UNDERGRADUATE    II  YEAR  

 
SUBJECT:  English  Language  &  Poetry  
TOPIC:  A  Midsummer  Night’s  Dream  
LESSON  MAP:  2.6.C.1  
Duration:  30:16  
 

 
  
 
 

A  Midsummer  Night’s  Dream  

Introduction – Shakespeare as a Playwright

During the next half an hour, we are going to discuss William Shakespeare’s well-
known comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As we know, Shakespeare was an
Elizabethan poet and playwright, that is, he lived and wrote his poems and plays
during the reign of the Tudor monarch, Queen Elizabeth I. He is widely
considered the greatest dramatist in English. Speaking on the fecundity of
Shakespeare’s imagination, Alexander Dumas, a French writer, said: “After God,
Shakespeare has created most.” Before we proceed to the details of the play, let us
learn about the dramatist.

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 at Stratford-upon-Avon in England as the

son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. John Shakespeare was an alderman and
glover. Mary Arden belonged to a wealthy landowning family. William
Shakespeare was probably educated in a grammar school whose curriculum
consisted of Latin grammar and classics. His contemporary Ben Jonson has written
that Shakespeare knew “small Latin and less Greek.” At the age of eighteen, he
married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior. With Anne, Shakespeare
had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime after 1585 he
left for London, the capital city of England. In London he began a successful
career as an actor, writer, and part owner of a drama company called the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men. Shakespeare began writing
plays in the traditional style, adapting available plots and stock dramatic devices,
but soon came to be known for his insightful originality, particularly in the creation
of characters. He even aroused the envy of fellow playwrights such as Robert
Greene. Shakespeare’s plays were staged at different theatres: The Theatre, The
Curtain and The Globe. After living in London for almost three decades,
Shakespeare probably retired to his hometown. He died on 23 April 1616.
  
 
In 1623, that is, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, John Heminges and Henry
Condell, two of his friends, published what is called the First Folio, a collected
edition of his plays.   Shakespeare’s surviving works consist of 38 plays (some of
these are collaborations), 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems (Venus and
Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece), and several other poems. His plays have become
immensely popular. They have been translated into every major living language
and are studied, interpreted and performed more than the works of any other
playwright. The plays are generally classified into comedies, tragedies and
historical plays. Some scholars add other categories such as “chronicle plays,”
“Roman plays,” “problem plays,” and “dramatic romances.”

Shakespeare’s Comedies

Shakespeare’s comedies fall into what are called the “early” and “mature” phases
of his career. The mature comedies include As You Like It and Twelfth Night. A
Midsummer Night’s Dream is usually counted among his early comedies. It is
considered lighter and more playful in comparison with the mature comedies. It is
believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. How do you date a
Shakespeare play? It is often impossible to determine the exact date of writing or
production. Of course, the plays came out in print only later. To arrive at a
probable date scholars rely on external and internal evidence. For example, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream is listed in Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia, a critical
account of plays and poems, in September 1598. This is typical of external
evidence. As for internal evidence, that is, evidence within the play, it is said that
Titania’s description of the disastrous effect on the weather, of her quarrel with
Oberon refers to the bad summer of 1594 in England. The story of Pyramus and
Thisbe – death of lovers – is the very story of Romeo and Juliet, which is dated
between 1591 and 1595. A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to have been
intended to grace a marriage festivity in some great house.
  
 
As I said earlier, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is considered an early comedy.
Critics say that this is a play in which lyrical moods and feelings take precedence
over careful character study. However, it is not an immature play. It is
Shakespeare’s first successful experiment in the domain of comedy after rather
conventional comedies such as The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of
Verona and Love’s Labour’s Lost. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare
displays a command over characterization and a power of creating romantic
atmosphere. Most of the play is set in the woodland, the haunt of fairies. It is full
of the fantastic adventures of a night. As the name suggests, the play has a dreamy
atmosphere. We also find greater boldness on the part of the dramatist in unifying
stories of characters belonging to different worlds and stations – fairy kings and
queens, human lovers and Athenian mechanics. Shakespeare’s craftsmanship is so
wonderful that the fairies come down to earth as easily as Bottom the weaver is
transported to the land of fairies. Of course, there are incongruities, anachronisms,
contradictions and impossible juxtapositions. But Shakespeare triumphantly
reduces them to harmony. Dream, play, love, art, magic and comic low-life scenes
are interwoven by means of fertile imagination.

