A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(Play, magic and love)
Though literature, throughout history, has changed into many different forms and styles, it has also stayed the same in certain ways. Literary technique is a key to a good piece of writing, and a perfect example that shows to us what it is, is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a fine example of a light-hearted, whimsical comedy, which combines magic and love with skillful techniques.
To begin with, it is necessary to look at the background and the historical context of this comedy. Hypothetically A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written between 1590 and 1596. There are two opinions about the reason for Shakespeare’s creating the play. One is the wedding of a noble aristocratic couple. The other suggestion is the celebration of the Day of St. John, which is also known as Midsummer.
The play-within-the-play motif
The main function of any comedy, as we know, is to entertain the public. It is the entertainment aspect of the Elizabethan drama that seems to be the main reason for Shakespeare to use the play-within-a-play motif. Shakespeare, however, was not the first to shape it. The source of this motif goes back to Thomas Kyd, who probably used this dramatic device for the first time in his The Spanish Tragedy (1587), where play-within-a-play marks the culmination of the desire and where the act of revenge resolves all the tensions of the play. Thomas Kyd must have designed the technique of using some other play in his own play as a help to deepen its central message.
Also, it is worth mentioning that the love story of the ill-fated lovers Pyramus and Thisbe (which is the very play within Shakespeare’s comedy) is part of the Roman mythology, the classical heritage. This tale is told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. According to Ovid’s version, the story involves suicides and the tragically wasted love of two lovers, whom their parents do not allow to marry. This story ends by changing the mulberry fruit colour from white into red, and the latter becomes the symbol of a forbidden love.
The metamorphoses in the play
The fact that the amateur actors have chosen this very story, a Babylonian myth, for their performance at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta only heightens the comedy. They are inexperienced and poorly suited to their task, but they do make the audience laugh at them because everything about them is comical and everything about it is ironic. For instance, while rehearsing, Francis Flute begs not to be cast as a female character (Thisbe) by saying «I have a beard coming» (note there were no women actors in the Elizabethan theatre). Or, for example, Snug says some funny words: «Have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study». Nick Bottom seems to be acting everyone else`s part, which is also comical. He says that, if he plays the lion’s part, he «will make the duke say 'Let him roar again, let him roar again'». And if Bottom plays Pyramus, he will «move storms». Of course he will, but as for Philostrate he thinks there will be «more merry tears/ The passion of loud laughter never shed».
We see that the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in the comedy is far from tragic, and this contrast between the seriousness of the play and the bumbling foolishness of the craftsmen makes readers and the audience laugh. So, one of the most important function of the-play-within-the-play motif is to make characters and the play itself look even more funny. This is what makes Shakespeare`s A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a sweeping comedy.
The fairy-tale atmosphere of the play
Another way to make the play funny is to create a fairy-tale atmosphere. Shakespeare makes up the funniest and the most humbling scenes by means of the magic moments. One of such ridiculous moments happens when Puck uses his magic to transform Bottom’s head into a donkey’s head. When Bottom comes on stage he is followed by Puck, who says to the audience:
I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog , through bush, through brake, through brier:
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
(Act 3, scene 1)
By this Puck means that he will follow Bottom and play these nasty little tricks on him. It does not matter where he himself is, for Puck can be anywhere, he can take on the shape and the disguise of anything and anybody, without your knowing that he is there. So, when Titania, the gorgeous queen of fairies, falls passionately in love with him, Bottom’s destiny changes even more dramatically.
Love as a central theme of the play
As a rule, the theme of love is believed to be a very serious and deep one. But as for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the topic of love gets unrolled in a new way, ironic and comical. The episode when Puck controls the character’s love by putting a love potion on the lovers (Puck sees Lysander sleeping on the ground near Hermia and confuses them with Demetrius and Helena, and puts the love potion on Lysander instead; Lysander is now a victim of the fairy's magic and from now on he is to fall in love with the first person he meets) is exactly an example of such futile attitude to love. Before this happened, Lysander was telling Hermia about his undying love. Now this means that Lysander, who really loves Hermia, is in love with Helena because it is she who woke him up.
Another aspect that is worth mentioning, is that the theme of love in Shakespeare’s comedies is often explored through the motif of love out of balance, that is, the romantic situations in which inequality interferes with the harmony of a relationship. The prime example of this unbalance is the asymmetrical love among the four young Athenians: Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius, and Demetrius loves Hermia, instead of Helena. We can see a simple numeric unbalance in that two men leave one woman with too many admirers, and the other with no one. But by the end of the play the lovers’ tangle resolves itself into the symmetrical pairings with a traditional happy ending.
As far as the love theme is concerned, we cannot help saying a few words about true love in the comedy. It is personified by Lysander and Hermia. One of the most famous lines, The course of true love never did run smooth, belongs to Lysander who tries to soothe Hermia, when she despairs about the difficulties facing their love, namely, that Egeus, her father, has forbidden them to marry. Lysander tells Hermia that as long as there is true love, there are also the inevitable difficulties to baffle the lovers. Throughout the play the couple encounter lots of obstacles: differences in age (“misgrafted in respect of years”), difficulties caused by friends or “war, death, or sickness,” which make love seem “swift as a shadow, short as any dream, but they overcome them and find their happiness.
No doubt, Shakespeare is one of the most talented writers ever known. He makes a masterful use of the drama resources and techniques (the-play-within-the-play motif, a fairy-tale atmosphere and the like) to make his audience laugh. Yet, while roaring with laughter, we are aware of our hearts going out in sympathy to Lysander and Hermia the protagonists. Definitely, it takes a genius of a playwright to make people laugh and weep at the same time.
The 2nd year BA students
Masha Petrova, Karina Skripkina, Ann Soloshenkova, and Kate Grudkina
group 096.