A MID SUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER CONTENT PAGE NO

1. INTRODUCTION 2

2. SUMMARY 13

3. THEME 15

4. CONCLUSION 23

REFERENCES 24

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 CHAPTER-I

INTRODUCTION

William Shakespeare, often called England's national poet, is considered the greatest
dramatist of all time. His works are loved throughout the world, but Shakespeare's
personal life is shrouded in mystery. William Shakespeare was an English poet,
playwright and actor of the Renaissance era. He was an important member of the
King’s Men company of theatrical players from roughly 1594 onward. Known
throughout the world, Shakespeare's writings capture the range of human emotion and
conflict and have been celebrated for more than 400 years. And yet, the personal life
of William Shakespeare is somewhat a mystery. There are two primary sources that
provide historians with an outline of his life. One is his work — the plays, poems and
sonnets — and the other is official documentation such as church and court records.
However, these provide only brief sketches of specific events in his life and yield little
insight into the man himself. No birth records exist, but an old church record indicates
that a William Shakespeare was baptized at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-
Avon on April 26, 1564. From this, it is believed he was born on or near April 23,
1564, and this is the date scholars acknowledge as Shakespeare's birthday. Located
about 100 miles northwest of London, during Shakespeare's time Stratford-upon-
Avon was a bustling market town along the River Avon and bisected by a country
road.

Family

Shakespeare was the third child of John Shakespeare, a leather merchant, and Mary
Arden, a local landed heiress. Shakespeare had two older sisters, Joan and Judith, and
three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard and Edmund.

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Before Shakespeare's birth, his father became a successful merchant and held official
positions as alderman and bailiff, an office resembling a mayor. However, records
indicate John's fortunes declined sometime in the late 1570s.

Childhood and Education

Scant records exist of Shakespeare's childhood and virtually none regarding his
education. Scholars have surmised that he most likely attended the King's New
School, in Stratford, which taught reading, writing and the classics.

Being a public official's child, Shakespeare would have undoubtedly qualified for free
tuition. But this uncertainty regarding his education has led some to raise questions
about the authorship of his work (and even about whether or not Shakespeare really
existed).

Wife and Children

Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582, in Worcester, in

Canterbury Province. Hathaway was from Shottery, a small village a mile west of
Stratford. Shakespeare was 18 and Anne was 26, and, as it turns out, pregnant.

Their first child, a daughter they named Susanna, was born on May 26, 1583. Two
years later, on February 2, 1585, twins Hamnet and Judith were born. Hamnet later
died of unknown causes at age 11.

Shakespeare’s Lost Years

There are seven years of Shakespeare's life where no records exist after the birth of his
twins in 1585. Scholars call this period the "lost years," and there is wide speculation
on what he was doing during this period.

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One theory is that he might have gone into hiding for poaching game from the local
landlord, Sir Thomas Lucy. Another possibility is that he might have been working as
an assistant schoolmaster in Lancashire.

It's generally believed he arrived in London in the mid- to late 1580s and may have
found work as a horse attendant at some of London's finer theaters, a scenario updated
centuries later by the countless aspiring actors and playwrights in Hollywood and
Broadway.

The King's Men

By the early 1590s, documents show Shakespeare was a managing partner in the Lord
Chamberlain's Men, an acting company in London with which he was connected for
most of his career.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, is

generally thought of as a sparkling romantic farce. However, while the play is lovely
and comic, it also has a strong trace of darkness and cruelty, a sinister underside that
is inextricable from its amorous themes. Midsummer may end with a series of happy
weddings, but along the way it clearly depicts how male-female relationships can
involve a great amount of cruelty, with the potential to spread discord throughout
society.

