A Midsummer Night's Dream: Stuff to Chew On
It's time to talk about donkeys! Just kidding...a little. In this episode, we are going to unpack the major themes and tropes in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. We'll also discuss the challenges presented by some problematic plot points and what theatremakers are left to reckon with when they produce A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Kourtney Smith (KS): Hi, Elyse.
Elyse Sharp (ES): Hi, Kourtney.
KS: How are you?
ES: I'm doing well. How are you?
KS: I'm doing fine today.
ES: Oh, great.
KS: Yeah, today is exciting because we're now going to start really chewing on A Midsummer Night's Dream.
ES: Yes, with our stuff to chew on, things that typically people talk about when they start talking about this play.
KS: So think of it as you're in an English or college class, and that's the level of analyzing the text that we're going to be doing in this episode.
ES: Right. A little bit of background, a little bit of if you're at a trivia night, and they're asking questions about Midsummer, things that might come up. And that way we can dive into some bigger topics, different topics in our upcoming episodes.
KS: Exactly. So A Midsummer Night's Dream, let's first talk about when it premiered. As with all Shakespeare plays, it can be really hard to pinpoint exactly when a play was written or its first debut on stage. We know that A Midsummer Night's Dream was first published in 1600 because that's when it entered the Stationer's publication. And according to the title page, it had, “been sundry times publicly acted by the right honorable, the Lord Chamberlain, his servants.” And scholars pinpoint that it was written between 1595 and 96. And that's them taking a look at some writing styles and some habits that Shakespeare has, which correlate with other plays, because he did evolve. His writing did evolve as his career progressed.
ES: Right.
KS: Yeah.
ES: But this is, while we don't know an exact date, firmly an Elizabeth play, if we're going to divide them into Elizabeth and James plays.
KS: Right. Like we said, we couldn't find a first performance date on record, but some scholars have tried to argue that it was first performed at the celebration of a particular aristocratic wedding. There is no conclusive evidence to confirm this theory, but it's kind of nice to think that a play that has a triple wedding would be performed at a wedding.
ES: Yeah.
KS: Yeah.
ES: This play has a few different sources, especially our tragedies do.
KS: Yeah.
ES: There's English fairy mythology, both Celtic and Teutonic. Ovid's Metamorphoses was used to inform the Athenians, the characters of Theseus, Hippolyta, et cetera, and how they act in the laws of Athens. Plutarch's Life of Theseus, Chaucer's The Knight's Tale was more directly drawn on for Theseus's war with the Amazons and marriage to their queen, Hippolyta. And I think we could also say Greek mythology is also in here a lot.
KS: Yes. You hear so many references to Greek myths. So brush up on your Greek mythology, friends. It will help.
ES: Yes.
KS: And now we're going to move on to major themes and tropes in this play. The first one we're going to talk about is love's difficulty. The theme of love's difficulty is often explored through the motif of love out of balance. So that is romantic situations in which a disparity or an inequality interferes with the harmony of the relationship.
So the prime instance of this imbalance is the asymmetrical love between the four young Athenians. Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius, but Demetrius loves Hermia instead of Helena, who he had previously been betrothed to, we find out at the end. And this plot is in many ways based on a quest for internal balance. So when the lover's tangle resolves itself into a symmetrical pairing, we then get the traditional happy ending of a wedding.
ES: As Lysander says, the course of true love never did run smooth.
KS: Yeah.
ES: And somewhat similarly in the relationship between Titania and Oberon, an imbalance arises out of the fact that Oberon's coveting of Titania's changeling boy outweighs his love for her. And then later, Titania's passion for the ass-headed Bottom represents an imbalance of appearance and nature.
KS: So yeah, things are out of whack in Athens and in the forest.
ES: Yes. Then we also have the theme of magic. Shakespeare uses magic, or the trope of magic, Shakespeare uses magic to both embody the almost supernatural power of love, symbolized by the love potion that Oberon and Puck create out of the nectar of a flower, and to create a surreal world. Although the misuse of magic does cause chaos, like when Puck mistakenly applies the love potion to Lysander's eyelids, magic ultimately resolves the play's tensions by restoring love to a state of balance among the quartet of Athenian youths.
