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Two themes present in many of Shakespeares plays, the struggle of men to dominate women and the conflict between father and daughter, form a large part of the dramatic content of A Midsummer Nights Dream. In the first act both forms of tension appear, when Theseus remarks that he has won Hippolyta by defeating her, Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword (1.1.16), and via the conflict between Egeus and Hermia. Adding to this war of the sexes are Lysander and Demetrius, both wooing Hermia away from her father.
It is therefore necessary to realize that A Midsummer Nights Dream is really a play about finding oneself in order to be free of these authoritative and sexual conflicts. The forest therefore quickly emerges as the location where all of these struggles must be resolved. Hermia will try to seek her freedom from Egeus in the woods, in the process fighting a battle against arranged marriages and for passionate love. The buffoons, in the form of the artisans, add an undercurrent of comedy which at first masks the very real events unfolding on the stage. Yet later they will provide a terrifying (albeit funny) vision of what could have happened in A Midsummer Nights Dream, in the form of their Pyramus and Thisbe play.
Recalling Romeo and Juliet, Theseus offers Hermia the choice of the nunnery or death. As always in Shakespeare (note Juliet), this is not a viable option for a young woman who is beautiful. Hermia therefore decides to run away rather than face the certainty of death.
A remarkable aspect of A Midsummer Nights Dream is that it contains a play within a play. The story of Pyramus and Thisbe serves to not only show the tragedy that might have occurred if the fairies had not intervened, but also to comment on the nature of reality versus theater. Nick Bottom, afraid the lion will frighten the ladies, get them to write a prologue in which the lion is explicitly revealed as only being an actor. Adding to this, Pyramus must further provide a commentary in which he informs the audience that he is not really committing suicide, but is only acting.
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This play within a play is therefore used by Shakespeare to make a subtle point about theater, namely the fact that it is only acting. Elizabethan times were not so far removed from the medieval past that actors lived with impunity, regardless of their roles. The threat of censorship was very real, a fact that Shakespeare makes laughable in Pyramus and Thisbe. A further purpose of pointing out the distinction between theater and reality could have been to try and convince the public that it does not matter what is put on stage, since the audience clearly knows that it is only a facade. However, Shakespeare throws all of this into doubt with his suggestion in the epilogue that the play has only been a dream.
The aspect of the woods as a place for the characters to reach adulthood is made even more explicit in this scene. In the dialogue between Helena and Demetrius, the woods are a place to be feared, and also are a place to lose virginity. As Demetrius warns, You do impeach your modesty too much, / To leave the city and commit yourself / Into the hands of one that loves you not; / To trust the opportunity of night / And the ill counsel of a desert place, / With the rich worth of your virginity (.1.14-1). Thus the forest can be allegorically read as a sort of trial for the characters, a phase they must pass through in order to reach maturity.
Hermias serpent serves as a sign of the monsters which are in the woods. This plays into the fact that the woods are not only a place which the characters must escape from, but are also a place of imagination. Hermias fear of her dream, in which the monster and the danger are only imagined, is meant to show the audience that the danger in a play is only imagined by the audience; neither the play nor Hermias dream are real
What is interesting in this scene is the interchangeability of the characters. Lysander and Demetrius, Helena and Hermia, each of them switches roles and becomes the other person. One of the primary ways that Shakespeare indicates maturity is to make his characters distinct. Thus, at this stage of the play the lovers are clearly not yet mature enough in their love to escape from the forest. Puck makes this clear by the way he leads them around in circles until they all collapse in exhaustion. It is this interchangeability that must be resolved before the lovers can fully exit from the forest.
The nature of this interchangeability is further evidenced by the characters themselves. Helena says to Hermia
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 (..04-10).
Like to a double cherry. This line sums up the reason why they are lost in the forest it is necessary for them to become distinct from one another. After all, Lysander and Demetrius have been able to shift their love to Helena without noticing any difference whatsoever. Therefore, the forest is not only a place of maturation, but also of finding ones identity.
Perhaps the most famous line from A Midsummer Nights Dream is when Puck remarks, Lord what fools these mortals be! (..115). His exclamation, directed at the ridiculous antics of Lysander, is also a direct jibe towards the audience. The nature of human love is challenged in this line, which implies that people will make fools of themselves because of love.