Nearly all the male characters threaten their female counterparts with violence at some
point in the play. Theseus, for example, won Hippolyta not through seduction or
courtship but by military conquest, having vanquished the Amazons, her tribe of
woman warriors. He says to her in the opening scene, “I wooed thee with my sword, /
And won thy love doing thee injuries,” drawing an explicit connection between love
and assault. Later in the same scene, Egeus publicly threatens to kill Hermia, his
daughter, if she does not consent to marry Demetrius. Oberon, for his part, does not

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put Titania at risk of true physical danger, but he does brainwash her with a love-
potion for the express purpose of humiliating and humbling her. Lysander may be the
only male who does not consciously seek to harm his mate. But even so, Hermia
cannot escape peril. Just after the bewitched Lysander abandons her, she wakes from a
nightmare, trembling with fear as she describes how she dreamt she saw “a serpent
[eat her] heart away.” Though Lysander isn’t in control of his own actions at this
moment, Hermia’s subconscious still registers his desertion as an act of violation.

The female characters in the play, particularly Helena and Hermia, end up
internalizing much of this violent behavior. In the most vicious exchange in the play,
Lysander bluntly tells the lovesick Helena that he does not love her and that he is
“sick” when he looks at her. He warns her that he will “do [her] mischief” in the
woods—a far more menacing promise when we realize that mischief had a much
stronger connotation in the period, meaning something closer to “harm” or “evil” than
“naughtiness.” Helena, however, is undeterred. She accepts the aggression directed at
her and turns it into an argument for her stamina, pleading with him to treat her like
his “spaniel,” since the more he “beat[s]” her, the more she will “fawn” on him.
Eventually, the two young women fall victim to the hostility in the air and turn on one
another. Their confrontation in Act III, scene ii is often played as a comic catfight, but
that ignores the poignancy of Helena’s speech, in which she pleads with her “sister”
not to “rend [their] ancient love asunder” by conspiring with the men to shame her.
Hermia, however, does not listen, and the two dissolve into a torrent of mutual abuse.
Even at the end of the play, when the couples are paired off harmoniously, it is
unclear whether the women’s intimate friendship will ever be repaired.

Throughout the play, romantic strife is portrayed as a force that can spread, like a
contagion. At one point, the whole earth becomes infected. When the sparring fairy
monarchs, Titania and Oberon, confront each other in Act II, scene i, Titania describes
a tumultuous world filled with sickly clouds and rotting vegetation. She insists that

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this chaos has sprung from her and Oberon’s quarrel, and that they are the “parents”
of the planet’s current state of turmoil.

A Midsummer Night's Dream has been produced many times in New York, including
several stagings by the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theatre in
Central Park and a production by the Theatre for a New Audience, produced by
Joseph Papp at the Public Theater. In 1978, the Riverside Shakespeare Company
staged an outdoor production starring Eric Hoffmann as Puck, with Karen Hurley as
Titania and Eric Conger as Oberon, directed by company founder Gloria Skurski.
There have been several variations since then, including some set in the 1980s. The
Maryland Shakespeare Players at University of Maryland staged a queer production in
2015 where the lovers were same-sex couples and the mechanicals were drag queens.

The University of Michigan's Nichols Arboretum's programme Shakespeare in the

Arb has presented a play every summer since 2001. Shakespeare in the Arb has
produced A Midsummer Night's Dream three times. These performances take place in
a 123-acre (50 ha) natural setting, with lush woods, a flowing river, and steep hills.
The performance takes place in several places, with actors and audience moving
together to each setting. "As one critic commented, 'The actors used the vastness of its
Arb[oretum] stage to full advantage, making entrances from behind trees, appearing
over rises and vanishing into the woods.'"

A Midsummer Night’s Dream ends with several happy (if magically-induced)

weddings, but even the joy of the closing celebration does not completely banish the
play’s threatening undercurrent. The nuptials are commemorated with a clownish
performance, but significantly, the craftsmen’s theme is a gruesome one: a romantic
couple that meets a violent and tragic end. In addition, the blessings offered by Puck
and Oberon seem to evoke more terror than good will. Oberon offers the more
traditional blessing, wishing the couples fertility and lasting love. However, he also

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mentions “blots of nature,” such as harelips and other deformities, calling attention to
the dangers that can befall vulnerable children even as he wards them away. Puck, for
his part, spends most of his speech describing all the horrible things that lurk outside
the wedding chamber door, such as hungry lions and ghosts from “gaping” graves. In
the end, we don’t know if the newlyweds are inside experiencing the flush of
matrimonial bliss or if the discord that has been bubbling up throughout the play has
unsettled them: As Puck closes the door against the terrible creatures of the night, he
shuts the audience out, as well. With the ultimate fate of our protagonists so
ambiguous, A Midsummer Night’s Dream cannot properly be called a romantic
comedy.

