A Midsummer Night's Dream

Sources

1.

 A Midsummer Night's Dream

This video was one of the sources that aided our understanding of the play. The video was helpful because it condensed the play and was especially understandable because of the simple language used. The visual aspect of this source allowed us to easily follow the story line and not be confused with names and characters as you are likely to be while reading the original play.

2. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/midsummer/full.html

This is the source where we read the original play from. It was a more detailed and extensive way to learn and farmiliarize ourselves with the story line compared to the video. From this source we learned every detail and were attuned to the themes and motifs displayed in the play.

Synopsis of A Midsummer Night's Dream:









Appearances vs. Reality (Ayelet Schorr)
        The theme of appearances versus reality is central in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The "appearances" are the fairytale world that Lysander, Demitrius, Hermea, and Helena are thrown into when they enter the forest.  The "reality" is the real world, including the initial ruling of Theseus and Egeus and the play that is put on by the villagers.  This play revolves around the collision of these two worlds, the collision of appearances and reality, and how love can form a bridge between the two.
One way that love melds together appearances and reality is when Hermia, Demitrius, Helena, and Lysander leave the real world and enter the forest.  The couples came from a world of laws, kings, and traditions, to go into a forest full of fairies, enchanted flowers, and magic.  When the couples enter the forest, there are problems regarding who loves whom.  Lysander and Hermea are in love, but Demitrius also loves Hermea, while Helena loves Demitrius, and Helena is unloved.  Through the magical means of the forest, the problems regarding love are corrected.  Puck, a fairy, puts a special flower over the eyes of Demitrius to make him love Helena, thus fixing the issue.  The real problems of real people from the real world are mended by a magical being through magical means in a magical place.  From this one can see the theme of appearances versus reality in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The love in this play forms a tie between the supernatural and the natural, the appearances, and the reality. Very good, but what then do we learn about appearances and reality from this analysis?

Talia Bardash
The use of rule and misrule

In the play A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, an overall motif is rule and misrule. Rule and misrule stems from the theme that love makes people foolish and not themselves. One of the ways Shakespeare uses the motif is by making the setting a place where and time when the characters become the opposite of their natural selves. The decisions that the characters choose are impulsive and done without much thought.

The main settings of the play are the forest of Athens, which is the home of the fairies, and the city of Athens. The fairies, King Oberon and Queen Titania, are the whimsical, free-living creatures that are juxtaposed with the rigid and bureaucratic king and queen-to-be of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta. At first glance one may think that the two settings, the pastoral and irrational versus the urban and rational, are definite opposites. However, after further examination one can see that the seemingly rational urban lifestyle is just as irrational as the magical forest. King Theseus is one who follows the rules and makes Hermia marry someone other than her true love because her father doesn’t approve. King Oberon, on the other hand, embodies the true meaning of Midsummer and the emotions that transform a human being into a more mischievous and impetuous person. King Oberon enjoys seeing his wife, Titania, fall in love with a donkey, while fighting over a trivial possession. Both the kings force love on another character, whether it is through rational rules or through the irrational use of a magic flower. In fact, in some productions of the play the same actors play King Oberon and Theseus and Queen Titania and Hippolyta. This shows that even though the ruling couples may seem different, they actually have the same characteristics and are meant to portray the same idea, that creatures are can be foolish and love makes them particularly so.  By placing the two settings in two opposite places, real and imaginary, Shakespeare shows that not only can one be irrational in the imaginary world but also in the real world. In addition, Puck says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Oh lord what fools these mortals be.” By having Puck, who himself is a mischievous fairy, say these words, Shakespeare again makes his point that the real and imaginary are interchangeable because irrationality are a part of both types of worlds.

The timing of the play is set at a midsummer night. Midsummer is a time when many people lose their routines and rules; night is a time when there is darkness and shadows. The timing of midsummer, the heat and the relaxation, creates the feeling of careless and spontaneous actions. Whereas during the winter one feels more contained and actions feel more controlled and calculated, midsummer is the perfect time for love because it allows one to step outside his comfort zone and become a more relaxed and carefree person. Everyone in the play relaxes or defies rules, so that there is confusion and chaos. In the play forbidden lovers, Hermia and Lysander, decide to run away from the rational world and head off into the magical side of the forest spontaneously. Hermia and Lysander needed to run away from the rules because Hermia would be forced to marry Demetrius. Another character who didn’t follow rules is Oberon. King Oberon didn’t like the limitations and restrictions that his wife, Titania, set about a slave child. Oberon loses his control and makes his wife fall in love with a man with a donkey’s head. Puck is also a careless character who is characterized as the jester of the play. Puck’s decisions are always causing the characters confusion and creates the entertaining misrule of the play. Puck is told to put the magic flower on Demetrius’s eyes so he will fall in love with Helena, who is madly in love with Demetrius. But, Puck puts the magic flower on Lysander, which creates the first major confusion and misrule. 

The night setting of the play also facilitates the foolish act of falling in love. Night is the time when lovers sneak out, become crazy and naive. The moon is constantly used in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to describe the night time. The moon is just like characters: it is quickly changing and ephemeral. In Elizabethan time the moon was said to influence emotions and self-image. This supports the plays theme very well because the misrule, which occurs at night, changes the behavior and emotions of many of the characters. The moon made each character act like a lunatic, a word with a Latin root meaning moon and which shows the Elizabethan idea that the moon alters one’s emotions in a drastic way. Helena, in the beginning of the play, portrays the first sign of strong and sad emotions towards herself. Helena’s one true love shows his love towards Hermia. Helena would go to any length to have any contact with Demetrius. Helena is so madly in love that even talking to Demetrius about his true love excites Helena:

I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight.

Then to the wood will he tomorrow night,

Pursue her. And for this intelligence

If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.

But herein mean I to enrich my pain,

To have his sight thither and back again. (Act I)

Hermia, who was once loved by Lysander is shocked when Lysander has now professed his love for Helena, because he was showered with the magic flower. Lysander says, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Content with Hermia? No. I do repent,/The tedious minutes I with her have spent./Not Hermia but Helena I love.” Hermia begins to feel badly about herself and questions the love that Lysander had for her in the first place:

What, can you do me greater harm than hate?

Hate me? Wherefore? O me! What news, my love?

Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?

I am as fair now as I was erewhile.

Since night you loved me. Yet since night you left me.

Why then, you left me—Oh, the gods forbid!—In earnest, shall I say?

Here Lysander is acting crazy and foolish because his true love from the beginning of the play, the person that he risked his life for and ran away with, is now repulsive to him. The flower juice Puck dribbled into his eyes makes Lysander be mad for Helena. Lysander’s rejection of Hermia then makes Hermia mad, since she is beside herself with anxiety over the loss of his love.

Shakespeare’s characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream exemplify the motif of being foolishly in love. They are drawn in by the aspect and magical side of love, which then transforms them.Shakespeare titled the play to show the influence that a time and day have on a person’s character, but his real intent may have been to show that no matter time, day or place, we can all be foolish about love.