Introduction
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of four Shakespeare plays containing a significant degree of original plot. The others are Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Tempest. Shakespeare was extremely well read and, according to the times, he borrowed extensively from the classics, often combining several source materials for each play. Inventing completely original plots may have been the one single dramatic title that nature denied him.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was likely created to celebrate an aristocratic wedding in 1595. It begins with the announcement of a wedding and finishes on the night of a triple wedding. The play can be viewed as an extravagant wedding gift and as instruction on the true nature of love that the watching couple must learn before embarking on married life.
It was likely written therefore in 1594, while the theatres were closed due to the plague, when he had the extended writing time and likely also wrote Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost and many if not most of the Sonnets. Just ahead would come The Merchant of Venice and the appearance of the monumental Falstaff in the two Henry IV plays. It was his first, but not last, creative explosion.
Along with Romeo and Juliet, this is Shakespeare’s first undisputed masterpiece. Although a comedy provoking much laughter and mirth, a dark depth lurks beneath the moonlit charm and the play is dreamlike on several simultaneous planes of understanding. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an exploration of four different kinds of love: court convention, young love, the supernatural spirit world and the world of ‘honest toil’. Shakespeare’s comedies were always more than simply funny, as we witnessed in Act I of The Comedy of Errors, when Aegeon is seemingly doomed to die and most characters are facing what they fear is the madness of identity loss prior to the resolution scene in Act V.
The play is a flight of fancy in a dreamlike world of magic, exploring love in all of its tenderness, excitement and danger. The play begins and ends in an Athens of reason and order but in between traverses the wild enchantments of the forest. It is as much an interior journey of self discovery and imagination, a place of fantasy and dreams, as it is an actual romp in the woods. This is one of many examples of Shakespeare anticipating Freudian psychology by hundreds of years, as Shakespeare’s thinly veiled English Forest of Arden, which he knew well, becomes the realm of the unconscious, complete with a plethora of sexual and gender issues. Indeed, the entire play reads like a dream we have stumbled into. This forest of dreams is a place where what is considered normal in Athens gets turned on its head and becomes nightmarish and delusional, particularly around the question of identity loss.
This is especially a play to be seen. The actors play robust characters to audiences who delight in the extravagance of this visual feast. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is played frequently around the world and is a beloved mainstay of the Shakespearean canon. In fact, for years ‘Shakespeare in the Park’, called “Dream in the Park”, here in Toronto’s High Park, featured A Midsummer Night’s Dream and one other play every summer. Today both summer productions are a surprise. I will suggest video clips and will endeavour to find a full staged production or film adaptation.
Act I (2 scenes)
Scene i
Athens. The palace of Theseus
Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate and attendants
Theseus: “Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws apace. How slow this old moon wanes.”
Hippolyta: “Four nights will quickly dream away the time; and then the new moon shall behold the night of our solemnities.”
Theseus: “Go, Philostrate, stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; awake the nimble spirit of mirth.”
Enter Egeus and his daughter Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius
Theseus: “Good Egeus, what’s the news with thee?”
Egeus: “Full of vexation come I, with complaint against my child, my daughter Hermia. Demetrius hath my consent to marry her, but Lysander hath bewitched the bosom of my child. Thou, Lysander, with cunning hast thou filched my daughter’s heart and turned her obedience, which is due to me, to stubborn harshness. She will not consent to marry Demetrius. As she is mine, I may depose of her, which shall be either to this gentleman or to her death, according to our law.”
Theseus: “What say you, Hermia? Be advised, to you your father should be as a God. Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.”
Hermia: “So is Lysander.”
Theseus: “But wanting your father’s voice, the other must be held the worthier.”
Hermia: “I would my father looked but with my eyes.”
Theseus: “Rather your eyes must with his judgement look.”
Hermia: “But I beseech your Grace that I may know the worst that may befall me in this case, if I refuse to wed Demetrius.”
Theseus: “Either to die the death, or to abjure forever the society of men. You can endure the livery of a nun.”
Hermia: “So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord.”
Demetrius: “Relent, sweet Hermia, and Lysander, yield thy crazed title to my certain right.”
Lysander: “You have her father’s love, Demetrius; Let me have Hermia. I am, my lord, as well derived as he, as well possessed; my love is more than his; I am beloved of beauteous Hermia. Demetrius made love to Helena, and won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes upon this inconstant man.”
Theseus: “I must confess that I have heard so much. Fair Hermia, look you arm yourself to fit your fancies to your father’s will, or else the laws of Athens yields you up to death, or to a vow of single life.”
Exit all but Lysander and Hermia
Lysander: “Ay, me! The course of true love never did run smooth.“
Hermia: “O hell, to choose love by another’s eyes.”
Lysander: “Hear me, Hermia: I have a widowed aunt and from Athens her house remote is seven leagues, and she respects me as her only son. There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee; and to that place the sharp Athenian law cannot pursue us. If thou loves me then, steal forth from thy father’s house tomorrow night; and in the woods there will I stay for thee.”
Hermia: “My good Lysander! I swear to thee by Cupid’s strongest bow, tomorrow truly will I meet with thee.”