Plot

Hermia and Helena by Washington Allston, 1818

The play consists of four interconnecting plots, connected by a celebration of the

wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, which are set
simultaneously in the woodland and in the realm of Fairyland, under the light of the
moon.

The play opens with Hermia who is in love with Lysander, resistant to her father
Egeus's demand that she wed Demetrius, whom he has arranged for her to marry.
Helena, Hermia's best friend, pines unrequitedly for Demetrius, who broke up with
her to be with Hermia. Enraged, Egeus invokes an ancient Athenian law before Duke
Theseus, whereby a daughter needs to marry a suitor chosen by her father, or else face
death. Theseus offers her another choice: lifelong chastity as a nun worshipping the
goddess Diana.

Peter Quince and his fellow players Nick Bottom, Francis Flute, Robin Starveling,
Tom Snout and Snug plan to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the

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Queen, "the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe".
Quince reads the names of characters and bestows them on the players. Nick Bottom,
who is playing the main role of Pyramus, is over-enthusiastic and wants to dominate
others by suggesting himself for the characters of Thisbe, the Lion, and Pyramus at
the same time. Quince insists that Bottom can only play the role of Pyramus. Bottom
would also rather be a tyrant and recites some lines of Ercles. Bottom is told by
Quince that he would do the Lion so terribly as to frighten the duchess and ladies
enough for the Duke and Lords to have the players hanged. Snug remarks that he
needs the Lion's part because he is "slow of study". Quince assures Snug that the role
of the lion is "nothing but roaring." Quince then ends the meeting telling his actors "at
the Duke's oak we meet".

The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Joseph Noel Paton, 1849

In a parallel plot line, Oberon, king of the fairies, and Titania, his queen, have come to
the forest outside Athens. Titania tells Oberon that she plans to stay there until she has
attended Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because
Titania refuses to give her Indian changeling to Oberon for use as his "knight" or
"henchman", since the child's mother was one of Titania's worshippers. Oberon seeks
to punish Titania's disobedience. He calls upon Robin "Puck" Goodfellow, his
"shrewd and knavish sprite", to help him concoct a magical juice derived from a
flower called "love-in-idleness", which turns from white to purple when struck by
Cupid's arrow. When the concoction is applied to the eyelids of a sleeping person, that
person, upon waking, falls in love with the first living thing they perceive. He
instructs Puck to retrieve the flower with the hope that he might make Titania fall in
love with an animal of the forest and thereby shame her into giving up the little Indian
boy. He says, "And ere I take this charm from off her sight, / As I can take it with
another herb, / I'll make her render up her page to me."

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Hermia and Lysander have escaped to the same forest in hopes of running away from
Theseus. Helena, desperate to reclaim Demetrius's love, tells Demetrius about the plan
and he follows them in hopes of finding Hermia. Helena continually makes advances
towards Demetrius, promising to love him more than Hermia. However, he rebuffs
her with cruel insults. Observing this, Oberon orders Puck to spread some of the
magical juice from the flower on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. Instead,
Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, not having actually seen either before, and
administers the juice to the sleeping Lysander. Helena, coming across him, wakes him
while attempting to determine whether he is dead or asleep. Upon this happening,
Lysander immediately falls in love with Helena. Helena, thinking Lysander is playing
a trick on her, runs away with Lysander following her. When Hermia wakes up, she
sees that Lysander is gone and goes out in the woods to find him. Oberon sees
Demetrius still following Hermia, who thinks Demetrius killed Lysander, and is
enraged. When Demetrius goes to sleep, Oberon sends Puck to get Helena while he
charms Demetrius' eyes. Upon waking up, he sees Helena. Now, both men are in love
with Helena. However, she is convinced that her two suitors are mocking her, as
neither loved her originally. Hermia finds Lysander and asks why he left her, but
Lysander claims he never loved Hermia, just Helena. Hermia accuses Helena of
stealing Lysander away from her while Helena believes Hermia joined the two men in
mocking her. Hermia tries to attack Helena, but the two men protect Helena.
Lysander, tired of Hermia's presence, insults her and tells her to leave. Lysander and
Demetrius decide to seek a place to duel to prove whose love for Helena is the greater.
The two women go their own separate ways, Helena hoping to reach Athens and
Hermia chasing after the men to make sure Lysander doesn't get hurt or killed. Oberon
orders Puck to keep Lysander and Demetrius from catching up with one another and
to remove the charm from Lysander so Lysander can return to love Hermia, while
Demetrius continues to love Helena with none of them having any memory of what
happened, as if it were a dream.
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A drawing of Puck, Titania and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream from Act III,
Scene II by Charles Buchel, 1905