We will discuss A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a romantic comedy later. But

before that let us look at its plot and characters.

The Characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The plot of a play is enacted by its characters. The characters of a dramatic work
are called “dramatis personae.” The dramatis personae of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream may be classified into three groups:

The first group includes:

Theseus, the Duke of Athens
Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, who is the betrothed of
Theseus
Hermia, a young Athenian woman who is in love with Lysander
Lysander, a young Athenian man who is in love with Hermia and
Helena at
  
 
different times of the play
Egeus, father of Hermia, who forces Hermia to marry Demetrius
Helena, who is in love with Demetrius
Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia and Helena at different times
of the play
Philostrate, Master of the Revels for Theseus

The second group of characters is supernatural. This group includes:

Oberon, King of the Fairies
Titania, Queen of the Fairies
Puck, also called Robin Goodfellow, who is servant to Oberon
Titania’s fairy servants: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and
Mustardseed

The third group consists of an amateur acting troupe. These actors are:
Peter Quince, a carpenter and the leader of the troupe
Nick Bottom, a weaver: In the course of the play Bottom is turned into
a donkey
by Puck’s magic and is loved by Titania. He plays Pyramus in
the troupe’s production of “Pyramus and Thisbe”.
Francis Flute, the bellows-mender who plays Thisbe in the play
Robin Starveling, the tailor who plays the Moonshine
Tom Snout, the tinker who plays the Wall
Snug, the joiner who plays a Lion.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream it is character more than incident which makes the
drama lively. This is so in most of Shakespeare’s comedies. Bottom in the present
play is the first of the really great figures on the English stage.

The Plot of the Play

Now let us turn our attention to the plot of the play. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
features three interlocking plots organized into five acts, which are further divided
into one or two scenes. In the first plot preparations are being made for the
  
 
wedding of Theseus, the Duke of Athens to Hippolyta, the Queen of Amazons. The
Amazons are a nation of female warriors in Greek mythology. In the opening
scene, Egeus, an Athenian citizen, approaches Theseus with a complaint against
his daughter. He wants his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius to whom she has
been betrothed. But Hermia is in love with Lysander, and refuses to follow her
father’s command to marry Demetrius. Egeus requests Theseus to enforce an
ancient Athenian law whereby a daughter must marry the suitor chosen by her
father, or else face death. Theseus offers Hermia another choice: life-long
seclusion in a nunnery worshipping Diana, the Greek goddess of chastity.
Meanwhile, Lysander and Hermia plan to elope from Athens, to the place of a
childless aunt of Lysander’s, where the Athenian laws are not valid, where they
can be safely married. Hermia confides this to her bosom friend Helena.
Helena shares this information with Demetrius, with whom she has been madly in
love. Demetrius had formerly sought and won Helena’s love but now spurns her
and wants to marry Hermia. Soon Demetrius will follow Hermia and Lysander on
their jungle route, followed by Hermia.

Around the same time, a group of rustic labourers, or “rude mechanicals” as they
are described, plan the rehearsal of an act ironically entitled “the most lamentable
comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.” They want to perform this
“lamentable comedy” on the occasion of the Duke’s wedding. Peter Quince reads
the names of characters and assigns the roles to his fellow players. Nick Bottom, a
stage-struck weaver and one of the funniest characters in Shakespeare’s works, is
given the main role of Pyramus. But he is over-enthusiastic and wants to play
almost every other character as well. The rustic players agree to meet at the Duke’s
oak in a forest outside Athens, which is also the haunt of fairies. A lot of comedy
results from the overlap of these two worlds.

