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A Midsummer Night's Dream (Signet Classics)

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It's neither the best nor worst of Shakespeare's many comedies, but "A Midsummer Night's Dream" definitely holds one honor -- it's the most fantastical of his works. This airy little comedy is filled with fairies, spells, love potions and romantic mixups, with only the bland human lovers making things a little confusing (who's in love with whom again?).

As Athens prepares for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, the fusty Egeus is demanding that his daughter Hermia marry the man he's chosen for her, Demetrius. Her only other options are death or nunhood.

Since she's in love with a young man named Lysander (no, we never learn why her dad hates Lysander), Hermia refuses, and the two of them plot to escape Athens and marry elsewhere. But Helena, a girl who has been kicked to the curb by Demetrius, tips him off about their plans; he chases Hermia and Lysander into the woods, with Helena following him all the way. Are you confused yet?

But on this same night, the fairy king Oberon and his queen Titania are feuding over a little Indian boy. Oberon decides to use a magical "love juice" from a flower to cause some trouble for Titania by making her fall in love with some random weaver named Nick Bottom (whom his henchman Puck has turned into a donkey-headed man). He also decides to have Puck iron out the four lovers' romantic troubles with the same potion. But of course, hijinks ensue.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is another one of Shakespeare's plays that REALLY needs to be seen before it's read. Not only is it meant to be seen rather than read, but the tangle of romantic problems and hijinks are a little difficult to follow... okay, scratch that. They can be VERY difficult to follow, especially if you need to keep the four lovers straight.

But despite those small flaws, Shakespeare is in rare form here -- the story floats along in an enchanted haze of fairy magic, forest groves, and a love square that twists in on itself. And Shakespeare's lush, haunting poetry is absolutely lovely here ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight...").

But he also packs it with plenty of hilarity -- not only is it funny to read about the haughty fairy queen fawning over a guy with a donkey head (Nick Bottom = "ass's head", get it?), but there's plenty of funny moments in the dialogue ("Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet...").

The four main lovers are relatively bland and interchangeable, and we never find out much about them except that Helena is kind of stalkerish and not too bright (she tips off the guy she likes that the girl HE likes is eloping so he can stop her?). The real draws are the fairy creatures -- Titania and Oberon are proud alien creatures filled with both cruelty and kindness, and Puck is delightfully mischievous and.... puckish.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a shimmering little concoction of magic, romantic mayhem and fairy squabbling. Absolutely stunning.

Unlike many of Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream is neither tragic nore overly didactic. Although the conflict between the young lovers (Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius) is distressing for the characters involved, Shakespeare structures the story in such a way that the debacle becomes light-hearted and fanciful. One way he does this is by using fairies as central characters. Unlike in Macbeth or Hamlet, where the occult is dark and foreboding, A Midsummer Night's Dream's mystic is playful and charming. For example, fairies named after flowers lull their queen to sleep with a fairy song.

Another device Shakespeare uses to lighten the mood is humor, most strongly found in the characters Puck and Bottom. Puck, a mischievous sprite, is nothing less than a prankster. At one point, he turns Bottom's head into that of a donkey. The other comic relief, Bottom, is an unsophisticated, rough-around-the-edges tradesman who thinks himself to be quite the opposite. Humor is created through Bottom's delusions; the gravity with which Bottom delivers his line (in the play-within-the-play) contradicts his numerous grammatical and rhetorical errors, and he does not question Titania's doting love for him, convinced that he indeed deserving of it. In addition to these two characters, the four Athenian lovers and the lovers Pyramus and Thisby (in the subplay) act with such melodrama that they reinforce A Midsummer Night's Dream's categorization as a satire instead of a drama.

Shakespeare meant for the audience to partake in the lovers' troubles while still being distanced and detached from them. This allows for an entertaining, carefree theatrical experience that doesn't weigh one down.

This play was one of Shakespeares best. It was beautiful,magical and it made me laugh.The fairies were the perfect piece of magic to make this play work. I loved how Shakespeare combined the real world and the spiratual world together. My favourite character of all of Shakespeares character was definately Helena. She reminded me of myself. Shakespeare was great at showing how the course of true love never does run smooth with the four characters. I recommend this play to everyone. It was simply beautiful.

