting us? Oh, is all
forgot?” (III.ii.) Near the end of the speech Helena goes further, pointing to the irony of
Hermia’s apparent conspiracy with men to destroy their friendship: “And will you rend our
ancient love asunder / To join with men in scorning your poor friend?” Helena’s speech implies
that the female characters in the play face a choice: love or friendship. Believing that Hermia is
conspiring with Lysander and Demetrius, Helena assumes that Hermia has chosen love over
friendship, leaving her with neither romantic nor platonic love.
Throughout the play, we find suggestions that as the female characters come of age, they are
expected to put aside their own interests and desires in order to please the men in their lives. For
example, Hermia faces grave consequences for refusing to obey both her father, Egeus, and the
figurehead for Athenian law, Duke Theseus. In Athens, as Theseus explains, the patriarch’s word
should be sacred: “To you your father should be as a god” (I.i.). We also know that Theseus
“wooed” Hippolyta with his sword. Oberon humiliates Titania by making her fall in love with
Bottom as punishment for quarreling with him. The suggestion that female characters should
honor and obey their fathers and husbands leaves them little room for childhood pursuits like
friendship with other females. Hermia’s speech in Act I scene i suggests she’s willing to make
this sacrifice even before she fights with Helena. She announces she’s going to meet Lysander
“in the wood where often you and I / Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie…” Here, the use
of the past tense indicates that Hermia is replacing Helena with Lysander. This sense is
reinforced when she says, “Farewell, sweet playfellow.”

By the end of the play, the main source of Hermia and Helena’s conflict – Demetrius’s and
Lysander’s enchanted love for Helena – has been removed, and the path is clear for the two
women to repair their friendship. However, we don’t see the two women actually make up, so we
don’t know whether they resume being friends or not. In fact, once the enchantment has been
removed from Lysander and Helena and Hermia are united with their appropriate partners, we
hear little from either woman. The last line Hermia speaks is “Yea, and my father” (IV.i.)
referring to Egeus’s continued control over her fate. The only reason Egeus agrees to allow
Hermia to marry Lysander is because another, more powerful man – Duke Theseus – overrules
him, saying “Egeus, I will overbear your will, / For in the temple by and by with us / These
couples shall be eternally knit.” (IV. i.) Hermia and Helena, in becoming married women, are
following the commands of men. We can assume they now follow the rules of love (and
marriage), rather than the rules of friendship.
THEMES

Love’s Difficulty
“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander, articulating one of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream’s most important themes—that of the difficulty of love (I.i.134).
Though most of the conflict in the play stems from the troubles of romance, and though the play
involves a number of romantic elements, it is not truly a love story; it distances the audience
from the emotions of the characters in order to poke fun at the torments and afflictions that those
in love suffer. The tone of the play is so lighthearted that the audience never doubts that things
will end happily, and it is therefore free to enjoy the comedy without being caught up in the
tension of an uncertain outcome.
The theme of love’s difficulty is often explored through the motif of love out of balance—that is,
romantic situations in which a disparity or inequality interferes with the harmony of a
relationship. The prime instance of this imbalance is the asymmetrical love among the four
young Athenians: Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius, and
Demetrius loves Hermia instead of Helena—a simple numeric imbalance in which two men love
the same woman, leaving one woman with too many suitors and one with too few. The play has
strong potential for a traditional outcome, and the plot is in many ways based on a quest for
internal balance; that is, when the lovers’ tangle resolves itself into symmetrical pairings, the
traditional happy ending will have been achieved. Somewhat similarly, in the relationship
between Titania and Oberon, an imbalance arises out of the fact that Oberon’s coveting of
Titania’s Indian boy outweighs his love for her. Later, Titania’s passion for the ass-headed
Bottom represents an imbalance of appearance and nature: Titania is beautiful and graceful,
while Bottom is clumsy and grotesque.

Magic
The fairies’ magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the
play, is another element central to the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Shakespeare uses magic both to embody the almost supernatural power of love (symbolized by
the love potion) and to create a surreal world. Although the misuse of magic causes chaos, as
when Puck mistakenly applies the love potion to Lysander’s eyelids, magic ultimately resolves
the play’s tensions by restoring love to balance among the quartet of Athenian youths.
Additionally, the ease with which Puck uses magic to his own ends, as when he reshapes
Bottom’s head into that of an ass and recreates the voices of Lysander and Demetrius, stands in
contrast to the laboriousness and gracelessness of the craftsmen’s attempt to stage their play.

Dreams
As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; they are
linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Hippolyta’s first words in the play evidence
the prevalence of dreams (“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will
quickly dream away the time”), and various characters mention dreams throughout (I.i.7–8). The
theme of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre events in
which these characters are involved: “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 t’expound this dream,” Bottom says, unable to
fathom the magical happenings that have affected him as anything but the result of slumber.
Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur without
explanation, time loses its normal sense of flow, and the impossible occurs as a matter of course;
he seeks to recreate this environment in the play through the intervention of the fairies in the
magical forest. At the end of the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members
themselves, saying that, if they have been offended by the play, they should remember it as
nothing more than a dream. This sense of illusion and gauzy fragility is crucial to the atmosphere
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as it helps render the play a fantastical experience rather than a
heavy drama.

