Jennifer Wilson
2-28-03
Period 3
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play written by William Shakespeare that is 121 pages in length. It was published in the year 1595 and is a truly magical play. The use of setting in this play is what gives it magical quality. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is set in the forest where four lovers are trying to get away from the clutches of Athenian law. The forest is full of fairies who are trying to restore stability in their own society. The forest provides a setting where anything can happen and plenty of things can go wrong. This helps to establish a dreamlike mood to the play.
The difference between appearance and reality, or the dream world, and the real world, is a key theme in this play. Shakespeare creates a dreamlike feeling during the entire course of the play. The four lovers, Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander, are often put to sleep by magic potions administered by fairies. They often awake feeling as though they had magic worked upon them, as Hermia did in Act II, Scene Two. “Methought a serpent ate my heart away” (Shakespeare 69). Moonlight is mentioned many times in the play, since moonlight offers an illusory effect to nighttime. The audience is affected by these dreams as well because the reader finishes the play feeling uncertain, as though having dreamed as well.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a romantic comedy in which four lovers are all intertwined. Hermia loves Lysander, and Helena loves Demetrius. However, Demetrius loves Hermia, but she does not love him in return. Hermia’s father, Egeus, wants her to marry Demetrius or else she will be placed into a convent or face death. As one can see, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is very complicated. Shakespeare adds humor to these characters by using the fairies in the forest to complicate things. He also uses dialogue effectively to explain each character’s feelings for one another. Things become further complicated in Acts II and III when potions are administered to the wrong people to make them fall in love with the wrong person. In Act II, Scenes One and Two, Helena awakes to find Demetrius in love with her. She believes that he is playing a cruel joke on her, so she runs away from him. Shakespeare also uses stage action, such as the play-within-a-play in Act V, Scene One to add more humor to the play and create a happy ending.
The title, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, explains how each of the four lovers are placed through a sequence of dreams and are awakened in a different state, causing much disorder. The title also explains how Shakespeare creates the illusion during the course of the play to leave the audience feeling hesitant. A Midsummer Night’s Dream suggests how the whole ordeal in the forest was just one grandiose dream and none of it ever happened. It also suggests the use of magic and fairies and the role they play in the dream chain of the four lovers.
Audiences truly love and enjoy this play because of its elements of humor, love, magic, dreams, and disorder. Shakespeare twists each one of these elements into a play that manages to fall perfectly together to produce a festive ending. In the final scene, Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies, come to the wedding festivities of the four lovers. The king and queen dance and bless the union, a sign that the fairy world has come back into harmony and order. Puck, the servant of Oberon, hints that the audience may have been dreaming in the last speech of the play.
If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions appear. And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream… Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends. (Shakespeare 150)