Shakespeares challenge of what is real versus what is only dreamed emerges in full force in this scene. Oberon decides that he will resolve the conflicts once and for all, saying, And when they wake, all this derision / Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision (..7-). Thus the lovers are expected to wake up, each loving the correct person, and each having found his or her own identity.
The transition of reality into only a dream emerges a second time in Act Four. Oberon tells Titania that Bottom will think no more of this nights accidents / But as the fierce vexation of a dream (4.1.65-6). Indeed, this is exactly what happens The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, mans hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was (4.1.05-07).
It is the way that Bottom deals with his nightmare of a dream that is important and interesting. Not only is he not afraid of it, but he wants to turn it into a ballad. Turning a fearful nightmare into a fun song is crucial to understanding what Shakespeare has done with A Midsummer Nights Dream. This play is the Romeo and Juliet theme woven into a play, taking the sad tragedy and converting it into comedy. Thus Shakespeare is making a further comment about the nature of plays and acting, showing them to be a medium by which our worst fears can be dissipated into hilarity.
The nature of doubling emerges once again in this act, but for the last time. Hermia remarks that, Methinks I see these things with parted eye, / When everything seems double (4.1.186-7). This comment occurs right after Theseus has overridden Egeus desires and agreed to let Hermia and Lysander get married. Hermia is correct about the fact that this is a doubling of marriages. In spite of escaping from the confusion of the forest, there is still a lingering uncertainty about whether Lysander and Demetrius have been able to distinguish between Helena and Hermia. The effect of having a double wedding merely makes the newfound differences more vague, making Hermia wonder if things still are in fact double.
This final act at first seems completely unnecessary to the overall plot of the play. After all, in Act Four we not only have the lovers getting married, but there has been a happy resolution to the conflict. Thus, the immediate question which arises is why Shakespeare felt it necessary to include this act.
The answer lies in the fact that Shakespeare is trying to drive home a point about theater; he wants to make it very clear that the ending to this play could just as easily have been tragedy, not comedy. The Pyramus and Thisbe play makes this very clear because it parallels the actual action of the lovers so closely. Pyramus and Thisbe decide to run away, a lion (one of the monsters in the forest) emerges and seizes Thisbes cloak, and when Pyramus sees the bloodied cloak he rashly commits suicide. This ending could easily have been the ending to A Midsummer Nights Dream.
The final act also serves to challenge the audiences notions about reality and imagination. Seeing the pathetic acting of the artisans, Theseus remarks that, The lunatic, the lover, and the poet / Are of imagination all compact (5.1.7-8). By this he means that it is imagination which makes people crazy, but it is also the imagination which inspires people. Without imagination it would be much more difficult to enjoy a play, as evidenced by the farce of Pyramus and Thisbe, about which Hippolyta comments, This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard. Theseus helps her overcome this problem by saying, The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them (5.1.07,08). Thus, the imagination can solve all the problems.
Perhaps the most telling line of the last act is when Theseus asks, How shall we find the concord of this discord? (5.1.60). That is exactly what has happened in the play itself, namely there has been a resolution to the discord of the lovers in the initial scenes, which by the end has turned into concord.
The play is considered a comedy. The most famous character is the spirit, Puck. It is believed to have been written around the same time as Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, and shares many characteristics with that tragedy a plot centering on rebellious young love, florid imagery in language that often feels more separate from the dramatic action than it does in Shakespeares more mature works. Pyramus and Thisbe, the comical tragedy performed by the mechanicals at the end of Midsummer, bears an even closer resemblance to the plot of Romeo and Juliet.
The plot has several strands, and the relationship of Oberon, king of the fairies, and his estranged wife, Titania, is mirrored by that of Duke Theseus and his bride, Hippolyta, who are about to be married - to the extent that the parts of Oberon/Theseus and Titania/Hippolyta are sometimes played by the same actors. Two young men, Lysander and Demetrius, are both in love with the same woman, Hermia; Hermia prefers Lysander, but her friend, Helena, is in love with Demetrius. Into the middle of this complex situation stumbles Bottom, a weaver and the leader of a group of common working men who intend to perform a play as part of the Dukes wedding celebrations. Oberon recruits Puck to help him regain Titanias devotion, but his simultaneous attempt to help the young lovers goes wrong, resulting in confusion. As usual with Shakespeare, the comedy has a bitter-sweet note, when Hermias two lovers both, temporarily, turn against her.
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