KS: Mm-hmm. The next trope is dreams. Dreams are linked to the bizarre and magical mishaps in the forest. The theme of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre events in which these characters are involved. So when the four lovers have returned to Athens, they have felt as though they're in a dream, but they can corroborate the events of the dream.
ES: Yeah.
KS: Same thing with Bottom and Bottom's dream, which he wants to turn into a song. Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur without explanation. Time loses its normal sense of flow and the impossible occurs as a matter of course. At the end of the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members themselves, saying that if they've been offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a dream.
ES: The next theme or trope is the trope of jealousy. Jealousy plays out most obviously among the quartet of Athenian lovers who find themselves in an increasingly entangled knot of misaligned desire. Helena begins to play feeling jealous of Hermia, who has managed to snag not one but two suitors, and Helena loves Demetrius, who in turn feels jealous of his rival for Hermia's affections, Lysander. King Oberon and Queen Titania both have eyes for their counterparts in the human realm, Theseus and Hippolyta. And again, Oberon's jealousy over the changeling child drives much of the action of this play.
KS: Yeah. The next theme or trope is transformation. Transformation is both emotional and physical in this play. So these transformations contribute to the play's humorous chaos, and it also makes the happy ending possible. It's both the symptom and the medicine, I guess I'll say. Most of the transformations that take place in the play derive from fairy magic, specifically the magic of Puck. All four of the lovers go through emotional transformation, and Bottom goes through quite an obviously physical transformation, having been transformed into an ass with the donkey's head.
ES: We also have not so obviously the transformation of some working class individuals into actors in the court of Theseus.
KS: Yes.
ES: Speaking of the magic of Puck, we also have a theme and trope of mischief. Mischief is primarily associated with the forest and the fairies who reside there. Accordingly, the fairies of traditional British folklore are master mischief makers. The trickster fairy Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow and Goblin, is the play's chief creator of mischief.
KS: It's funny because I haven't read this play in a while, and so I was like, Robin, Robin, who's that? Then it was like, yes, that's Puck, but everyone just refers to Puck as Puck, not Robin Goodfellow.
ES: Yeah, it's actually interesting because having played this character, there are certain scenes where Puck is addressed as Puck, or Puck is addressed as Robin, or addresses himself as Goblin, or when we do have stage directions, they will switch. They'll say, enter Puck, enter Robin, enter... I don't think we have an enter Goblin.
KS: I wish we did.
ES: I wish. But one thing that I tried to track was like, what are these three personas that this character kind of puts on?
KS: That sounds like a lot of fun to work with as an actor.
ES: Deciding that those things were used to indicate something was a lot of fun.
KS: The next theme or trope is unreason, and these transformations that were put upon by the mischief of Puck lead to a temporary suspension of reason. So yeah, there's a lot of unreason that goes on with these characters.
ES: Yeah, or really rather, when Bottom is transformed, he has to accept the world of Fairyland as a mortal.
KS: Yeah.
ES: There's no text indication that he is aware of the donkey head. Even in his Bottom's dream speech at the end, where he says, me thought I was, me thought I was, me thought I had. It's not clear what he intends by that, and whether or not he means he had all the riches of the Fairy Kingdom, and the love—
KS: Titania yeah.
ES: —of a queen. Because there's no other language where he goes, oh, I see that I have an ass head on me.
KS: And also, Quince and Snout don't tell him what's wrong. They're just like, oh, you're a monster. Oh, yeah.
ES: What's written there is like, they're trying to make an ass out of me, and that's for the audience. I can see that he has a donkey's head. That's not him saying, I know I have a donkey's head.
KS: Yes, it's quite funny.
ES: And then we also have the theme of reversal. The charm Puck uses to transform the Athenian lovers' affections creates sudden reversals of love and hate, and then these reversals result in a breakdown of reason. All of the madcap foolery that plays out in the forest arises from Oberon's original idea to affect just one strategic reversal. And then all of the reversals that we watch happen in their own way get reversed and set right.
KS: Yeah, it's dangerous to go out into the forest if you're a Shakespeare character.
ES: Yes. A few other topics that we definitely want to talk about briefly.
KS: Yes.
ES: That this is kind of a pastoral. I have suspicions that it could have been written as a parody of the pastoral comedy, because in pastorals, if you think As You Like It, or listen to our episode on Galatea, pastoral comedies involve going into the forest, experiencing a change, and then coming out of the forest. Or, you know, living and continuing to live in the forest. And this is a play with a forest.