Meanwhile, Oberon, King of the fairies, and Titania, his Queen, have arrived in the
forest. They will stay there until they have attended Theseus and Hippolyta’s
wedding. Oberon and Titania are estranged because Titania refuses to give her an
Indian changeling whom Oberon wants as his “knight” or “henchman.” She refuses
to part with the boy as his mother was one of Titania’s worshippers. Oberon wants
  
 
to punish Titania for her defiance. He orders his mischievous court jester Puck or
“Robin Goodfellow” to smear Titania’s eyes with a magical juice from a flower
called “love-in-idleness.” When the magical juice is applied on a person’s eyelids
while asleep, it makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing he or she
sees upon waking up. Oberon’s intent is to make her fall in love with an animal of
the forest or something like that, so that her fascination for the changeling is
removed and she concedes Oberon’s request.

Oberon sees Demetrius behave cruelly towards Helena. Taking pity upon the girl,
he instructs Puck to squeeze some of the magical juice on the eyelids of the young
Athenian man. But Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and applies the juice on
Lysander’s eyes. When Lysander wakes up he immediately falls in love with
Helena. Oberon sees Demetrius still following Hermia. When Demetrius decides to
go to sleep, Oberon charms Demetrius’s eyes and sends Puck to get Helena. Upon
waking up, he too sees Helena. Now, both men are enamoured of Helena. The
consequences are hilarious. Having been spurned for long, Helena believes that her
two suitors are mocking her. On the other hand, Hermia does not understand why
her formerly committed lover, Lysander, has abandoned her. She accuses Helena
of stealing Lysander away from her. The four quarrel with each other. Finally,
Lysander and Demetrius become so enraged that they seek place for a duel to
prove whose love for Helena is greater. Oberon orders Puck to lead Lysander and
Demetrius away from each other. Puck does it with the help of his ventriloquism.
Oberon also orders his spirit to remove the charm from Lysander, so that he is back
in love with Hermia.

Meanwhile, the six labourers are near Titania’s bower rehearsing their play. Puck
spots Bottom and fastens the head of an ass on his neck. When Bottom returns for
his next lines, his co-players run away screaming in horror. Unaware of the change
in him, Bottom decides to wait for his friends, and begins to sing to himself. His
singing wakes up Titania, who under the impact of the magical juice, immediately
falls in love with him. She lavishes her fond attention on him, and also orders her
fairy servants to serve him. This new-found fascination counteracts her attachment
to the changeling. While she is in this state of devotion, Oberon takes the
  
 
changeling. Having achieved his purpose, Oberon releases Titania, and orders Puck
to remove the ass’s head from Bottom. He also sees to it that the lovers are
properly matched. The fairies disappear after setting everything right.

Early in the morning, Theseus and Hippolyta arrive on the scene during a hunt.
They wake the lovers. The lovers obviously do not understand what has happened
to them in the course of the previous night. They decide that it must have been a
dream. Since Demetrius does not love Hermia any more, Theseus overrules
Egeus’s objections and arranges a group wedding – Hermia with Lysander and
Helena with Demetrius. After they all exit, Bottom also wakes up. He cannot
explain the happenings either. The only thing he can say is that he must have
experienced a dream “past the wit of man.” In Athens, Theseus, Hippolyta and the
lovers watch Bottom and his men perform Pyramus and Thisbe. The play is about
the tragic death of the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe. But it is so badly performed that
the audience laugh as if it were meant to be a comedy. When the newly wed
couples retire to bed, the fairies bless the house and its occupants with good
fortune and progeny. Puck promises to make amends if he or others have caused
offence to anyone. He also reminds the audience that what they saw was but a
dream. Remember that the play is called A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a Romantic Comedy

Let us now attempt a generic analysis of the play. As we already noted, A

Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy. The word ‘comedy’ is derived from two
Greek words “kōmos” meaning revel, and “aoidos” meaning singer. Greek
kōmōidia means a comic song. As a dramatic genre comedy features lighthearted
actions and amusing incidents. Although the plot undergoes a complication, it does
not end in catastrophe as in a tragedy. A comedy ends in resolution, a promise of
life to continue.

