Love
The
dominant theme in A Midsummer Night's Dream is love, a subject to which
Shakespeare returns constantly in his comedies. Shakespeare explores how people
tend to fall in love with those who appear beautiful to them. People we think
we love at one time in our lives can later seem not only unattractive but even
repellent. For a time, this attraction to beauty might appear to be love at its
most intense, but one of the ideas of the play is that real love is much more
than mere physical attraction.
At
one level, the story of the four young Athenians asserts that although
"The course of true love never did run smooth," true love triumphs in
the end, bringing happiness and harmony. At another level, however, the
audience is forced to consider what an apparently irrational and whimsical
thing love is, at least when experienced between youngsters.
Marriage
A
Midsummer Night's Dream asserts marriage as the true fulfillment of romantic
love. All the damaged relationships have been sorted out at the end of Act IV,
and Act V serves to celebrate the whole idea of marriage in a spirit of festive
happiness.
The
triple wedding at the end of Act IV marks the formal resolution of the romantic
problems that have beset the two young couples from the beginning, when Egeus
attempted to force his daughter to marry the man he had chosen to be her
husband.
The
mature and stable love of Theseus and Hippolyta is contrasted with the
relationship of Oberon and Titania, whose squabbling has such a negative impact
on the world around them. Only when the marriage of the fairy King and Queen is
put right can there be peace in their kingdom and the world beyond it.
Appearance
and Reality
Another
of the play's main themes is one to which Shakespeare returns to again and
again in his work: the difference between appearance and reality. The idea that
things are not necessarily what they seem to be is at the heart of A Midsummer
Night's Dream, and in the very title itself.
A
dream is not real, even though it seems so at the time we experience it. Shakespeare
consciously creates the plays' dreamlike quality in a number of ways.
Characters frequently fall asleep and wake having dreamed ("Methought a
serpent ate my heart away"); having had magic worked upon them so that
they are in a dreamlike state; or thinking that they have dreamed ("I have
had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was"). Much of the
play takes place at night, and there are references to moonlight, which changes
the appearance of what it illuminates.
The
difference between appearances and reality is also explored through the
play-within-a-play, to particularly comic effect. The "rude
mechanicals" completely fail to understand the magic of the theatre, which
depends upon the audience being allowed to believe (for a time, at least) that
what is being acted out in front of them is real.
When
Snug the Joiner tells the stage audience that he is not really a lion and that
they must not be afraid of him, we (and they) laugh at this stupidity, but we
also laugh at ourselves — for we know that he is not just a joiner pretending
to be a lion, but an actor pretending to be a joiner pretending to be a lion.
Shakespeare seems to be saying, "We all know that this play isn't real,
but you're still sitting there and believing it." That is a kind of magic
too.
Order
and Disorder
A
Midsummer Night's Dream also deals with the theme of order and disorder. The
order of Egeus' family is threatened because his daughter wishes to marry
against his will; the social order to the state demands that a father's will
should be enforced. When the city dwellers find themselves in the wood, away
from their ordered and hierarchical society, order breaks down and
relationships are fragmented. But this is comedy, and relationships are more
happily rebuilt in the free atmosphere of the wood before the characters return
to society.
Natural
order — the order of Nature — is also broken and restored in A Midsummer
Night's Dream. The row between the Fairy King and Queen results in the order of
the seasons being disrupted:
The
spring, the summer,
The
chiding autumn, angry winter change
Their
wonted liveries, and the mazèd world
By
their increase knows not which is which.
Only
after Oberon and Titania's reconciliation can all this be put right. Without
the restoration of natural order, the happiness of the play's ending could not
be complete
Magic
The
fairies’ magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious
situations in the play, is another element central to the fantastic atmosphere
of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare uses magic both to embody the almost
supernatural power of love (symbolized by the love potion) and to create a
surreal world. Although the misuse of magic causes chaos, as when Puck
mistakenly applies the love potion to Lysander’s eyelids, magic ultimately
resolves the play’s tensions by restoring love to balance among the quartet of
Athenian youths. Additionally, the ease with which Puck uses magic to his own
ends, as when he reshapes Bottom’s head into that of an ass and recreates the
voices of Lysander and Demetrius, stands in contrast to the laboriousness and
gracelessness of the craftsmen’s attempt to stage their play.
Dreams
As
the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Night’s Dream;
they are linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Hippolyta’s
first words in the play evidence the prevalence of dreams (“Four days will
quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the
time”), and various characters mention dreams throughout (I.i.7–8). The theme
of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre
events in which these characters are involved: “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,” Bottom says, unable to fathom the magical happenings that have
affected him as anything but the result of slumber.
Shakespeare
is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur
without explanation, time loses its normal sense of flow, and the impossible
occurs as a matter of course; he seeks to recreate this environment in the play
through the intervention of the fairies in the magical forest. At the end of
the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members themselves,
saying that, if they have been offended by the play, they should remember it as
nothing more than a dream. This sense of illusion and gauzy fragility is
crucial to the atmosphere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as it helps render the
play a fantastical experience rather than a heavy drama.
Jealousy
The
theme of jealousy operates in both the human and fairy realms in Midsummer
Night’s Dream. Jealousy plays out most obviously among the quartet of Athenian
lovers, who find themselves in an increasingly tangled knot of misaligned
desire. Helena begins the play feeling jealous of Hermia, who has managed to
snag not one but two suitors. Helena loves Demetrius, who in turn feels jealous
of his rival for Hermia’s affections, Lysander. When misplaced fairy mischief
leads Lysander into an amorous pursuit of Helena, the event drives Hermia into
her own jealous rage. Jealousy also extends into the fairy realm, where it has
caused a rift between the fairy king and queen. As we learn in Act II, King
Oberon and Queen Titania both have eyes for their counterparts in the human
realm, Theseus and Hippolyta. Titania accuses Oberon of stealing away with “the
bouncing Amazon” (II.i.). Oberon accuses Titania of hypocrisy, since she also
loves another: “How canst thou thus for shame, Titania, / Glance at my credit
with Hippolyta, / Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?” (II.i.). This jealous
rift incites Oberon to command Puck to fetch the magic flower that eventually
causes so much chaos and confusion for the Athenian lovers
Mischief
In
Midsummer, mischief is primarily associated with the forest and the fairies who
reside there. Accordingly, the fairies of traditional British folklore are
master mischief makers. The trickster fairy Puck (also known as Robin
Goodfellow) is the play’s chief creator of mischief. Puck’s reputation as a
troublemaker precedes him, as suggested in the first scene of Act II, where an
unnamed fairy recognizes Puck and rhapsodizes about all the tricks Puck has
played on unsuspecting humans. Although in the play Puck only retrieves and
uses the magical flower at Oberon’s request, his mistakes in implementing
Oberon’s plan have the most chaotic effects. Puck also makes mischief of his
own accord, as when he transforms Bottom’s head into that of ass. Puck is also
the only character who explicitly talks about his love of mischief. When in Act
III he declares that “those things do best please me / That befall
prepost’rously” (III.ii.), he effectively announces a personal philosophy of
mischief and an appreciation for turning things on their head.
