Hermia on the other hand is transformed by love, from a meek and timid person to a bold and open person. We can see this when she tells Theseus and her father that she doesn’t know what makes her 'bold' but it is obviously love for Lysander that gives Hermia the power to stand up to the Duke and her father. This creates tension and suspense in the play because the audience wants to find out that is to happen to the forbidden lovers. Will Hermia be made to marry Demetrius? Or will she somehow manage to be with Lysander? She is even willing to run away with Lysander and leave her family and friends behind, when before she would have taken her father’s word as law. This shows her radical transformation. Shakespeare is emphasising that someone will go thought all kinds of changes for love.
Helena is also transformed by love but also the jealousy of love. When she finds out that Hermia and Lysander plan to 'fly this place', because of their forbidden love, she tells Demetrius hoping that he would love her for it but her already loves Hermia. Shakespeare has transformed Helena from a loyal and caring friend to a conniving enemy, as she insults Hermia later on in the play when she continues to refer to her as 'little', shrewd and lower than herself. Shakespeare uses a humorous language here as he slyly puts in references to Hermia's size through out the whole of Helena’s speech. This also refers back to the central theme of the play that love or even jealousy of love can tear relationships and friendships apart. But Helena has been transformed since before the play started. She has been transformed by her love of Demetrius and is willing to degrade herself to be with him. We see this when she refers to herself as his 'spaniel'. What Shakespeare is trying to convey is that love is so powerful that someone could be willing to be their loved ones dog as along as they got some contact with them and that it will take over all other rational thinking and can become a person’s sole reason for living. An example of this is when Helena says that she would rather 'die apon' Demetrius's 'hand' than be without his love.
Lysander and Demetrius are also transformed by love, but this is a fake love. Puck is ordered by Oberon, King of the Fairies, to put a magic juice from a flower called 'love-in-idelness', into Demetrius eyes so that he will love Helena as much as she loves him. But Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and transforms Lysander from loving Hermia to Helena. The audience sees this when he says that his time spent with Hermia was 'tedious'.
Puck then pours the juice into Demetrius's eyes and he falls in love with Helena, which ends up a comical situation because now Lysander and Demetrius love Helena but she thinks that they are both mocking her. We see this when see says to them that it is 'cruel' to make a 'mockery' of her. I think she thinks they are mocking her because of the hyperboles that Shakespeare inserts into the play. Shakespeare does this to show the exaggeration of their love and how love can transform someone from loving someone to hating someone and vice versa.
'O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!'
This shows a link to religious icons in the way that he calls her a ‘goddess’ and also describes her as being ‘perfect’ and ‘divine’, which is a term that is only really to be spoken about Gods as they are the only ‘divine’ and ‘perfect’ ones.
Another character that is transformed by the love of the magical flower juice, is Titania; this is by Oberon's jealousy at her not giving the Indian boy to him. But this is comic love as she is made to fall in love with, Bottom, an idiot that Puck transformed to have the head of and ass. This part of the play is very humorous because she is awakened by Bottom's awful singing but she says 'sing again' because the magic flower juice is making it sound like his voice is 'heavenly'. Shakespeare adds this in to show the contrast between the mechanicals and the fairies and how all three worlds are slowly entwining. He also does this to give the audience a breather from all the tension and suspense going on in other parts of the play. Shakespeare does this to show that love takes pity on no-one and ridicules everyone of every status.
The Pyramis and Thisbe play is transformed radically by the mechanicals, but more importantly shows a paradox between Thisbe and Hermia because both pursed forbidden love and ran away. The characters are mirrored in the way that the Pyamis and Thisbe play shows the alternative ending to Hermia and Lysander’s story and the fact that things could have easily turned that way had the fairies not intervened. This again shows how Shakespeare views love as unpredictable. The mechanicals version of the Pyramis and Thisbe play was transformed because it was meant to be a ‘lamentable tragedy’ but the characters get the words mixed up and end up making the play humorous. W see an example of this when Thisbe describes Pyramis’s face as ‘these yellow cowslip cheeks’ and ‘these lily lips’. When in fact it should be red lips and coloured cheeks. Shakespeare does this so the play ends on a happy not but also to show the real play could have become a tragedy as well. But on the other hand when viewing the film version of the play remade in 1999 and directed by Michael Hoffman, I got the impression that when Thisbe was reciting these words it seemed to me that Thisbe might have been describing Pyramis’s face as ‘yellow cowslip cheeks’ because he is dead and his face has lost its colour.
The world is also being transformed in the background while Titania and Oberon are still arguing over the little Indian boy that Titania will not give up to Oberon for him to become one of his henchmen. Because they are not tending to the rest of the world it is falling into chaos. We see this when it says in the play ‘the governess of floods’ showing that there are now floods over the land because the fairies have not been keeping their eye on things. This shows transformation, not only as something that happens in obvious ways, but also the effects it has on factors surrounding the play.
In conclusion Shakespeare uses transformation as a key theme in the play. Without transformation the play would lose its edge and be rather straight forward and predictable. The main factor that Shakespeare uses to show transformation is how love makes people transform completely into people you would never have believed you would become, when Lysander and Demetrius were going to slay each other to prove their love for Helena was the greatest. Shakespeare also shows, though transformation by love that love affects everyone of every kind and it takes over so much of your mind that it can blind and distort people’s visions from the real truth, as in when the characters are transformed by the magic flower juice. Even though Shakespeare uses the magic flower juice it is still there to represent the power of love.
Word Count: 1,571 words. (Not including the title, word count and bibliography)
Bibliography: A Midsummer’s Night Dream by William Shakespeare- Cambridge Edition
Royal Shakespeare Company Film
Hollywood version by Michael Hoffman