From the time of the ancient Greeks there have been two different streams or types
of comedy. The first type is satiric comedy, represented by Shakespeare’s
  
 
contemporary Ben Jonson. Satiric comedy has a strictly moral purpose. It pours
ridicule on human foibles and vices, and follows contempt with chastisement. Love
finds no place in a satiric comedy. Shakespeare mostly wrote a second type of
comedy, namely romantic comedy. Love is the ruling force in this type of comedy.
Shakespeare’s romantic comedies stress the romantic element and suppress the
satiric element. The characters in his romantic comedies always have something
good about them. Though they have their vices and weaknesses, they are tolerable.
All this is true of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here love is a passion kindling the
heart, brain and senses alike in a happy proportion. People fall in love, pass
through a lot of sufferings and confusions but finally overcome obstacles, marry
and live a life of happiness thereafter. Like most of Shakespeare’s comedies, such
as Twelfth Night and As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream also ends in
multiple marriages. It ends in the wedding of Hermia to Lysander, Helena to
Demetrius, and Hippolyta to Theseus. Puck administers a benediction and blesses
the marriage bed. Oberon and Titania also get reconciled to each other.

Strange, wonderful, remote and unfamiliar incidents and situations abound in

Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. Improbability is the essence of the story. It is a
world of pure romance. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream it is the prankish
influence of Puck and the intervention of Oberon which add the fantastic element.
Lovers change their affections and Bottom gets transformed into a donkey.

The scene of the action is far away from the dull and dreary world of everyday life.
It is Illyria in Twelfth Night, the forest of Arden in As You Like It. In A Midsummer
Night’s Dream it is a forest on the outskirts of Athens. It is also the haunt of the
fairies. It is a space where the natural and the supernatural comingle. This does not
mean that the play is entirely cut off from real life. There are realistic checks on the
happiness of lovers. Hermia and Lysander have to face the law Athens and the
wrath of her father. At the beginning Hermia even faces the prospect of having to
lead a cloistered life in a convent. But the lovers overcome obstacles and enter
upon a life of happiness and harmony. Realistic and fantastic elements blend.

An important characteristic of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies is its merry

atmosphere. The atmosphere is gay, sweet and high-spirited. Like the other
romantic comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream exposes ordinary life to the light
  
 
of imagination and poetry. The floodgates of laughter burst on the spectator’s mind
with a cleansing and purifying effect. The confusion among the lovers and the
rustics’ play are two notable instances of the comic in the play.

The pervading tone is one of genial humour. Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson,
Shakespeare does not ridicule human foibles or defects. People who belong to
different stations of life and possessing different degrees of worth make their
appearance. But each of them receives sympathy from the reader. They are all
essentially noble. When the uneducated and unrefined Bottom and his men badly
perform their ill-written play, Theseus appreciates their good intention. That is the
spirit of a Shakespearean comedy. Sympathy and tolerance are the guiding
principles. Of course, Puck comments on the folly of the lovers when he tells
Oberon: “Shall we their fond pageant see?/ Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Puck is mischievous but not malicious. He is a benevolent and gracious spirit
whose good intentions pervade the action in the woods.

It is often said that women constitute the soul of a Shakespearean comedy. Beatrice
in Much Ado about Nothing, Viola in Twelfth Night, and Rosalind in As You Like It
are known for their wit, brilliance and ingenuity. A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
being an early comedy by Shakespeare, seems to be an exception to this rule.
Unfortunately, Hermia and Helena are no match for Rosalind and Viola. Unlike the
heroines of Shakespeare’s mature comedies, the heroines of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream do not have any initiative at all in relationships. They are merely the objects
of the changing affections of men.

Major themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Let us now move on to explore the major themes of the play.