A Love Tangle

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare is one of the most known plays written by this author. As all of his work A Midsummer Night's Dream the vocabulary used is a tad puzzling but helps to fulfill the idea of the play. It is a comedy tainted with a little irony such as in Act 3, scene 1 when Nick Bottom, a weaver, is given an ass's head by the puck, the goblin. We can see the irony in it as the term ass can be understood in two ways making the connection with his name quite comical. We can also see the usual romantic feuds in between the characters. The play starts with Hippolyta and Theseus discussing their marriage that will occur in four days when soon enough they are interrupted by Egeus, Hermia's father, who is highly displeased by his daughter's romantic inclination and has chosen a suitor he finds fittest for her. This is where we start to see what usually constitutes Shakespeare's plays, two men, Lysander and Demetrious in love with Hermia and then there is Helena, desperately in love with Demetrious but can't have him because of his devotion to her best friend. Along with this central love story two other tales are playing by its side. The one mentioned before that includes Peter Quince, carpenter, Nick Bottom, a weaver, Francis flout, a bellows mender and Tom Snout; a tinker, among other handymen that are putting on a play to present on Hippolyta and Theseus wedding. The other story stringing along is the one that includes the fairies. Oberon and Titania the queen and queen of the fairies and their rivalry that goes around a child that is now under Titania's care. The three stories clash at night on Act 3 scene 2 when Titania falls in love with Bottom because of the flower with cupids attributes, as well as Lysander and Demetrious change their loves direction to Helena because of it. This is a typical play that shows William Shakespeare's skills to the top of his ability reminding us why he was one of the greatest minds of the past century.

From what I've seen, this may be the single most popular Shakespearean play to perform in high school. The language (as always) is hard to decipher and harder to memorize and deliver in a meaningful way, but audiences love the show, and the lighting, costume, and set designers have a field day with creating the visual look of the play. Because, hey--fairies! Everyone loves brightly colored, sparkly things. But it's not just the fantasy-world part of the play that's appealing. The crossed-up romances between the two Athenian couples are fairly fun to watch, and the "mechanicals" or lower class people who perform the play-within-a-play are downright hilarious, since it's always enjoyable to watch intentionally over the top acting.

Like most comedies, it could be a tragedy if a few things had just gone differently. Hermia and Lysander love each other, but Hermia's dad wants her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius loves(?) Hermia, but he used to love Helena. Helena loves Demetrius, but he now hates her and she has to watch him pursue her best friend. That's the opening of the play--everybody's miserable and nobody has what they want. Even Theseus, the Duke of Athens, doesn't have what he wants, though his marriage to Hippolyta the surprisingly sedate queen of the Amazons will be performed in a few days. If the pretty people in the mortal world are discontent, the pretty people in the fairy world are even more so. King Oberon and Queen Titania are separated, and every time they meet they quarrel over who gets custody of a particular changeling child. But their beef is really more about respect--Oberon wants it, Titania's not ready to give it, and nature itself is suffering from their discord.

The nighttime forest outside of Athens is where the action moves for the whole middle of the play. The strict sense of Athens is loosened a bit and all kinds of magic are now possible. Duke Theseus appears to be a just and sympathetic ruler, but he's the steward of some rigorous laws (like the one that says Hermia has to marry the groom her father picks, or else become a nun or be executed); Oberon, on the other hand, does establish a certain kind of order for his realm, but the rules are nearly arbitrary. He instigates some chaos when he gives Titania a love potion that makes her fall in love with a silly donkey-headed mortal (it sort of makes sense in context. Sort of), but he also has a tender heart and tries to make Helena happy again. But even Oberon's kind intentions inadvertently lead to chaos when his right hand man Puck gives a love potion to the wrong guy. Now Lysander and Demetrius have switched alliances and love(?) Helena, which both Helena and Hermia view as a nasty practical joke. Puck thinks it's hilarious, but Oberon wants the couples put right. And after Titania has acted like a loon for awhile, Oberon's ready to undo her spell, too. It's not precisely clear who's in the wrong in the Oberon-Titania conflict, and it doesn't seem to matter how they resolve their conflict, so long as it gets resolved.