Enter Helena
Hermia: “God speed fair Helena!”
Helena: “Call you me fair? Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair! Sickness is catching; yours would I catch. O, teach me how you look, and with what art you sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart!”
Hermia: “I give him curses, yet he gives me love. The more I hate, the more he follows me.”
Helena: “The more I love, the more he hates me.”
Hermia: “His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.”
Helena: “None but your beauty; would the fault were mine!”
Hermia: “Take comfort, Lysander and I will fly this place.”
Lysander: “Helen, to you our minds we will unfold; tomorrow night, through Athen’s gates have we devised to steal.”
Hermia: “And in the woods there my Lysander and myself shall meet; and thence from Athens turn away our eyes. Farewell, sweet playfellow; and good luck grant thee thy Demetrius.”
Exit Hermia and Lysander
Helena: “Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so; love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged cupid painted blind. I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight; then to the woods will he tomorrow night pursue her.”
Analysis
In Act I, scene i we meet the court lovers (Theseus, Duke of Athens and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons) and the four human lovers (Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius) Theseus was a very important character in Greek mythology, having slew the infamous minotaur. Shakespeare resurrects him here to be the Duke of Athens in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hermia’s father, Egeus, insists she marry Demetrius but she is in love with Lysander. Egeus appeals to Theseus, who supports the established Athenian patriarchy. The old ways must be enforced. “Be advised, Hermia, that, to you, your father should be as a god.” Lysander and Hermia determine to leave Athens for the forest, where the laws of Athens do not apply. Hence, the great adventure begins.
Lysander is appropriately given one of Shakespeare’s greatest lines: “The course of true love never did run smooth”, which will prove to be true indeed, as the four lovers are significantly mismatched. Demetrius loves Hermia, who loves Lysander, while Helena loves Demetrius. Yikes! We will see them next in the woods, amongst those nimble, awakened and mischievous spirits. The four lovers are all very serious and Shakespeare plays them like a farce in the face of the fairy world and the preposterous situations and ludicrous predicaments they will face in the mysterious forest.
Act I
Scene ii
Athens. Quince’s home
Enter Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout and Starveling
Quince: “Is all our company here?”
Bottom: “You were best to call them, man by man, according to the script.”
Quince: “Here is the scroll of every man’s name which is thought fit, throughout all Athens, to play in our interlude before the Duke and the Duchess on his wedding day. Our play is ‘The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby’. Answer as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.”
Bottom: “What is Pyramus? A lover or a tyrant?”
Quince: “:A lover who kills himself most gallant for love.”
Bottom: “That will require some tears. I will move storms!”
Quince: “Flute, you must take on Thisby.”
Flute: “Let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.”
Bottom: “Let me play Thisby too.”
Quince: “No, no; you must play Pyramus. Robin Starling, you must play Thisby’s mother. Tom Snout: you, Pyramus’ father; myself Thisby’s father; Snug, you, the lion’s part.”
Snug: “Have you the lion’s part written, for I am slow of study?”
Quince: “It is nothing but roaring.”
Bottom: “Let me play the lion, too. I will roar that will do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar and make the Duke say ‘let him roar again, let him roar again.”
Quince: “You would frighten the Duchess and the ladies and that would be enough to hang us all. You can play no part but Pyramus. Masters, here are your parts; meet me in the place wood, a mile outside of town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse.”
Analysis
Here we meet the actors, referred to as the mechanicals. They have landed a very important job. They will perform their play before Theseus and Hippolyta to celebrate their wedding. They are akin to Shakespeare and his troupe performing for Queen Elizabeth, who would certainly not miss that parallel in this play she will love so much. Quince is the director of the acting group and in this scene he is assigning roles for the performance. Nick Bottom will play the main role, as Pyramus. Bottom is very passionate about acting and will be the most memorable character in the play by the end.
We have met three of the four very different groups in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The royal couple (including mythological Theseus, who is betrothed to the Queen of the Amazons), the four mismatched young lovers and these rather ridiculous actors, who though they have chosen a most serious subject in the classical story of Pyramus and Thisby, will in fact provide much comic relief whenever they appear. We have only yet to have met the fairies, who will stir things up as only fairies can.
Act II (2 scenes)
Scene i
The woods near Athens
Enter Puck and a fairy
Puck: “The Queen of the fairies, hath a lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king, and jealous Oberon, King of the fairies, would have the child; but she perforce withholds the loved boy and makes him all her joy.”
Fairy: “Either I mistake your shape or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he who frightens maidens and mis-leads night wanderers, laughing at their harm? You are called sweet Puck. Are you not he?”
Puck: “Thou speaketh right. I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon and make him smile.”
Enter Oberon and Titania
Titania: “Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his bed and company.”
Oberon: “Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord?”
Titania: “Then I must be thy lady.”
Oberon: “Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little boy to be my henchman.”
Titania: “His mother, being mortal, of that boy did die; and for her sake do I rear up the boy; and for her sake I will not part with him.”
Oberon: “Give me that boy.”
Titania: “Not for thy fairy kingdom!”
Exit Titania
Oberon: “Thou shall not from this grove till I torment thee for this injury. My gentle Puck, come hither. Fetch me that flower the juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid will make man or woman madly dote upon the next creature that it sees.”