KS: Yeah. A lot of change happens in the forest.
ES: Uh-huh. A lot of change happens in the forest, but where in pastorals, the characters end up better than they were, in this play, you're the same, or are you better? We don't know.
KS: Yeah.
ES: Because if we look at Oberon, Bottom, and the lovers as entering the forest to all get something they want. They all get it, but is it a satisfying achievement?
KS: Yeah. I mean, certainly Demetrius and Helena's relationship is, in my own personal opinion, not satisfactory. Like, I don't feel fulfilled by that, because is the...
ES: That's another thing we want to talk about, is is Demetrius still drugged at the end?
KS: Let's just dive into that then.
ES: Yeah, let's dive into that.
KS: I guess that would be a director choice.
ES: Puck puts the herb on Lysander's eye, and Oberon kind of makes this decree that everybody's going to be wed. In my reading, that was the first time where I picked up on, oh, Oberon actually gives us that piece of information before we see Theseus make the decision. So the entire resolution may be very overshadowed by fairy magic still.
KS: I read that as well. I was reading it, and then I was like, hold on. I didn't see or hear... I guess I didn't hear Demetrius be returned to his previous state. And so therefore,
ES: Yeah.
KS: Demetrius must... Yeah.
ES: As written, he is not. As written, there's also a reduction of the intensity of the effects of the spell and a further spell to ensure that they are all married. And then the play actually ends with Oberon and Titania blessing the house and keeping these three couples together.
KS: Yeah.
ES: People today, we do have to reconcile that that is in this play.
KS: Yeah. And does one, as a theater maker, stick with the text? Or do you add in Puck goes and does that to Demetrius as well? And kind of—
ES: That Puck sneaks in a little to Demetrius.
KS: That Puck sneaks it in. Yeah, because it's certainly... It is certainly uncomfortable to sit there and go, hold on. Demetrius is back in love with Helena, but of his own free will or magic?
ES: Yeah. I think that if you consider that he has rhyming couplets with Helena and Hermia, and he just kind of uses them willy-nilly, I think that you could also say that he did and does... He could love Helena at the beginning and just be trying to do something advantageous for himself by marrying Hermia, trying to do the thing that society tells him he should be doing. The girl's dad wants him to marry her, and it's advantageous for him. Maybe old Nadar does not have the money that Egeus has.
KS: Yeah. But either way, you have to reckon with it.
ES: Yeah. Yeah. You just got to sit with that. Also uncomfortable things. The changeling child.
KS: Yeah.
ES: So much of this play happens because Oberon and Titania are in a child custody battle.
KS: Right.
ES: And Oberon enacts all of the love potioning because he wants to distract Titania from the child and make the child not mean so much to her in comparison to the love that she has.
KS: Yeah.
ES: Because this is an extreme, extreme plant. This plant works hard.
KS: It does. And it works.
ES: This potion is intense. And I think if you're going to make an argument for Demetrius is no longer drugged, I think a great one is that the effects of the potion are so intense. And it's like constant passion.
KS: Right.
ES: And nothing else matters. And upon waking up, Demetrius does seem to have more reason and less need to fight Lysander or anything like that.So perhaps sleeping it off does wane it, but we don't have explicit language.
KS: No, we don't.
ES: But Titania is raising the child of a woman that she had a very close personal relationship with.
KS: Yeah.
ES: And who has died in childbirth. And she says that she will not part with this child for the entire fairy kingdom.
KS: Right.
ES: And Oberon makes her fall in love with, well, he'd be fine with whatever because he just isn't. He's more focused on the intensity of this potion.
KS: But in this case.
ES: In this case, we do get Bottom and asses head. Donkey's head. And Oberon lets Titania dote on this creature for a while and then goes and says, hey, can I have the changeling child? And she says, yeah, sure. Because she's under the spell. And it's very counter to what she wanted.
KS: Right.
ES: And when she wakes up, she seems to have no memory of doing that.
KS: Yeah when they exit.
ES: When they exit, when they, when.
KS: She's like, you can tell me what happened.
ES: What happened? And he's like, oh, don't worry, honey. We've got a whole day of chasing the night around the globe for me to explain.
KS: And the wedding to go to. Yeah.