Jealousy
The theme of jealousy operates in both the human and fairy realms in Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Jealousy plays out most obviously among the quartet of Athenian lovers, who find
themselves in an increasingly tangled knot of misaligned desire. Helena begins the play feeling
jealous of Hermia, who has managed to snag not one but two suitors. Helena loves Demetrius,
who in turn feels jealous of his rival for Hermia’s affections, Lysander. When misplaced fairy
mischief leads Lysander into an amorous pursuit of Helena, the event drives Hermia into her own
jealous rage. Jealousy also extends into the fairy realm, where it has caused a rift between the
fairy king and queen. As we learn in Act II, King Oberon and Queen Titania both have eyes for
their counterparts in the human realm, Theseus and Hippolyta. Titania accuses Oberon of
stealing away with “the bouncing Amazon” (II.i.). Oberon accuses Titania of hypocrisy, since
she also loves another: “How canst thou thus for shame, Titania, / Glance at my credit with
Hippolyta, / Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?” (II.i.). This jealous rift incites Oberon to
command Puck to fetch the magic flower that eventually causes so much chaos and confusion for
the Athenian lovers.

Mischief
In Midsummer, mischief is primarily associated with the forest and the fairies who reside there.
Accordingly, the fairies of traditional British folklore are master mischief makers. The trickster
fairy Puck (also known as Robin Goodfellow) is the play’s chief creator of mischief. Puck’s
reputation as a troublemaker precedes him, as suggested in the first scene of Act II, where an
unnamed fairy recognizes Puck and rhapsodizes about all the tricks Puck has played on
unsuspecting humans. Although in the play Puck only retrieves and uses the magical flower at
Oberon’s request, his mistakes in implementing Oberon’s plan have the most chaotic effects.
Puck also makes mischief of his own accord, as when he transforms Bottom’s head into that of
ass. Puck is also the only character who explicitly talks about his love of mischief. When in Act
III he declares that “those things do best please me / That befall prepost’rously” (III.ii.), he
effectively announces a personal philosophy of mischief and an appreciation for turning things
on their head.

Transformation
Many examples of emotional and physical transformation occur in Midsummer. These
transformations contribute to the play’s humorous chaos, and also make its happy ending
possible. Most of the transformations that take place in the play derive from fairy magic,
specifically the magic of Puck. Perhaps the most obvious example is when Puck assists Oberon
in placing a charm on Titania and two of the Athenian lovers in order to transform their
affections. Instead of helping the lovers, Puck’s meddling amplifies the tensions that already
existed among them. Puck wreaks further havoc when he physically transforms Bottom,
“translating” his head into the head of a donkey. Bottom’s transformation inspires terror among
Bottom’s companions, who fear that his change bears the marks of a devil. Although these
transformations initially stimulate conflict and fear, they ultimately help to restore order. By the
end of the night, the Athenian lovers all end up in their proper pairings and are able to return
safely to Athens. Likewise, after Titania awakens from her bizarre coupling with Bottom, she
and Oberon are able to settle their quarrel. The many transformations therefore enable the play’s
happy ending.

Unreason
The many transformations that take place in Midsummer give rise to a temporary suspension of
reason. As night progresses in the forest, things cease to make sense. For example, Hermia falls
asleep near Lysander but then wakes to find him gone. When she eventually finds him again,
Lysander does the verbal equivalent of spitting in Hermia’s face: “Could not this make thee
know / The hate I bear thee made me leave thee so?” (III.ii.). Completely floored by the sudden
reversal of Lysander’s former love, Hermia senses a failure of reason: “You speak not as you
think” (III.ii.). A more humorous version of unreason occurs when Bottom, recently crowned
with the head of a donkey, finds himself nestling with Titania in her bower. Even though Bottom
doesn’t know about his physical transformation, he’s self-aware enough to see the absurdity of
the situation. When Titania professes her love for Bottom, he responds coolly: “Methinks,
mistress, you should have little reason for that” (III.i.). By turns disturbing and amusing, these
and other examples of unreason in the play function to amplify the chaos and confusion
traditionally associated with fairies and the forest.

Reversal
Situations transform quickly into their opposites throughout the play. Most obviously, the charm
Puck uses to transform the Athenian lovers’ affections creates sudden reversals of love and hate,
and these reversals result in a breakdown of reason. The sudden reversal of Lysander’s affection
for Hermia not only leaves his former lover stunned, but also shocks Helena, who suddenly finds
herself being pursued by Lysander. All of the madcap foolery that plays out in the forest arises
from Oberon’s original idea to affect just one strategic reversal. In Act II, when Oberon spies on
Helena chasing after Demetrius, Helena comments that her pursuit reverses the natural order of
things: “Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase. / The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind /
Makes speed to catch the tiger.” (II.i.) According to Helena, this state of affairs creates “a
scandal for my sex.” Hearing Helena, Oberon promises to reverse the reversal, thereby restoring
order: “Ere he do leave this grove / Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love”