Exit Puck
Oberon: “Having once this juice, I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep, and drop the liquor of it in her eyes; the next thing then she waking looks upon she shall pursue it with the soul of love. I’ll make her render up her boy to me.”
Enter Demetrius, with Helena following
Demetrius: “I love thee not, therefore pursue me not. Where is Lysander and fair Hermia? The one I’ll slay, the other slays me. Thou told me they were stolen into this wood. Get thee gone and follow me no more. I do not nor I cannot love you.”
Helena: “And even for that do I love you the more. I am your spaniel; and Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn on you.”
Demetrius: “Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit; for I am sick when I do look on you.”
Helena: “And I am sick when I look not on you.”
Demetrius: “You do impeach your modesty too much to leave the city and commit yourself into the hands of one who loves you not; To trust the opportunity of night with the rich worth of your virginity.”
Helena: “It is not night when I do see your face, therefore I think I am not in the night.”
Demetrius: “I’ll run from thee and hide me and leave thee to the mercy of the wild beasts. If thou follow me, I shall do thee mischief in the wood.”
Helena: “Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex. We cannot fight for love as men may do; we should be woo’d, and were not made to woo.”
Exit Demetrius
Helena: I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, to die upon the hand I love so well.”
Exit Helena
Oberon: “Fair thee well, nymph; ere he do leave this grove, he shall seek thy love.”
Re-enter Puck
Oberon: “Hath thou the flower?”
Puck: “Ay, here it is.”
Oberon: “I pray thee give it me. With the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes, and make her full of hateful fantasies. Take thou some of it and seek through this grove : a sweet Athenian lady is in love with a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes; when the next thing he spies may be the lady. Thou shall know the man by the Athenian garments he has on.”
Puck: “Your servant shall do so.”
Analysis
Now for a little Fairy action. We must remember that in 1595 fairies, nymphs and the like were very much more real than we consider them today. The age of science is way beyond Shakespeare’s horizon. Whereas the Italian Renaissance is about 150 years old by 1600, the English are just getting their Renaissance legs under them with Shakespeare and this new English language for which there will not yet even be a dictionary until 1606.
These fairies are about to turn the four young lover’s lives upside down, especially one notorious little guy named Robin Goodfellow, often known as Puck. He is best known for his pranks and jests.
Meanwhile, Demetrius and Helena have arrived in the forest. Recall from Act I that both men love Hermia and that Helena loves Demetrius. Keep that straight and you’ll be fine.
With that we return to Puck, who has the juice of the flower requested of him. But first Oberon, who has witnessed Demtrius’ spurn of Helena, tells Puck: “A sweet Athenian lady is in love with a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes when the next thing he spies may be the lady.” “Your servant shall do so”, Puck assures Oberon. And the confusion begins!
Act II
Scene ii
Another part of the woods
Enter Titania with her fairies
Titania: “Come now, a fairy song. Sing me now asleep.”
Titania falls asleep
Enter Oberon, squeeing the flower onto Titania’s eyelids
Oberon: “Whatever thou sees when thou awakes, do it for thy true-love take.”
Exit Oberon
Enter Lysander and Hermia
Lysander: “Fair love, you faint with wandering in the woods. We’ll rest here, Hermia.”
Hermia: “Be it so, Lysander. Find yourself a bed, for I upon this bank will rest my head.”
Lysander: One turf shall serve as pillow for us both; one heart, one bed.”
Hermia: “Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear, lie further off yet; do not lie so near. Such separation becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid.”
They sleep
Enter Puck
Puck: “Who is here? This is he, my master said, who despised the Athenian maid. Upon thy eyes I throw all the power this charm doth owe.”
Exit Puck
Enter Demetrius and Helena
Helena: “Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius.”
Demetrius: “Do not haunt me thus. Stay on thy peril; I alone will go.”
Exit Demetrius
Helena: “O, I am out of breath in this fond chase! Happy is Hermia for she hath blessed and attractive eyes. I am as ugly as a bear, for beast that meet me run away for fear. Who is here? Lysander on the ground! Dead or asleep? Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake.”
Lysander awakes
Lysander: “And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake. Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word is that vile name to perish on my sword!”
Helena: “Do not say so, Lysander. Hermia still loves you, so be content.”
Lysander: “Content with Hermia? No; I do repent the tedious moments I with her have spent. No Hermia but Helena I love; who will not change a raven for a dove?”
Helena: “Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? When at your hands did I deserve this scorn? Must you flout my insufficiency? O, that a lady of one man refused should of another therefore be abused.”
Exit Helena
Lysander: “Hermia, sleep thou there, and may never thou come near Lysander!”
Hermia awakes suddenly
Hermia: “Help me, Lysander. What a dream was here! Lysander, look how I do quake with fear. Lysander! What, removed? Alack, where are you.”
