The Nature of Power in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

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The Nature of Power in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

The nature of power can be seen in many different forms in the this festive comedy set in patriarchal Athens, which are influenced in relation to the different environments in Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. The different environments bring out complimentary aspects of human nature, as demonstrated when the four lovers, Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius enter the woods for the reason that Hermia wishes to go against her father, Egeus, and spend the rest of her life with Lysander, whom she loves. The play makes social and historical comment. Theseus’ stiff and rigid domain mirrors the image of Elizabethan society in the 17th Century. Love and marriage was a manner of duty; people were married not out of love, but to make social or economic relation between two families. Scene I demonstrates this as it introduces one of the major plot issues of the play.

Ordinarily a love triangle like that of Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius would cause a great deal of trouble just for the sake of love, but it is further complicated by Egeus' insistence that Hermia marry Demetrius, despite her love for Lysander. This conflict highlights a key issue in the amount of control a parent should have over their child. By Athenian law, Egeus has the right to decide whom his daughter will marry, and he is shocked and angered by his daughter's refusal to follow his wishes on the matter as she should, by Elizabethan societal standards, be governed by her father, “as she is mine [Egeus’s]”. However, Egeus completely disregards Hermia's preferences and Demetrius' reputation, which has been grazed by the breaking of his oath to Helena. Theseus claims at this point that he cannot change the law, and he tells Hermia to choose between Demetrius, life as a nun, and death, “either to this gentleman, or to her death”.

Athens is no environment for imagination but reason, and there is no place for romantic love in marriage in Elizabethan society. The lack of rhyming or spontaneity in Theseus’ measured verse symbolises the way in which, unlike in the woods, it was a place of duty and order, and not imagination, love or poetry. Once left alone, Lysander and Hermia ponder their situation, at which point Lysander reminds his beloved that “the course of true love never did run smooth”. The power of the court and authority of Theseus and Egeus over Hermia and Lysander compels the lovers to elope the next night and leave Theseus’ domain, in which they can live free from suppression and the conflicts of the power of love versus duty. The theme of true love not running smoothly (and the problems this brings) repeats again and again in the play.

Through the use of language, Shakespeare uses his power, as a poet to set the difference between the order and mundane every-day life of the lovers in Athens “good morrow, friends, Saint Valentine is past” and the free-will, magic and disorder found in the woods. In the woods, language is much more poetical and rhythmic; “my mistress with a monster is in love, near to her close and consecrated bower while she was in her dull, and sleeping hour.” This creates a greater feeling of freedom and enhances the theme of imagination and magic in the woods, while in Athens, the more uniform and stable ‘prose’ is used.

As previously mentioned, the different environments in the play bring out complimentary aspects of human nature. The power of the woods, run by supernatural beings, Titania and Oberon whom are at the top of the hierarchy within their world, frees those in it from strict laws and any social constraints. The lack of morality, and the power of free-will in the woods, echoing The May Games and Midsummer Festivals, allows the lovers to be more passionate than they would normally be in the court of Athens. However, a darker side of love can be seen in the woods as sex without social constraint can lead to rape. This is hinted on between Demetrius and Helena as the power of free-will, chaos and disorder take over as they “leave the city” and “commit yourself. To trust the opportunity of night, and the ill counsel of a desert place with the rich worth of your virginity”.

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Following Titania ad Oberon’s dispute, Oberon orders Puck to go get the “love-in-idleness” flower, whose juice has the power to make someone fall in love with any living creature. Once Titania sleeps, Oberon puts the juice on Titania's eyes. The fact that this potion must be applied to the eyes links back to Helena's speech in Act I, scene 1, when she complains that love blinds people to reality and makes one do strange things one would not normally do. This is the exact effect of the love juice, whose application to the eye renders the victim unable to see ...

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