The young lovers decide to elope and arrange to meet each other in the woods. Hermia confides in her childhood friend, Helena of her and Lysander’s intentions.
Helena is envious of Demetrius’s feelings for Hermia, and even though Hermia tries to put Helena’s mind at rest that she has no feelings for Demetrius, she is still jealous.
Helena’s soliloquy of unrequited love, is an important scene in the play as she speaks of ‘Things base and vile, holding no quantity’, ‘Love can transpose to form and dignity’. She is explaining how the power of love, can transform what we would normally consider as undesirable into something quite beautiful. She decides to tell Demetrius of Hermia and Lysander’s plan in the hope that he will once again see her as he once did.
This is where the mayhem begins as the lovers enter the woods, the world of the fairies. Most of the scenes are set in the night, and the darkness is an essential element. It is the time when most humans are sleeping, and magical beings are awakening. We cannot generally see things very clearly in the dark and this corresponds to the inability to grasp reality.
The fairies are at home and the humans feel lost and bewildered, Oberon and Puck deviously control their every move by changing their appearances, ways of behaving and creating the illusion of love, from scene to scene.
The Elizabethans believed that the human world had parallels with the natural world, and that a natural balance must be maintained. If this balance was upset in any way this could have serious consequences.
Shakespeare uses this idea, when Titania and Oberon argue over the boy in her care; it has terrible affects on the natural world, the seasons alter quite remarkably and this sets off a sequence of harmful events that the humans find themselves involved in.
While Titania Queen of the fairies is sleeping Oberon squeezes a love potion on to her eyelids, he is angry with her for refusing to give the boy to him, he wants to humiliate her and for her to fall in love with something ugly. She is awoken by the sound of Bottom’s singing and she tells him ‘mine ear is much enamoured of thy note’; ‘so is mine eye enthralled to thy shape’; she believes she is in love with Bottom, who has been ‘translated’ and has the head of an ass; he looks quite ‘monstrous’, it is absurd but very funny. Bottom’s transformation into an ass, is ironic as he behaves like an ass throughout the play, but his transformation seems to make him speak more sense. He is obviously surprised by Titania’s words of affection and replies ‘Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that’: and to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays’. This comment reflects what is happening in A Midsummer Nights Dream.
In the woods Puck mistakenly places the love juice in Lysander’s eyes when he awakens he declares his love for Helena, denying he ever truly loved Hermia, ‘The tedious minutes I with her have spent’. ‘The will of a man is by his reason swayed’; Lysander is implying he had ‘no reason’ when he loved Hermia, this is ironic as he is under the influence of the love juice, and the reality is, he has no reason to love Helena. His use of over exaggerated language shows the power or magic induced love, and how it can affect someone’s ability to determine what it reality or just an illusion. Helena cannot believe Lysander’s claims of love and thinks he is showing her ‘mockery’ and ‘scorn’, she runs off distressed. Lysander follows her leaving Hermia sleeping.
Hermia awakens after having a nightmare, calling for Lysander to remove a snake that she believes is crawling over her breasts.
Dreams and illusion often reveal truth and reality, the serpent in Hermia’s dream could be Lysander, and therefore her dream would be considered a premonition.
Oberon realizing Pucks mistake sets out to put things right, he tells Puck to find Helena and ‘By some illusion see thou bring her here’, ‘I’ll charm his eyes against she do appear’. Oberon then puts the love juice in Demetrius’s eyes and awaits Helena’s return. Demetrius awakens and as soon as he sets eyes on Helena, the love juice takes affect, he uses exaggerated language ‘O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine’; ‘To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?’ this makes Demetrius sound insincere. Later on in the play when the love juice begins to wear off Demetrius and Lysander no longer use such over dramatic language.
When the workmen are rehearsing their play in the woods, they cannot seem to grasp the difference between illusion and reality. This causes them many problems; their main problems are the wall, moon and the lion. They use ridiculous things to make up for the props they do not have, they cannot think of a way to represent the wall in the play and Bottom comes up with the idea ‘some man or other must present wall’; ‘and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall’; They believe the lion may frighten the ladies, and solve the problem by agreeing Snug must tell the ladies his name, and his mask must cover only half his face. They also discuss how to present the moon and decide one of them must hold a thorn bush and a lantern. They are unaware the solutions they have for their problems, actually shatter the illusion they are trying so hard to create.
In the last act they perform the play to the Theseus, Hippolyta and the courtiers who heckle the workmen throughout the play, as it is so ridiculous. Throughout the play they grossly exaggerate their lines and use overdone alliteration in one of Bottoms scenes, he describes the moon as ‘Golden, gracious, glittering gleams’, this sounds ridiculous. In the final scene Bottom dies, but as he is dying he announces ‘Now I am dead’; ‘Now I am fled’. Then he carries on ‘Now die, die, die, die, die’. This is one of the most humorous scenes in the whole play.
The play creates the double illusion of a play within a play, however their performance is so bad they fail to create an illusion.
Shakespeare’s treatment of illusion and reality throughout the play is in my opinion quite genius.
His use of language throughout the play is very important, as in Elizabethan times they had few props, so he used language to create an effective illusion.
The fairies speak in light rhymed verse, which is very descriptive:
‘Over hill, over dale
Through bush, through briar
Over park, over pale
Through flood, through fire’.
I wander over every place
Swifter than the moon through space.
This gives the impression they are light, fast, and magical. This is a complete contrast to the workmen they use prose; they speak commonly and in ordinary sentences which indicates their low status. This contrast in the use of their language shows their differences, the fairies are magical and the workmen ordinary just like their speech. Puck speaks in rhyming couplets, which shows his mischievous nature. The courtiers, Oberon, Titania, Theseus and Hippolyta speak in blank verse which signifies their high status.
Shakespeare also uses language to create imagery, ‘Nodding violet grows’, this suggests the nodding violets ‘lulled’ Titania to sleep; this imagery helps us to actually picture the scene in our heads. The fairies describe ‘The cowslips tall’, this description helps us realise just how tiny they are, and the scale of fairyland.
Oberon’s describes ‘a little western flower’, ‘Before, milk-white, now purple with love’s wound’. Oberon’s elaborate use of language transforms a simple flower into something beautiful and magical.
There are references throughout the play to moonlight; this helps to set up the nighttime scenes, as the play would originally have been played in the daytime. The moon was thought to affect people’s behaviour. This idea is portrayed in the play; the characters act irrationally during the nighttime scenes, and appear to gain clarity as the daytime returns. The young lovers awake, unsure of what they have experienced, and believe they have simply been dreaming.
Puck has the final speech in the play and speaks directly to the audience; he refers to himself and his fellow actors as shadows within a dream, this reminds us that we have been part of an illusion just like the characters in the play. He ends asking the audience to clap this signals the end of the performance, and the illusion created by ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’.
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