Analysis
Shakespeare introduces the magic potion here, and in the hands of mischievous Puck, mistaken identity on the scale of ‘The Comedy of Errors’ is inevitable. Not only will Puck extend the bounds of reason and sanity but he will eventually set things right in the end, as though stretching the limits was necessary to repair the natural damage done between the four young lovers and Oberon and Titania. Magic is the cure in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, compared to The Comedy of Errors, where all confusion was solely due to mistaken identity alone. What both plays have in common is the element of farce. If this were a simple love story then the magical fairy potion would be an inappropriate vehicle for the romantic plot development. But the fairy world opens up the farcical possibilities and creates a midsummer night dreamscape. The magic flower allows Shakespeare to follow a circuitous route of incredulous farce to eventually reach the inevitable Act V resolution.
Act III (2 scenes)
Scene i
The Woods, with Titania asleep
Enter Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout and Starveling
Quince: “This green plot shall be our stage.”
Bottom: “There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladies cannot abide. I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue and let the prologue seem to say that we will do no harm with our swords. Tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.”
Quince: “Well, we will have such a prologue.”
Snout: “Will not the ladies be afeared of the lion?”
Bottom: “A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.”
Snout: “Wherefore, another prologue must tell he is not a lion.”
Quince: “Well, it shall be so. But there are two hard things – to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for you know Pyramus and Thisby meet by moonlight. Then we must have a wall in the great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby, says the story, did talk through the chink of a wall.”
Bottom: “Some man must present wall, and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper.”
Quince: “If that may be, then all is well.”
Enter Puck, concealed
Puck: “What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here? What, a play! I’ll be an auditor; an actor too perhaps, if I see cause. A stranger Pyramus than ever played here!”
Exit Puck
Re-enter Puck and Bottom with an ass head
Quince: “O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Help!”
Bottom: “Why do they run away?”
Snout: “O Bottom, thou art changed.”
Bottom: “What do you see? You see an ass-head of your own, do you?”
Quince: “Thou art translated.”
Bottom: “I see their knavery; this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could.”
Bottom sings
Titania: “What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?”
Bottom sings
Titania: “I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again. My ear is much enamoured of thy note; so is mine eye enthralled by your shape. I love thee.”
Bottom: “Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.”
Titania: “Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.”
Bottom: “Not so, neither.”
Titania: “Thou shalt remain here. I am a spirit of no common rate and I do love thee. I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee. Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! Musterseed!”
Enter the fairies
Peaseblossom: “Ready.”
Cobweb: “And I.”
Moth: “And I.”
Musterseed: “And I.”
All: “Where shall we go?”
Titania: “Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.”
Peaseblossom: “Hail, mortal.”
Cobweb: “Hail!”
Moth: “Hail!”
Mustardseed: “Hail!”
Titania: “Come, wait upon him and lead him to my bower.”
Analysis
Typical of Shakespeare’s plays, Act I introduces us to three of the four groups of characters and establishes the essential conflict which drives the four lovers into the woods. Act II introduces the fairies and exposes the conflict between Titania and Oberon and the magic potion that will wreak havoc on them all. It also sees the first interaction between groups, as Puck endeavours to make peace between the young lovers, but initially makes things much worse. Act three further complicates matters, as Puck transforms Bottom into an ass and then Titania falls hopelessly in love with him. A lengthy scene ii of Act III may be the apex of absurdities between the Athenian young people, as Puck must fix the mess he has created, either by accident or deliberately. One can never be sure with Puck, as he leads the way deeper and deeper into the entanglements he so loves to inspire and contrive. And once again Shakespeare’s world of mistaken identity bordering on madness begins anew! Love is out of sorts in both worlds and will require more fairy magic to set things right. Shakespeare uses the magic potion to highlight and explore the various comedic possibilities inherent in the mixed up confusion of love out of sorts. He can utilize this devise to compound the farce through a variety of humorous entanglements before the inevitable happy ending.
When the actors commence with their rehearsals Bottom is concerned that the ladies in the audience will be afraid of the swordplay in the performance as well as the depiction of the lion. What he really fears, as they all do, is the censor. As Shakespeare knew well, an inappropriate performance before royalty could mean prison, torture or even death for the players, and they are a stiff and uncomfortably clunky group of thespians to begin with.
Act III
Scene ii
Another part of the woods
Enter Oberon
Oberon: “I wonder if Titania be awakened, and what it was that next came into her eye, which she must dote on in extremity.”
Enter Puck
Puck: “My mistress with a monster is in love. Near to her consecrated bower a crew of rude mechanicals were met together to rehearse a play intended for great Thesius’ nuptial day. The shallowest thick skin of that barren sort, an ass’s nole I fixed on his head. And forth my mimic comes, so at his sight away his fellows fly. I led them on in this distracted fear, when in the moment, so it came to pass, Titania waked, and straight away loved an ass.”
Oberon: “This falls out better than I could devise. But hast thou yet latched the Athenian’s eyes with the love-juice, as I did bid thee to?”
Puck: “I took him sleeping; that is finished too.”
Enter Demetrius and Hermia
Hermia: “Thou, I fear, has given me cause to curse. If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep, then kill me too. Would he have stolen away from sleeping Hermia? It cannot be but thou hast murdered him. Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?”
Demetrius: “I had rather give his carcass to my hounds.”
Hermia: “Out, dog! Out, cur! Hast thou slayed him then?”