Meanwhile, Quince and his band of six labourers ("rude mechanicals", as they are
described by Puck) have arranged to perform their play about Pyramus and Thisbe for
Theseus' wedding and venture into the forest, near Titania's bower, for their rehearsal.
Quince leads the actors in their rehearsal of the play. Bottom is spotted by Puck, who
(taking his name to be another word for a jackass) transforms his head into that of a
donkey. When Bottom returns for his next lines, the other workmen run screaming in
terror: They claim that they are haunted, much to Bottom's confusion. Determined to
await his friends, he begins to sing to himself. Titania, having received the love-
potion, is awakened by Bottom's singing and immediately falls in love with him. She
lavishes him with the attention of her and her fairies, and while she is in this state of
devotion, Oberon takes the changeling boy. Having achieved his goals, Oberon
releases Titania, orders Puck to remove the donkey's head from Bottom, and arranges
everything so Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander will all believe they have
been dreaming when they awaken. Puck distracts Lysander and Demetrius from
fighting over Helena's love by mimicking their voices and leading them apart.
Eventually, all four find themselves separately falling asleep in the glade. Once they
fall asleep, Puck administers the love potion to Lysander again, returning his love to
Hermia again, and claiming all will be well in the morning.

The fairies then disappear, and Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene, during an
early morning hunt. They find the lovers still sleeping in the glade. They wake up the
lovers and, since Demetrius no longer loves Hermia, Theseus over-rules Egeus's
demands and arranges a group wedding. The lovers at first believe they are still in a
dream and can't recall what has happened. The lovers decide that the night's events
must have been a dream. After they exit, Bottom awakes, and he too decides that he
must have experienced a dream "past the wit of man".

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At Quince's house, he and his team of actors worry that Bottom has gone missing.
Quince laments that Bottom is the only man who can take on the lead role of
Pyramus. Bottom returns, and the actors get ready to put on "Pyramus and Thisbe."

In Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers watch the six workmen perform
Pyramus and Thisbe. The performers are so terrible playing their roles that the guests
laugh as if it were meant to be a comedy, and everyone retires to bed. Afterwards,
Oberon, Titania, Puck, and other fairies enter, and bless the house and its occupants
with good fortune. After all the other characters leave, Puck "restores amends" and
suggests that what the audience experienced might just be a dream.

Sources

Titania and Bottom, Henry Fuseli (c.1790)

It is unknown exactly when A Midsummer Night's Dream was written or first

performed, but on the basis of topical references and an allusion to Edmund Spenser's
Epithalamion, it is usually dated 1595 or early 1596. Some have theorised that the
play might have been written for an aristocratic wedding (for example that of
Elizabeth Carey, Lady Berkeley), while others suggest that it was written for the
Queen to celebrate the feast day of St. John, but no evidence exists to support this
theory. In any case, it would have been performed at The Theatre and, later, The
Globe. Though it is not a translation or adaptation of an earlier work, various sources
such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" served as
inspiration. According to John Twyning, the play's plot of four lovers undergoing a
trial in the woods was intended as a "riff" on Der Busant, a Middle High German
poem.

According to Dorothea Kehler, the writing period can be placed between 1594 and
1596, which means that Shakespeare had probably already completed Romeo and

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Juliet and was still in contemplation of The Merchant of Venice. The play belongs to
the author's early-middle period, a time when Shakespeare devoted primary attention
to the lyricism of his works.

