A Midsummer Nights Dream: Worlds Collide

Four worlds collide in a magical woods one night in midsummer in William Shakespeare's
mystical comedy A Midsummer Nights Dream. The mythological duke of Athens, on the eve of
his wedding to the newly defeated Queen of the Amazons, is called upon by the mortal Egeus to
settle a quarrel. Hermia, Egeus's vociferous daughter, refuses to marry the man her father has
betrothed to her, the enamored Demetrius. Theseus sides with authoritarian Egeus and forces
Hermia to marry Demetrius or face death. Defiantly, Hermia and her love, Lysander, resolve to
elope and abscond into the woods, confessing their plan only to Hermia's covetous friend,
Helena. Helena, in a rash attempt to earn Demetrius's love, divulges to him the lovers' plan. He
sets off to retrieve Hermia and Helena follows in hopes of soliciting his love.
In another plane of imagination, Oberon, King of the fairies, desires to possess the Indian boy that
Titania, Queen of the fairies, has adopted. When she refuses to relinquish the boy, Oberon
schemes with his servant, Puck, and commands him to retrieve a flower to use for a spell in which
the person under the spell falls in love with the first person seen. Oberon plans to use the spell on
Titania and charm her into falling in love with a hideous creature while Oberon takes the Indian
boy. While waiting for Puck to return with the flower, Oberon witnesses the pitiful persistence of
Helena to win Demetrius. Upon Puck's recovery of the flower, Oberon takes enough to fulfill his
plan and leaves Puck with the rest, instructing him to help the poor mortal girl whose love is
unrequited.
While Puck journeys on his mission to find the Athenian youth, he stumbles upon a troupe of
artisans practicing a play to perform on the night of Theseus' wedding in hopes of receiving a
monetary reward. The egotistical Nick Bottoms takes control of the production and tells Peter
Quince, the group's industrious leader, how the play should be performed. Puck realizes that the
domineering yet naive Bottoms is just the man to fulfill Oberon's insidious plan and changes his
head into that of a donkey. Terrified, Bottoms' innocent friends run away leaving the bewildered
Bottoms in Puck's care.
Puck leaves Bottoms, the only mortal in the play to have the privilege of viewing the fairies, in
Titania's chambers. Upon awaking, Titania falls instantly in love with the grotesque Bottoms and
entices him to bed. Oberon, taking pity on the witless Titania, lies to Puck and says that Titania
honored him with the Indian boy. The two fairies reverse the spell, transforming Bottoms back to
his mortal form and erasing the love spell from Titania, who remembers her love for Oberon.
All seems well until Oberon returns to Earth and discovers that Puck's idiocy led him to place the
love spell on Lysander who awoke to see Helena. In a feeble attempt to correct his awful mistake,
Puck places the juice in Demetrius's eyes who also views Helena when he awakes. The two
lovers, suddenly bewitched by Helena, try to woo her but she scorns their love, thinking they are
playing a horrid joke on her. Hermia arrives on the scene and both of her former admirers disavow
her. The quartet of mortal lovers quarrel and Oberon puts them all to sleep in order to correct the
mess his dim-witted servant started.

Theseus and Egeus arrive in the woods the next morning to see the four lovers returned to
normal with a slight twist-while Oberon revived Lysander's love for Hermia, he allowed Demetrius
to remain in love with Helena. Enraged, Egeus demands Theseus enforce his decree but
Theseus, under his own love spell with his new Amazon bride, softens and commands the two
couples should be married and share in his wedding feast. Blissfully, the three couples enjoy the
amusing production performed by Quince and his moronic group. The lovers leave to enjoy their
wedding night and Puck leaves the audience with the vision that the entire experience has been a
mystical dream.
Shakespeare's unique talent for creating poetry is effective in both establishing character and
demonstrating the theme. The characters of the play all speak in poetic form with the exception of
the English rustics who speak in prose. This helps to place the fairies and lovers on a higher,
more transcendental plane than the artisans. Therefore, the artisans become more comical and
lighten up the confusing comedy of love. The poetry of Shakespeare's genius also clarifies the
play's theme of the extreme confusion and blinding powers of love. The rhythmic words help to
create a magical setting of love while the rhymes portray the confusion each character feels while
under the stupefying powers of love.
Some optimists have compared love to a blissful dream, but Shakespeare's clever intrigue shows
what a confusing nightmare love can be. As the audience ponders the revelry they have just seen
as the play comes to a close, Puck steps forth to conclude the confusion:
If we shadows have offended
Think but this, and all is mended
That you have but slumb'red here
While these visions did appear
And this weak and idle theme
No more yielding than a dream.
The audience is left in as much ambiguity as felt throughout the performance, appropriately
ending the play in a puzzling state of confusion.
The theme of night activities-dreams and sleep-runs throughout the play. The majority of the plot
takes place at night, even the rehearsal for the farcical play. All the mishaps occur during the
midnight hours and the confusion is not cleared up until the next morning when the four lovers are
discovered. This setting of night allows for the audience to drift into the idea that the entire show
very well could have been a fantastical dream.
Sleep is another theme that runs throughout the play. All of the mishaps and mistakes occur
throughout the guise of sleep. One of the major influences of sleep is that it allows for Puck and
Oberon to use their magical love flower. The power of the flower can only be used while the victim
is sleeping. Once the victim awakes, he or she finds himself in a mystical stupor of love. Three
times this magical spell is used. On Titania, the influences aren't bad. She finds herself in a
dream where she falls in love with an awful creature and after Oberon receives the prize he

craves, he wakes her up, leaving her no worse then she started and actually rekindling the love
between herself and Oberon. The other two uses of this power have a few more adverse affects.
Both Demetrius and Lysander awake from the spell to fall in love with Helena, angering Helena
and deeply upsetting Hermia. Hermia had even predicted this occurrence when she experienced
a foreboding nightmare of her own. The nightmarish love triangle is finally set straight when
Oberon once again places the lovers asleep. When they are discovered the next morning and
asked to explain their crazy night, the only explanation that can be given is that of a dream.
Therefore, there is no other way for Shakespeare to end this crazy entanglement of lovers,
mythological beings, fairies, and artisans but to explain it as a dream. Throughout the play, with
the nighttime atmosphere and reoccurrence of sleep, the dreamy state of the characters is
passed on to the audience. The play itself is left inconclusive when the characters depart, with
questions remaining in the audience's mind, but Puck's closing monologue explains that
puzzlement is the appropriate emotion to be feeling during the course of the play. He goes on to
persuade the audience that the only logical explanation for the unusualness and ambiguity of the
play is that, just as the characters themselves experienced, the audience has just awoke from a
fantastical dream.