Demetrius: “I am not guilty of Lysander’s blood, nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell.”
Hermia: “I pray thee, tell me then that he is well.”
Demetrius: “And if I could, what should I get therefore?”
Hermia: “A privilege never to see me more. And from thy hated presence part I so.”
Exit Hermia
Demetrius lies down
Oberon: “What hast thou done? Thou has mistaken quite, and laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight. Some true love turned, and not a false turned true. Helena of Athens look thou find; all fancy-sick she is.”
Puck: “I go, I go; look how I go.”
Re-enter Puck
Puck: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!“
Oberon: “The noise they make will cause Demetrius to wake.”
Puck: “Then will two at once woo one. That must needs be sport alone; and those things do best please me that befall preposterously.“
Enter Lysander and Helena
Lysander: “How can these things in me seem scorn to you?”
Helena: “These vows are Hermia’s.”
Lysander: “Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you.”
Demetrius awakes
Demetrius: “O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! O, how ripe in show thy lips, those kissing cherries.”
Helena: “O spite! O hell! I see you are all bent to set against me for your merriment. If you were civil and knew courtesy, you would not do me thus much injury. Can you not hate me, as I know you do, but you must join in souls to mock me too? To vow, and swear, and super praise my parts, when I am sure you hate me with your hearts. You both are rivals, and love Hermia; and now both rivals, to mock Helena.”
Lysander: “You are unkind, Demetrius; for you love Hermia.”
Helena: “Never did mockery waste more idle breath.”
Demetrius: “Lysander, keep thy Hermia; if ever I loved her, all that love is gone.”
Enter Hermia
Hermia: “Lysander, why unkindly did thou leave me so?”
Lysander: “The hate I bear thee made me leave thee so.”
Hermia: “You speak not as you think; it cannot be.”
Helena: “Lo, she is one of this confederacy! Now I perceive they have conjoined all three to fashion this false sport. Injurious Hermia! Have you conspired, have you with these contrived, to bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shared all forgotten? All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence? So we grew together; and will you rent our ancient love asunder, to join with men in scorning your poor friend?”
Hermia: “I scorn you not.”
Helena: “Have you not seen Lysander, as in scorn, to follow me and praise my eyes and face? And made your other love, Demetrius, to call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare, precious celestial? Wherefore speaks he this to her he hates? And wherefore doth Lysander deny your love and tender me but by the setting on of your consent?”
Hermia: “I understand not what you mean by this.”
Helena: “Wink at each other; hold the sweet jest up.”
Lysander: “Stay, gentle Helena; my love, my life, my soul.”
Hermia: “Sweet, do not scorn her so.”
Lysander: “Helena, I love thee, by my life I do.”
Demetrius: “I say I love thee more than he can do.”
Hermia: “Lysander, whereto tends all this?”
Lysander: “Away, you! Hang off, thou cat, thou burr; vile thing, let loose, or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.”
Hermia: “Why are you grown so rude? Do you not jest?”
Helena: “Yes, sooth; and so do you.”
Hermia: “Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?”
Lysander: “By my life, never do I desire to see thee more. ‘Tis no jest that I do hate thee and love Helena.”
Hermia: “O me! You juggler! You canker blossom! You thief of love! Have you come by night and stole my love’s heart from him?”
Helena: “Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet you!”
Hermia: “‘Puppet!’ Why so? Now I perceive that she hath made compare between our statures; she hath urged her height; and with her tall personage she hath prevailed with him. And are you grown so high in his esteem because I am so dwarfish and low? How low am I, thou painted maypole? I am not yet so low but that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.“
Helena: “I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen, let her not hurt me. You perhaps may think, because she is something lower than myself, that I can match her.”
Hermia: “Lower hark, again.”
Helena: “Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me. I evermore did love you, Hermia, and never wronged you; save that, in love unto Demetrius, I told him of your stealth into these woods. He followed you and for love I followed him; but he hath chid me hence, and threatened to strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too; and now, to Athens will I bear my folly back, and follow you no further. Let me go.”
Hermia: “Why, get you gone! Who is it that hinders you?”
Lysander: “Be not afraid, she shall not harm thee, Helena.”
Demetrius: “No sir, she shall not.”
Helena: “O, when she is angry, though she be but little, she is fierce.”
Hermia: “‘Little’ again! Nothing but ‘low’ and ‘little’. Let me come to her.”
Lysander: “Get you gone, you dwarf; you bead, you acorn.” (to Demetrius) “Now follow, if thou darest, to try whose right, of thine or mine, is most in Helena.”
Demetrius: “I’ll go with thee, cheek by jowl.”
Exit Lysander and Demetrius
Helena: “Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray; my legs are longer though, to run away.”
Exit Helena
Hermia: “I am amazed, and know not what to say.”
Exit Hermia
Oberon: “This is thy negligence. Still thou mistakes or else committed thy knaveries willfully.”
Puck: “I mistook. Did not you tell me I should know the man by the Athenian garments he had on? And so far am I glad it so did sort, as this their jangling I esteem a sport.”
