So there are three groups of characters. Firstly the courts people, who are mixed up in love. Lysander is a young man of Athens, he is deeply in love with Hermia. He cannot marry her openly because of Egeus, Hermia’s father, he wants her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius is originally in love with Hermia, and in the end he falls in love with Helena. Demetrius’s pursuit of Hermia throws love out of the balance among the four. Hermia is in love with Lysander and is the childhood friend of Helena. But after the fairies play there tricks and use Oberon’s love potion, both Lysander and Demetrius suddenly fall in love with Helena. Demetrius and Helena where once betrothed, but when Demetrius met Helena’s friend Hermia, he fell in love and abandoned Helena. Lacking confidence with her looks, Helena thinks Lysander and Demetrius are mocking her when the fairies mischief causes them to fall in love with her. As you can see they are all very mixed up.
Secondly in the same woods that the four lovers get mixed up are the immortals. They include Oberon, the fairy king and Titainia, his queen, who has recently returned from India to bless the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. Oberon is at odds with Titania, because she refuses to give up a little Indian price she was given. Oberon wants to make him a knight, but the beautiful queen resists the attempts of Oberon to get the boy. Oberon’s desire for revenge on Titania leads him to send Puck, a mischievous fairy who loves to play pranks on mortals, to get a flower, which creates most of the confusion in the play. The flowers juice when put into someone’s eyes, they fall in love with the next thing they see.
The last group is the mechanicals. They have been asked to create a play for the wedding festivals. This is where the play-within-a-play comes from its in act V. The craftsmen are such clumsy actors, their performance mocks the melodramatic Athenian lovers and gives the play a comedic ending. The craftsmen are slow. Shakespeare portrays them as the working people of the play.
As you can see there are many differences between the three groups. The courts people are considered about love and marriage, the immortals are considered about revenge and power. The immortals have total power over the other two groups.
There are many clashes between the ways that Shakespeare portrays the characters. For example the mortals from the court speak in blank verse and rhymes, which is totally opposite to the working class mortals, mechanicals, who speak differently in, normally, prose but not in blank verse. The mechanicals use slang a lot in their speech and the Court people speak properly. This shows how Shakespeare portrays the difference in class and status. The immortals speak somewhat like the courts people, blank verse and rhymes. Example; “in her behalf that scorns your services, let her allow: speak not of Helena”
Shakespeare puts the Court and Mechanicals in a conscious state with reality. The Immortals on the other hand are always in a state of unconsciousness and in a dream world, where anything can happen. But when the mortals get mixed up in the world of immortals the mortals go into a dream world and go into an unconscious state of mind. Also the immortal world seems to be dark and full of mystery and wonder, and the mortal world seems to be light and full of clarity, everything seems clear.
Another clash Shakespeare has put in is the immortal world is full of disorder and disruption, where everything is not as it seems, and full of concealment. The mortals world, though, is full of order and openness no lies or hidden things. It’s a routine world with law and order, unlike the immortal world where there is no law at all. In the mortal world there is a sense of duty and responsibilities but no room for mistakes. The immortal world is full of desire and no responsibilities. The fairies, immortals, play tricks and make things change. They do magic, change a man’s head, Bottom, into the head or a ass and then make the fairy queen Titania fall in love with him, by putting a magical flower in her eyes. They fairies also do this to the four lovers, coursing trouble and disruption. The immortal world has a sense of a dream, were things happen by magic and mystery. Unlike the mortals where life is unexciting, where no magic happens everything has a reason for why it happened. The mortals are living life, normally and not unusual, but the immortals are living life like its art, full of song and magic and happiness.
There are clashes between where the characters live, the courts people live in maybe a country house with gardens. The immortals live in the woods, and the mechanicals live in town where they can work. Shakespeare uses the mechanicals cleverly by showing badly written plays and acting, which must have been around when he was writing his plays. He does this by making the Mechanicals act out a play. Shakespeare shows disorder and clumsiness in the play. He turns their stupidity into a joke, showing how amateurs try to do a play and when they do it, they act badly. The Mechanicals practice the play in the woods and that’s when Bottom, a character who wants to play the parts of everyone in his little play, gets his head turned into an ass’s head by Puck and Titania falls in love with him. Titania: “ What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?” Bottom: “ I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let’s have the tongs and the bones”. This shows a lot of humour and brings the mortals and Immortals together.
There is also a clash between the intelligence of the characters. The courts mortals are unaware of what’s going on around them. The mechanicals are common and stupid in ways. The Immortals are clever and cunning and have power, they seem to decide the fate of all the others.