When I was in high school, I really liked the whole love mix-up with the couples, but now it kind of bothers me. The guys don't have much to lose in any case, and the girls have everything to lose. But aside from that, I notice that two of the lovers have really ambivalent characteristics. At first, Helena she seems like a poor heartbroken girl who has been treated abominably, and then she seems like a deranged stalker with deep-set psychological problems. Her ex Demetrius is also a deranged stalker, and an even worse one than Helena because while Helena can't do Demetrius any harm, he absolutely could harm Hermia, his object of affection. But this is a comedy, so all the crazy people are happily settled and constructively socialized by the end of the play.

For all the difficulties, this play is still very funny and very charming. And it has fairies! If you haven't seen it, don't worry. Your local high school is probably planning a production of it at this very moment.

Even though in most of his comedies the entertainments are punctured by sarcastic comments and comic relief, Shakespeare, who has demonstrated keen devices of opposites, from long dignified prose to comic verse, strives not to repeat himself. Shakespeare seems to have enjoyed playing variation on a theme, dwelling on an idea (further developing an idea) hinted at in other parts of a play or in another play. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM embodies both. The play sets in Athens, in the midst of summer, which is associated traditionally (and surreptitiously) to magic. Immediately the opening act sets the romantic plot and whimsical air in motion by presenting the conflict between the young lovers and their elders.

The interesting thing is that it seems A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM could be a swinger: the situation as it stands could validly issue in either tragedy (similar circumstances in ROMEO AND JULIET, in which families thwarted what meant-to-be love) or comedy. Shakespeare quickly resolves the dilemma and provides light to the darkness of the situation. He nudges the story to a direction in which the style does not involve the audience too snuggly in the lovers' emotions. The love entanglement engenders enough body and reference to larger concepts to be viewed as image of some universal human experience: one so true-to-life that it inevitably and in no time provokes sympathy. The lovers' lines are not completely out of place in a romantic comedy because the lines are generalized: because soon after the crisis Lysander brings forward a plan by which he and Hermia may get out of their difficult situation. Hermia will neither be forced to marry Demetrius or perpetrate defiance of the pre-arranged marriage that surely promises prosecution. So the hints of pathos and possibility of tragedy echo ROMEO AND JULIET.

One of the recurring themes in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, as well as in TWELFTH NIGHT, and in LOVE LABOUR'S LOST, concerns the irrationality of love. In TWELFTH NIGHT, the gender disguise causes the confusion of love and identity of twins, and magic adopts the same course in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM as the King of Fairy decides to squeeze love juice onto Demetrius whom he has mistaken for Lysander. The idea of the tension between what people ought reasonably to feel and what in fact they do feel further gravitates to make a lasting impression. What is meant to make Demetrius requite the hapless Helena's passion takes an unexpectedly convoluted turn to anoint Lysander's eyes and he feels madly in love with Helena. Ironically he attributes this novel affection to his reason, which a mechanical later brings up in a sarcastic manner the antithesis between love and reason, whereas we know that the change has been effected by Puck's juice.

Variation of a theme that is hinted at in other parts of play is no more quintessential than the seemingly irrelevant speech that demonstrates poetic merit. The exquisite speech on irrational weather bears significance that is otherwise easily dismissed as mere decoration. So much Titania might have alluded to the inclement weather, the passionate tirade provides the ground for the idea that quarrel between the young lovers causes confusion in the seasons. For in the height of Helena's agony, she speaks about the danger of disaster and malevolent forces of nature and the caprice and irrationality of love. An atmosphere of a spell of illusion persists throughout the play, redolent of a recurrent notion of a dislocation between the senses, and between the senses and the brain. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, shrouded by comic confusions, sheds light on lovers' failure to reason and to keep pace with their emotions.

I must say this book has really touched me, right down to my soul. I sure know that my husband loved it as well; Bill has officially become a true fan of Shakespeare's work! After reading this heartwarming comedy, my husband always manages to find a little time in his extremely busy day to settle in and take to a good book. And let me tell you, I will stand by my man!

Throughout the entire script, Shakespeare uses fine vocabulary, and incredible detail to craft a truly engaging story of love, loss, and ultimate triumph. A Midsummer Night's Dream has honestly changed me, in person and in soul; I think I'll become a Republican.

...On second thought, no.