Oberon: “Thou sees these lovers seek a place to fight. Therefore, Robin, lead these testy rivals so astray as one come not within another’s way. Crush this herb into Lysander’s eyes, to take from hence all error. When they next awake, all this derision will seem a dream. I’ll to my queen, and beg her Indian boy; and then I will her charmed eye release from monster’s view, and all things shall be peace.”
Exit Oberon
Enter Lysander
Lysander: “Where art thou, proud Demetrius?”
Puck: “Here, villain, drawn and ready. Follow me.”
Exit Lysander, following the voice
Enter Demetrius
Demetrius: “Lysander, speak again. Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled? Where dost thou hide?”
Puck: “Thou coward. Come recreant. I’ll whip thee with a rod.”
Demetrius: “Yea, art thou there?”
Puck: “Follow my voice.”
Re-enter Lysander
Lysander: “He goes before me, and still dares me on; when I come where he calls, then he is gone. The villain is much lighter heeled than I. I followed fast, but faster he did fly, and here will rest me.” (lies down and sleeps)
Re-enter Puck and Demetrius
Puck: Ho, ho, ho! Coward; why comes thou not?””
Demetrius: “Abide me, if thou dares. Where art thou now?”
Puck: “Come hither; I am here.”
Demetrius: “Faintness constrains me.” (lies down and sleeps)
Enter Helena
Helena: “O weary night, O long and tedious night, abate thy hours, that I may back to Athens by daylight. And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, steal me awhile from mine own company.” (falls asleep)
Puck: “Yet but three? Come one more; two of both kinds make up four. Here she comes, cursed and sad. Cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make poor females mad.”
Enter Hermia
Hermia: “Never so weary, never so in woe, I can no further crawl, no further go; here will I rest me till the break of day. Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray! (lies down and sleeps)
Puck: (squeezing the juice on Lysander’s eyes) “When thou wakes take true delight in the sight of thy former lady’s eye; and the country proverb known, that every man should take his own, in your waking shall be shown. Jack shall have Jill; nought shall go ill and all shall be well.”
Analysis
Oberon is angry at Puck for misplacing the potion into Lysander’s eyes rather than Demetrius. As Puck approaches the humans to right his wrong he prefers to observe their plight for a while: ‘Lord, what fools these morals be. Then will two at once woo one. That must needs be sport alone; and these things do best please me that fall preposterously.’ Hence his reputation for mischief.
Helena is convinced they are all conspiring to have sport with her, as both men profess their love to her. Her insecurities can not allow for any other interpretation, as she who was spurned is now beloved by both men. As well, Hermia, who is accustomed to being the recipient of both men’s love is heartedly struck down by their rebuff. Neither woman can comprehend the meaning of their situation.
We must imagine Puck, just out of sight, relishing all that he has inspired and witnessed. At this point Demetrius and Lysander exit to fight a duel over Helena. Helena also runs from Hermia: “Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray; my legs are longer though, to run away.” Oberon approaches and has seen enough of Puck’s sport: “This is thy negligence or else committest thy knaveries willfully.” Puck defends himself: “I mistook. Did you not tell me I should know the man by the Athenian garments he had on? And so far am I glad it so did sort, as this their jangling I esteem a sport.”
The magical action and misadventures are at their peak in Act III for the fairies, the young lovers and the mechanicals (actors). The Fairy Queen is in love with the actor Bottom, dressed in an ass head, which has totally freaked out his fellow actors. Meanwhile Helena and Hermia are at each other’s throats and Demetrius and Lysander want to kill each other. Puck has his work cut out. Things will begin to sort themselves out in Act IV to the point of resolution.
Act 4 (2 scenes)
Scene i
The woods. Lysander, Demetrius, Helena and Hermia asleep.
Entire Titania, her fairies and Bottom. Oberon is hidden, unseen.
Titania: “Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed while I kiss thy fair large ears.”
Bottom: “I must to the barber’s; for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face, and I am such a tender ass, if my hair but do tickle me I must scratch.”
Titania: “What dost thou desire to eat?”
Bottom: “Good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire for a bundle of hay.”
Titania: “Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies, be gone. O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!” (They sleep)
Enter Puck
Oberon: “Her dotage now I do begin to pity. I then did ask of her the changeling child, which straight she gave me. Now that I have the boy, I will undo this hateful imperfection of her eyes, and think no more of this night’s accidents but as the fierce vexation of a dream. But first I will release the Fairy Queen. (He touches her eyes)
Titania: “My Oberon! What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamoured of an ass.”
Oberon: “There lies your love.”
Titania: “How came these things to pass? O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!”
Oberon: “Robin, take off this head.”
Enter Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus from Athens
Egeus: “My lord, this is my daughter here asleep. And this Lysander, this Demetrius and this Helena.”
Theseus: “Is this not the day that Hermia should give answer of her choice?”
Egeus: “It is, my Lord.”
Theseus: “Wake them with our horns.”
The four young people awake
Lysander: “I cannot truly say how I came here, but, as I think, I came with Hermia hither. Our intent was to be gone from Athens.”
Egeus: “I beg the law, the law upon his head.”
Demetrius: “My lord, fair Helena told me of their stealth, of this their purpose hither to this wood; and I in fury hither followed them, fair Helena in fancy following me. But by some power it is – my love to Hermia melted as the snow. The virtue of my heart is only Helena.”