1) Difficulties in love
As we noted love is the pivot round which Shakespeare’s romantic comedies
revolve. How is the theme of love treated in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Faced
with obstacles in his relationship with Hermia, Lysander comments: “The course
of true love never did run smooth.” Here he is articulating one of the play’s most
  
 
important themes—difficulties and challenges in love. It is true that most of the
conflict in the play stems from the troubles of romance. But these troubles are
made the focus of fun. The tone of the play is so lighthearted that the audience
never doubts that things will end happily. A resolution to the problems is
anticipated particularly in the introduction of the supernatural element – the
benevolent fairies. We also note that even the tragedy of the lovers Pyramus and
Thisbe is performed and received with mirth and laughter.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream we find several imbalances and incongruities in

love. Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius,
and Demetrius loves Hermia instead of Helena. Similarly, Oberon’s coveting of
Titania’s Indian boy outweighs his love for her. Later, beautiful Titania’s passion
for the clumsy, grotesque and ass-headed Bottom represents an imbalance of
appearance and nature. Nevertheless, many of these incongruities have only a
transient character. The plot of the play ensures that symmetry is finally achieved.
It is a fact that A Midsummer Night's Dream is a work that ends with the weddings
of three couples, and a reconciliation between the fairy couple.

2) Magic and the Supernatural

The fairy world is a central element in the play. It contributes to the fantastic
atmosphere of the play. It is the fairies’ magic which brings about many of the
most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play. It is also responsible for the
resolution of several tensions at the beginning of the play. The effect of the
magical juice lasts beyond the specific hours of supernatural intervention in the
case of Helena and Demetrius. Does this juice symbolize anything? On the one
hand, perhaps Shakespeare is suggesting the almost supernatural power of love. On
the other, if one may give a more earthly explanation, the playwright is hinting at
the capricious nature of love, which can change its object at the application of a
liquid. Even in its wildest misapplication it is not more perverse than the capricious
emotion we call love. A fairy queen can woo a beast and human lovers claim that
they are governed by reason while they are, in fact, charmed.
  
 
3) Dreams

As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Night’s

Dream. Hippolyta’s first words in the play mention dreaming: “Four days will
quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the time.”
Various characters talk about dreams throughout. The lovers use the word “dream”
to explain away the bizarre events which happen to them in the forest. So does
Bottom in trying to interpret his temporary transformation into an ass: “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.” In other words, a dream is a metaphor for
inexplicability. At the end of the play, Puck tells the audience that if they have
been offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a dream.
The illusory character of a dream which it shares with a dramatic performance
makes dream a metaphor for art. Perhaps, Puck’s statement also hints that a playful
comedy like A Midsummer Night’s Dream itself is as light as a dream, and need
not be treated as heavy drama. At least, this is the way even “the most lamentable
comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe” is received.

4) Issues of Gender and class

Despite the fact that England was ruled by a queen during Shakespeare’s time,
women had very little freedom and opportunities. Therefore it is not surprising that
male dominance is a major thematic element in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Theseus weds Hippolyta, the Queen of a nation of female warriors, after
conquering her. This in effect marks the replacement of a regime of female
autonomy by male hegemony. Theseus’s assumption of husbandly authority over
the conquered virgin warrior is given as the pattern of ideal marriage. Patriarchal
hegemony is evident in the plight of the lovers too. The law of the land has
legitimized this hegemony. The Athenian law gives parents the disposal of their
daughters in marriage or permission to put them to death in case of disobedience.
Lysander and Hermia escape into the woods for a night where they do not fall
under the laws of Theseus or Egeus. The woods represent a carnivalesque world
where the rules of hierarchy are only temporarily overturned. Even the happy
ending of multiple weddings is ideologically dubious from a gendered perspective.
  
 
Marriage is seen as the ultimate social achievement for women while men can go
on to do many other great things and gain societal recognition.

The elite audience of Pyramus and Thisbe have a condescending attitude towards
the performance of the labourers. This demonstrates the disparities in cultural
opportunities and resources in society. In historical England, social and cultural
opportunities were so severely restricted that it was nearly impossible for someone
who belonged to Bottom’s class to write or perform a play.