“To you your father should be as a god”
Theseus is the embodiment of the law of Athens, which is evident when he addresses Hermia. She will “Either die the death or abjure forever the society of men” if she does not obey her father.
Puck could be Theseus’ opposite; he is a symbol of anarchy and disorder. A contrasting pathetic character is Bottom.
To Egeus, assuming control over Hermia is his paternal understanding and right.
“She is mine, I may dispose of her, which shall be either to this gentleman or to her death”
This shows the insistence and brutality of Egeus. Rather seeing his daughter dead, or discontented than seeing her disobeying him for her own happiness. Egeus’ unromantic view on love is often correct and accurate. His character seems to be able to see through Lysander, whose lack of faith and honesty is evident when he states,
“Not Hermia, but Helena I love”
In a production by Lucy Bailey, the views of Egeus are personified in a gangster who ‘holds a gun to the head of his disobedient daughter (“as she is mine, I may dispose of her”)’.
This cruel ‘authority’ is just as evident in the fairy world. Oberon behaves with complete indulgence as a leader. He indulges in his power. This self-obsession is evident in Titania and Puck. It is a reckless society that by Athenian standards, and an Elizabethan audience is very promiscuous.
Since the Elizabethan era, the perception of promiscuity has altered. To express the sexual freedom of the forest, other issues relating to a contemporary audience could be raised regarding sexual taboos3. Less literally, this staging could denote how love can be sadomasochistic.
The feminist understanding of patriarchy can be read the example of Egeus, Oberon and even the exaggerated concern for ladies when ‘lion’ is to roar in ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’. Hippolyta’s role becomes that of an impotent onlooker. This is significant, as Hippolyta seems to resent her limited powers (bearing in mind she was queen of the Amazons). Both her and Titania seem suppressed by their male lovers when both are actually very strong female characters.
Oberon: “Give me that boy, and I will go with thee”
Titania: “Not for thy Fairy Kingdom”
In one production by Tara Art, Hippolyta slaps Theseus in the face when he refuses to overbear Athenian law for the young lovers. Antagonism seems to be the basis of the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta.
“I wooed thee with my sword,
And won thy love doing thee injuries”
This statement shows the war-like inclinations of the couple. Theseus won Hippolyta by defeating her in war.
In the dismissive, autocratic and patriarchal surface level of the play, there is an utter disregard for the ‘common’ people. When in the play the ‘common people’ (the Mechanicals) are made fun of, it is often Shakespeare making fun of the wealthy.
“It appears, by his small light of discretion, that he is in the wane: but yet in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay the time”
The Mechanicals’ performance for the duke could signify how the rich exploit the poor. Some of the irony and farcical appreciation of the play is highlighted in Bottom. Here is a character partly abused by autocratic authorities, yet ‘bully Bottom’ is a personification of autocratic behaviour. He imposes his will and dominates the action.
“We will meet, and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously”
The Mechanicals are consistently portrayed as idiots4. They seem to suffer from a lack of self-awareness, which makes them susceptible to taunting (they are unaware that Theseus is laughing at their efforts, not comic skill during the play within a play). Both the nobles and the fairies consistently portray them in the play as inadequate.
Taunting of the Mechanicals is most apparent when Puck sees the men rehearsing their play and slips the head of an ass onto Bottom. There is however potential for this transformation to change an audiences view of Bottom completely. His head could be utterly grotesque and the idea that bottom has been ‘transformed’ could re-interpret to give the impression he has been ‘mutated’, which has a darker connotation.
“O monstrous. O strange. We are haunted;
Pray masters, fly, masters, help”
Puck’s character has been interpreted very differently. A ‘puck’ is a changeling so his character is totally versatile, and has lots of dark potential. We do not really know what Puck is supposed to be, however the word ‘puck’ is another name for a demon. In some seventeenth century ballads, Puck is the son of Oberon and a mortal woman (which in the context of A Midsummer Night’s Dream highlights the promiscuity of the fairy folk). He has had many different images on stage.
“When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab”
Pucks character could raise issues regarding Satan and hell. He is a supernatural anarchist. Langland once called Hell “Pouk’s Pinfold”. Puck has actually appeared in a ‘dark fantasy [comic] series, The Sandman’ in which ‘he and the other real faeries are invited to attend the first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. With a hedgehog-like appearance’, ‘this Puck has some of the darker elements of the legend’.
In Act Two, the fairies sing Titania to sleep with a mystical charm, warding off dangerous creatures. One of the creatures mentioned is “Philomel”, a nightingale whose story from mythology involves mutilation, cannibalism and rape (also, the changeling boys mother, a “votaress of [Titania’s] order was evidently celibate and forced upon by a warlord).
On one hand, freedom is nice but it can become excessive and dangerous. These are two extremes and show how the middle way is the way of contentment. The lovers soon grow tired of their ultimate freedom.
“O weary night, O long and tedious night,
…
That I may back to Athens by daylight”
Titania is betrayed by one ‘sentinel’ fairy to Oberon who wishes her to “wake when some vile thing is near” as part of his plot to take the changeling boy from Titania. This shows the disloyal nature of the fairies and the thoughtlessness of Oberon.