Theseus: “Egeus, I will overbear your will. For in the temple, with us, these couples shall be eternally knit. Away with us to Athens.”
Exit Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus
Helena: “And I have found Demtrius like a jewel.”
Demetrius: “We are awake; let us recount our dreams.”
They exit
Bottom: (awakening) “I have had a most rare vision. 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 to expound this dream. Methought I was – there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had, but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to concieve, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’ because it hath no bottom.“
Analysis
Act IV is very short but resolves the conflict in such a way that Act V serves as rather a whimsical play within a play epilogue, back in Athens, as we shall see. Balance in the universe of the play has been restored, allowing for the triple wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and Helena. There is no clear apex in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Oberon and Puck simply remove the magic potions, resolving the misadventures, as the midsummer night ends with Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus beckoning the two young couples back to Athens to be married along side the royal couple and Bottom reflecting on his preposterous dream. Good and simple Bottom is restored and awakens astonished, in one of still early Shakespeare’s most insightful passages: “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what the dream was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was – there is no man can tell what. Methought I was and methought I had, but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom.” The sun comes up and the night of magical dreams is over.
Act IV
Scene ii
Athens. Peter Quince’s house
Enter Quince, Flute, Snout and Starveling
Quince: “Have you sent to Bottom’s house? Is he come home yet?”
Starveling: “He cannot be heard of.”
Flute: “If he come not, then the play is marr’d; it goes not forward, doth it?”
Quince: “It is not possible. You have not a man in all of Athens able to discharge Pyramus but he.”
Flute: “No; he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in Athens.”
Quince: “Yea, and the best person too.”
Enter Bottom
Quince: “Bottom! O, most courageous day! O, most happy hour!”
Bottom: “Masters, I am to discourse wonders; but ask me not what.“
Quince: “Let us hear, sweet Bottom.”
Bottom: “Not a word of me. All I will tell you is to get your apparel together and meet presently at the palace; every man look over his part; for ours is the preferred play. And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath. No more words. Let’s away!”
Analysis
A big shift occurs here in Act Iv, Scene ii. Everything else has been resolved but for the reunion of Bottom and his fellow actors, who will not perform without him. Unlike most Shakespeare plays, all of the comedic complexities developed in Acts II-III are resolved in Act IV, leaving Act V to serve as something of a playful epilogue, as Bottom is reunited with his friends and together they will most awkwardly and riotously entertain the Athenian guests of honour with their most mechanical and pedestrian production of Pyramus and Thisby. But the happy end comes, in essence, by the end of Act IV.
The play begins and ends in Athens. All of the magic and dreaming is in between these bookends. There is no fairie world in Athens. Typical of Shakespeare, the city is practical and lawful and the woods magical, dreamlike and romantic. The curtain rises in Act 5 for Bottom and his mechanicals. The drama is over. Let’s watch a play!
Act 5 (1 scene)
Scene i
Athens. The palace of Theseus
Enter Theseus, Hippolyta and Philostrate
Hippolyta: “Tis strange, my Theseus, what these lovers speak of.“
Theseus: “More strange than true. I may never believe these ancient fables. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet, are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; that is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, sees Helen’s beauty in the brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination that, if it would but apprehend some joy, it comprehends some bringer of that joy, or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear?“
Enter Lysander, Demetrius, Helena and Hermia
Theseus: “Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth. Come now, what masques and what dances shall we have? What revels are in hand? Is there no play?”
Philostrate: “Make choice of which your highness will see.” (gives Theseus a paper)
Theseus: “A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisby; very tragical mirth; merry and tragical! Tedious and brief! How shall we find the concord of this discord?”
Pilostrate: “It is too long, which makes it tedious; for in all the play there is not one word apt, one player fitted. And tragical it is, my lord, for Pyramus therein doth kill himself, which when I saw rehearsed, I must confess, made mine eyes water; but more merry tears the passion of loud laughter never shed.”
Theseus: “Who are they that do play it?”
Philostrate: “Hard-handed men who work in Athens and who never laboured in the minds until now.”
Theseus: “We will hear it.”
Philostrate: “No, my noble lord, it is not for you. I have heard it over and it is nothing, nothing in the world, unless you can find sport in their intents. It is extremely stretched with cruel pain.”
Theseus: “I will hear it. For never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it. Go, bring them in and take your places.”
Enter Quince as Prologue
Prologue: “If we offend, it is with our good will, that you should think we come not to offend, but with good will, to show our simple skill.”
Lysander: “He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt.”
Hippolyta: “Indeed, he played the prologue like a child on a recorder.”
Theseus: “His speech was like a tangled chain.”
Enter Pyramus and Thisby, wall, moonshine and lion
Prologue: “Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; but wonder on. This man is Pyramus; this beauteous lady Thisby. This man doth present wall, and through wall’s chink, poor souls, they are content to whisper. This man presents moonshine. By moonshine these lovers think to woo. This grisly beast, lion, the trusting Thisby did scare away, and as she fled, her mantle (cloak) she did fall, which lion with bloody mouth did stain. Anon comes Pyramus, and finds his trusty Thisby’s mantle slain, whereat with bloody blade he bravely broached his bloody breast and died. For all the rest let lion, moonshine, wall, and lovers twain, discourse while here they do remain.”