ES: And by the time we see them next, they are.
KS: Blessing.
ES: You know, whatever happened has been resolved offstage.
KS: Yeah. Yeah. Something interesting about the changeling child and specifically the mention of the Indian king, who may or may not be this changeling child's father, is that if you go back to our post colonial theory episode from this past November, there is research, scholarly research being done that links the colonization and the commodity of Indian goods and culture to this play. So in addition to all of the messed up interpersonal aspects of this changing child, there is also this like underbelly that you can read into of, hey, this is a time when England was starting to colonize. They were super into Indian culture, Indian commerce. And what's there to see in this play that references India, but doesn't actually have Indian characters portrayed on stage. So that's a little note about diving deeper into the meaning behind and the politics of the time, some context.
ES: On a lighter note, we also have a play within a play with this—
KS: Yes.
ES: —Play. And it is definitely lighter than the last play within a play we saw. And this play is based on the Pyramus and Thisbe myth, which is also a source for Romeo and Juliet. So there are some recognizable features with two young lovers who are separated by their families and who also meet untimely ends.
KS: Yes. And in addition to that Romeo and Juliet parallel, it's also just so fun to see jokes about theater making. It's just very delightful. Some of the—you know— like, Quince being the producer or stage manager trying to hold this rehearsal together. For the love of God, we have a play to do. Stop it, Bottom. Stop it.
ES: But also the biggest problems are that they don't know how to do lights and they don't know how to do set.
KS: No.
ES: How do we bring in moonshine into a chamber and how do we bring in a wall? It's like that's— the wall could be a flat, which is like a very basic piece of stagecraft.
KS: But also we have to make sure that we don't terrify the ladies because they'll think there's an actual lion on stage.
ES: Right.
KS: Yeah.
ES: Yeah. We also get like a really great dramatization of the Master of Revels, which we've talked about before this position in the court that basically decides like who can play a play in the character of Philostrate.
KS: Yes.
ES: That Philostrate has seen all of the possible entertainment for Theseus's wedding night and has come up with this short list and Pyramus and Thisbe is on there.
KS: Somehow.
ES: Somehow. And even though Philostrate does not seem to be a fan.
KS: No, it's not good when the Master of Revels say, oh, this part that was supposed to make me cry because it was so sad, made me cry because it was so bad.
ES: I cried because I was laughing so hard. Not because it was a tragedy.
KS: Actually a good tragedy. Yeah. Yeah.
ES: Speaking of Theseus's wedding night, this play also all happens within the span of about three days. At the top of the show, Theseus and Hippolyta say four days, but then it kind of gets foreshortened, possibly through, I don't know, fairy magic at the end there. But the decree and the first rehearsal of the mechanicals happen on day one that night. Then next night, day two, everybody goes to the forest. The majority of our play happens over the course of that evening. In the morning, the lovers wake up and it is the day of Theseus's wedding to Hippolyta. And it's also a new moon.
KS: Yeah.
ES: Yeah. And then everything's resolved by the morning of day four.
KS: Which I love. I love a play that's very straightforward about how long it takes to get through the actions of the the events of the story. So.
ES: So yeah, way to just, you know, throw Hamlet under there.
KS: Well…
ES: Very clear timeline versus a very unclear timeline.
KS: Very clear, Mr. Shakespeare.
ES: Yeah.
KS: Anything else?
ES: That's all I have for stuff to chew on. I'm very excited for the topics we're going to get into over the next few months with this play.
KS: Yeah. So chew on all of these for the time being and—
ES: Chew on that.
KS: Chew on that.
ES: Hopefully this got wheels turning?
KS: So that's some stuff to chew on for A Midsummer Night's Dream.
ES: Thank you for listening.
Quote of the Episode:
KS: From The Taming of the Shrew, Act 3, Scene 1, spoken by Hortensio: “Now, for my life, the knave doth court my love.”
Shakespeare Anyone? is created and produced by Korey Leigh Smith and Elyse Sharp.
Music is "Neverending Minute" by Sounds Like Sander.
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Works referenced:
Shakespeare, William, and Harold F. Brooks. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bloomsbury, 1979.
SparkNotes Editors. “A Midsummer Night's Dream: Literary Devices: Themes.” Sparknotes, SparkNotes, 2005, https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/msnd/themes/.