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 CHAPTER-II

SUMMARY

Duke Theseus and Hippolyta are preparing for their wedding, when Egeus arrives
with his daughter Hermia, along with Lysander and Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander
love each other; but Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius (who is loved by
Helena). Theseus insists that Egeus must have his way, and gives Hermia a month to
marry Demetrius, or either die or become a nun. Hermia and Lysander decide to run
away and to meet in the forest. Hermia tells Helena of their plans, and she in turn tells
Demetrius, in the hope that he will like her more for telling him. Demetrius chases
after the eloping couple, and Helena chases after him. A group of tradesmen meet to
discuss a play on the theme of Pyramus and Thisbe which they want to perform at
Theseus’ wedding. They plan to rehearse in the forest. Oberon and Titania, the king
and queen of the fairies, are arguing over who should have a changeling boy that
Titania has stolen. Titania will not give him up, so Oberon takes his revenge by
having his servant Puck find a special flower whose juice he will squeeze onto
Titania’s eyes while she is asleep. This will maker her fall in love with the first person
she sees upon waking. Oberon, seeing Demetrius reject Helena, tells Puck to put the
potion on Demetrius’ eyes also. But Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, and
Lysander wakes to see Helena, whom he falls in love with and chases after, leaving
Hermia alone. The rustics begin their rehearsal near where Titania is sleeping. Puck
gives Bottom an ass’s head. Bottom frightens his friends away, and in doing so wakes
Titania. She falls in love with him, and Bottom is treated like a lord by the fairy
retinue. Hermia, having lost Lysander, thinks Demetrius has killed him, and when he
denies it she goes to look for him. Oberon is furious with Puck for his mistake and
tells him to find Helena and bring her to him. Oberon squeezes the flower onto
Demetrius’ eyes while he sleeps. Lysander enters with Helena, begging for her love,
telling her Demetrius does not love her; Demetrius then wakes, sees Helena, and begs

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for her love. Hermia enters and is snubbed by Lysander, while Helena thinks all three
are tricking her.

Demetrius and Lysander challenge each other to a duel. Oberon gets Puck to imitate
the two men’s voices, leading them around until they fall asleep. Puck puts an antidote
on Lysander’s eyes so that he resumes his love for Hermia. Oberon then releases
Titania from her spell, having received the changeling boy from her. Puck removes
the ass’s head from Bottom.

Theseus and Hippolyta arrive to hunt in the forest, along with Egeus, where they
discover the sleeping lovers. They hear their story, and Theseus decrees they shall be
married as they wish, despite Egeus’ will. Bottom is reunited with his friends, and
they rehearse their play, which has been selected as one of those to be made available
as entertainment at the wedding. After supper, Theseus chooses their play, which is
presented in front of an audience of all the lovers. They all retire to bed, and Oberon
and Titania enter to sing and dance; Oberon blesses the three couples, and Puck is left
to address the audience.

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 CHAPTER-III

THEME

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

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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
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)

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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)

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)

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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 mentions "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)

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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.

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 possible exclusion from a world ruled by women

19
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

20
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

21
suggest 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.

22
 CHAPTER-IV

CONCLUSION

A comedic play is defined by formula, subject matter, and how that subject is treated.
The arc of the story is broken into five acts, and other forms of comedy follow the
same trajectory. Comedies often deal with strong emotions like love in a treatment
that expounds how absurd the extremes of emotions are. In doing so, comedies are
wildly entertaining and speak to the underlying philosophical precept of emotions'
influence on actions. Often these reactions to the feelings are divorced from reason,
and it is enjoyable to see people acting unreasonably.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains one of Shakespeare's most appreciated plays.

It follows the standard formula employing the conventions characteristic of the
comedic play. It not only technically does this, but artfully. I’m not sure Shakespeare
would appreciate his play being compared to the movie Knocked Up, but both are
comedies in their form and degree of absurdity. Both remind us that love can be silly
and that mortals are often fools. If this comparison does offend, pretend that you just
slumbered here while these words did appear, and all will be mended.

23
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