“The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock”
The ‘personal’ anarchy of jealousy is the underlying cause of the disruption to nature and is the cause of the antics between the lovers in the forest. If Helena had not been jealous of Demetrius’ love for Hermia, she would not have revealed to Demetrius that the couple were to elope and they would have been able to escape un-noticed. Helena’s betrayal illustrates a darker side to love. It is a sensation so powerful and irrational. It seems to numb inhibitions and awareness (like drugs – the love potion).
Obsession can be both positive and negative depending on who it is aimed at and how they feel. For example, Titania when under the spell of the love potion falls ‘madly’ in love with the hideous Bottom and certainly acts obsessively towards him. “Thou wilt remain here, whether thou wilt or no" signifies the obsessive nature of love. As Theseus says in Act five:
“The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet,
Are all of imagination compact”5
The fact that Titania is in love with Bottom, this deformed and mutated beast could be a message to the audience that ‘love is blind, and knows no boundaries’ which could be quite a frightening thought. This ‘blindness’ caused by love makes Helena unaware (or uninhibited) about the way she is acting with Demetrius.
“I am your spaniel, and Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you”
Demetrius claims to ‘love’ Hermia yet he would rather see her dead than with Lysander. From this it seems there is ‘true’ love, and ‘untrue’ love. Demetrius and Lysander are induced to love Helena. Therefore neither of the two must truly ‘love’ her. The difference is that Lysander is given the antidote and his true love for Hermia is returned but Demetrius is still under the influence to love Helena and throughout.
Helena’s love for Demetrius seems wasted. He, like Egeus would rather see Hermia die than go to Lysander. Later we question even more the sincerity of Demetrius’ claim to loving Helena. The language when he awakes is melodramatic and seems a parody of a lover rather than genuine feelings.
“O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine,
To what my love, shall I compare thine eyne?
Crystal is muddy, O how ripe in show,
Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!”
Demetrius shows similarities to Bottoms’ ridiculous portrayal of Pyramus. It has the same insincerity and melodramatic tone.
“O night, O night, alack, alack, alack,
I fear my Thisby’s promise is forgot.
And thou O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall.”
The way in which Cupid (in this play, Puck) intervenes suggests that love is caused by external factors. This is a darker idea about what makes us fall in love. If the love-potion represents a drug, being under the influence is what causes Titania and the male lovers to act so abnormally. However, in retrospect this makes their attitudes at the beginning of the play seem equally ridiculous. Even Bottom knows that “reason and love keep little company”.
‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ expresses almost every negative aspect of love. Usually, the dilemmas are trivialised but some productions emphasise the trauma of love’s difficulties. The play within a play is a paradox of ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’, especially the lovers’ story. It revisits the theme of romantic hardship, expressing a darker undertone of the play without losing comedic value.
It shows the tragic potential of the plot; in fact resembling the tragedy of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ who like Pyramus and Thisbe both thought the other lover was dead. It also recalls how Pyramus mistakes Thisbe’s bloody mantle as proof that she is dead which could correspond to how Puck mistook Lysander for Demetrius. Also Titania’s distorted conception of Bottom.
The lovers all have aggression. In a tragedy, the male lovers may have fought to the death, however the world of comedy is a kindly place and this does not occur. When the female lovers become aggressive and fight, the cause of this is love, which tells us that love is destructive and harsh.6
Distortion of reality runs through the play, and in the theme of dreams. The morning and the light is where the play ends and the lovers question whether their night in the forest was a dream. Theseus also remarks how odd it is the lovers’ dreams were the same. Shakespeare successfully leaves the audience questioning what and who is real in the play.
Puck’s epilogue is a fantastic way to end the play in a dark and mysterious way. Shakespeare uses Puck to suggest that the audience members were simply sleeping ‘while these visions did appear’. This idea perfectly captures the dark undertones of the play by questioning reality and the supernatural.
‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ is a play about the theatre and the way in which ‘illusions’ and ‘visions’ are cast before audience’s eyes. In Puck’s epilogue he says, “If we shadows hath offended” suggesting the whole cast are ‘shadows’. Oberon may well be a metaphor of Shakespeare himself. He wrote the play and hence ‘ultimately governs the proceedings’ like Pavelka suggested about Oberon. The mechanicals are a parallel within the play to actors (who are the autocrats to the audience).
Shakespeare’s subversive ability in ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’ is immense, he has raised issues of love and reason, law and anarchy, fantasy and reality, rich and poor, the role of men and women and so on. This is what made Shakespeare stand out compared to previous playwrights. Audiences recognise character traits on stage that they themselves have. Audience members may even realise later that they were laughing at characters not dissimilar from themselves.
Footnotes
1. In modern adaptations, the staging often uses symbols and motifs to extract the darker undertones.
2. Many modern productions depict the people of the woods as overly erotic as well as both savage and intimidating.
3. One present-day production had the cast wearing latex, giving the play a bondage theme
4. Also as in original Greek. Idios – common people
5. Similarly, Sigmund Freud said:
“You are always insane when you are in love.”
6. Carol Ann Duffy has quite an appropriate description of love in one of her poems, ‘onion’ in which an onion is an extended metaphor for love.
‘Here.
It will blind you with tears
Like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.’
Bibliography
- Penguin Popular classics – ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’
- Royal Shakespeare company notes (sponsored by Allied-Lyons)
- Reviews booklet of different productions of ‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’