Midsummer Night’s Dream

INTRODUCTION
Though MSND is set in Athens, there is little in the play that is specifically Greek or Athenian. Theseus is ruling Athens, but he bears little similarity to the Theseus of Plutarch, and he is even anachronistically described as the ?Duke of Athens.?E Bottom and company have nothing Greek about them; they are pure Elizabethan Englishmen. Yet, by looking at some of the themes of the play, we might gain some insight into Shakespeare?s feel for the world of ancient Greece.

SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY
Two general points need to be made about Shakespearean comedy. First, as Leo Salinger says, Shakespearean comedy is based on a ?belief,?Ea faith. The comedies operate on the premise that human beings are fools who can make a mess of love and life, but they are not strong or wise enough to get themselves out of the messes they create. If humans are going to end happily, something must come from ?outside?Ehuman life. Grace must break in. This is symbolized in MSND by the fairy world.

Second, grace takes various forms, depending on the type of obstacle involved. Peter Saccio has suggested that Shakespearean comedies are of two types: Comedies of flight and comedies of invasion. In a comedy of flight (or an ?exodus?Ecomedy), there is an external obstacle that the principal characters (usually lovers) have to overcome. This obstacle can be a law, a father?s decision, or a rival lover. In order to overcome this obstacle, the lovers escape from the home or city into a ?green world?Ewhere some powerful force simply dissolves the obstacle. Then, the lovers return to their home. A Midsummer Night?s Dream is a classic example of a comedy of exodus.

In a comedy of invasion (or an ?incarnation?Ecomedy), the obstacle to the lovers?Eis internal. One of the lovers is reluctant or shrewish. To overcome an internal obstacle, some force must invade the closed world that exists at the beginning of the play, break through the impasse, and reorder that world. Taming of the Shrew is an example of a comedy of incarnation.

CITY vs. FOREST
The thematic structure of the play revolves around the contrast of ?nature?Eand ?civilization,?Ethe city of Athens where lovers cannot gain their desires and the world of the woods where fairies rule. These two locations are associated with other ideas and themes:

City Wood

Day night
Waking sleep/dream
Reason passion
Law magic
Theseus Oberon
Reality illusion
Cool hot
Dry wet

Part of the point of this is captured by the speech of Theseus at the beginning of Acts 5. Theseus, Duke of the city of reason, is a skeptic about the stories the lovers tell. ?Lovers and madmen?Ehave ?seething brains?Ethat concoct ?more than cool reason ever comprehends.?E Lovers and poets actually create through imagination: A lover ?sees Helen?s beauty in a brow of Egypt,?Eand the poetic imagination ?bodies forth the forms of things unknown?Eand thus ?gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.?E For a man devoted to reason, this is one of the best descriptions of imagination in literature. Later, though, he reminds Hippolyta that in the theater ?the best . . . are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them?E(5.1.210-211).

More than this, Shakespeare shows that order and true society do not come through law and authority alone. Things are put right when the lovers flee to the forest, to a natural setting beyond the reach of Theseus?Esevere edicts and Egeus, Hermia?s father. As in Merchant of Venice , Shakespeare is operating on the profoundly Christian premise that Law cannot save, or bring satisfaction or happiness.

On the other hand, Shakespeare does not leave his lovers in the Edenic forest. They wake from the dream and return to Athens, though they don?t know for sure anymore which world is real. If law and order cannot bring happiness, and in fact often cause unhappiness, still man cannot live without law and order. Feminists will shriek, but it is clear that for Shakespeare part of this proper order is the establishment of male headship. Theseus and Hippolyta, whose preparations for marriage frame the whole play, provide the standard: Theseus subdues his wife, and she becomes his loving wife. Similarly, Oberon tricks Titania to assert his mastery.

MAGIC OF LOVE
Shakespeare dramatizes several aspects of love in the course of the play. First, as in other comedies, he plays with the traditional idea of love at first sight. Love follows the eyes. This is related to the fickleness of love, as the men change their affections rapidly and to the confusion of Hermia and Helena.

Of course, second, the confusions of love are all the result of Puck?s mistakes (if they are mistakes). This is played for laughs, but it also has an important thematic function. Shakespeare depicts love as a power that controls us from the outside; passion is not subject to the will or reason. Beyond this, Shakespeare depicts a world that is full of realities, persons, and powers that humans never see. This is evident in the final ?play within a play?Escene, which is highly complex: Bottom and crew act on stage (they are actors pretending to be actors); Theseus, Hippolyta, and other Athenians watch the play (actors pretending to be an audience); we watch the audience as well as the actors on stage. At the very end, Shakespeare adds a further complexity, implying with the appearance of the fairies that the Athenians are themselves acting out a play for the amusement of the fairies. Perhaps, the play implies, we the ?real-life?Eaudience are also performers for another, invisible audience.

Third, Shakespeare shows that love can both elevate and debase. It can inspire nobility and true honor, or it can make the lover act silly. In MSND , there is more of the latter. The changing love of the foursome from Athens make them absurd, and Titania falls in love with the ass-headed Bottom. Love makes people do things against their will and reason.

Finally, Shakespeare makes it clear that the ?course of true love did never run smooth,?Eas Lysander puts it (1.1.134).

MORE THINGS THAN DREAMED IN PHILOSOPHY
Vague as the ancient Greek setting is in the play, then, we may be able to draw two conclusions about Shakespeare?s evaluation of the classical world. First, it seems likely that Shakespeare sets the play in Athens because that city is a symbol of rationality. If so, the play gives us an idea of how Shakespeare evaluated the limits of reason. This is perhaps captured best by Bottom?s line ?reason and love keep little company together nowadays?E(3.1.148-9). Love, dreams, play, art ?Eall the things the play highlights ?Eare beyond cool reason to master. Second, MSND , like Troilus and Cressida , shows how free Shakespeare was in relation to his classical sources. He knew the classics, but no austere, grave classicist could do with the tragic story of Pyramus and Thisbe (from Ovid?s Metamorphoses , Book 4) what Shakespeare does.