Exit Prologue, Pyramus, Thisby, lion and moonshine
Theseus: “I wonder if the lion be to speak.”
Demetrius: “No wonder, my lord, one lion may, when many asses do.”
Wall: “I, one snout by name, present a wall, and such a wall as I would have you think had in it a chink, through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby, did whisper often very secretly.”
Demetrius: “It is the wittiest partition that I ever heard discourse, my lord.”
Theseus: “Pyramus draws near the wall; silence.”
Pyramus: “O grim looked night. O night, alack, alack, alack. I fear my Thisby’s promise is forgot. And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, show me thy chink.”
Wall holds up his fingers
Pyramus: “But what see I? No Thisby do I see. O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss.”
Enter Thisby
Thisby: “My love! Thou art my love, I think.”
Pyramus: “O, kiss me through the hole in this vile wall.”
Thisby: “I kiss the wall’s hole, not your lips at all.”
Pyramus: “Wilt thou at Ninny’s tomb meet me strait away?”
Thisby: “I come without delay.”
Exit Pyramus and Thisby
Re-enter Thisby
Thisby: “This is old Ninny’s tomb. Where is my love?”
Lion roars and Thisby runs off. The lion tears at Thisby’s mantle and exits
Re-enter Pyramus
Pyramus: “What dreadful dole is here! Eyes, do you see? How can it be? Thy mantle (cloak) stained with blood? Since lion vile hath here deflowered my dear, who was the fairest dame that lived, come tears, confound; out sword and wound Pyramus.” (stabs himself) “Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. Now I am dead. Now die, die, die, die die.” (he dies)
Theseus: “With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover and yet prove an ass.”
Re-enter Thisby
Thisby: “Asleep, my love? O, Pyramus, arise. Dead? Dead. Come trusty sword.” (stabs herself) “And farewell friends; thus Thisby ends; adieu, adieu, adieu. (she dies)
Bottom: (sitting up) “Will it please you to see the epilogue?”
Theseus: “No epilogue, I pray you! Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time. This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled the heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed. A fortnight hold we this solemnity, in nightly revels and new jollity.”
Exit all but Puck
Puck: (to the audience) “If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear and this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream. Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend. And, as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck now to scape the serpent’s tongue, we will make amends ere long; else the Puck a liar call. So, goodnight unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.”
Analysis
Act 5 is one 400 line scene. As suggested, the entire act serves as epilogue to the play and introduces the concept of the play within a play, used often by Shakespeare, most notably in Hamlet. However, there is a reason for everything in Shakespeare, so let’s examine the meaning of Pyramus and Thisby in the context of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
First of all, the mechanicals humbly rehearsing and performing a play for royalty echos Shakespeare’s very troupe of actors performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Queen Elizabeth. Certainly she would appreciate the play within the play as it reflected her own viewing of her favourite comedy, where Shakespeare is always so humble and his majesty so warm in her welcome and appreciation of his work.
Secondly, although Pyramus and Thisbe is the stuff of high tragedy it is played as a comedy by these mechanicals and describes the romantic complexities and confusing misinterpretations paralleled in what we just witnessed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Puck’s epilogue within the epilogue is a reminder to the audience that if the play has offended they should think that it was merely a dream. In the end he asks for their hands (applause), which he, no doubt, always receives before the fall of the curtain.
Final Thoughts
Very little by Shakespeare prior to A Midsummer Night’s Dream is its equal and, in many ways, nothing by him that follows surpasses it. It is often considered his first complete masterpiece. Bottom has been celebrated as Shakespeare’s most interesting character prior to Falstaff and Hamlet. A simple man who senses the deep depths within him and his ‘Bottomless dream’. Shakespeare will penetrate the interior of people like no one before or since and Bottom is one of those who first glimpses his own depth of character and unconscious mind. He becomes Shakespeare’s ‘everyman’ and a very wise clown figure or fool. He is the only human to see or converse with the fairie world. There is no darkness in Bottom, only light. He is unfazed by his time spent as an ass with the Fairie Queen, Titania, and immutable in his reflections upon his ‘dream.’ Through it all he remains simply Bottom, a very good man.
There was a total absence of performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream between a London production in 1662 and a German show for which the composer Mendelssohn wrote music in 1842. In a 1935 film James Cagney portrayed Nick Bottom and Mickey Rooney played Puck. There are several short clips of this one on youtube. As well, a 1939 jazz version (Swingin’ the Dream) featured the Benny Goodman Sextet with Louis Armstrong as Bottom. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is never out of favour anymore and is a staple of both the professional and amateur theatre scene across the world. A 1968 Peter Hall directed performance starring the cast from the Royal Shakespeare Academy is a highlight on youtube, as is a 1999 film version starring Mihelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci and Christian Bale. It must be rented off of youtube for $5. Still quite a deal! Finally, a very impressive 2018 version is worthy of a watch, as are several stage productions.
William Shakespeare: Journey Through Genius 