How does the plot of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" run through a complicated passage to a handsome solution

 

Q: How does the plot of  A Midsummer Night’s Dream run through a complicated passage to a handsome resolution?

          A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an early comedy and masterpiece of William Shakespeare which he wrote in a highly creative period of his career. Like the most Elizabethan comedies, this play is also a light-hearted romp because of many types of humour and ends happily in the unification of the courting couples. Shakespeare shows his dexterity at portraying a careful mix of love with humour by the fairies, wordplay and buffoonery behaviour of Bottom, a rude mechanical who leads to hilarious events. But Shakespeare interweaves some complications in the play just to show that human life is a mixture of both happiness and sadness at the same time. According to Louis Adrian Montrose, an American literary theorist and scholar, “This play explores the predominant patriarchal society, concentrates on the tensions of Elizabethan popular culture and exposes the lacking of sensitivity of the lower working-class people.”

           The tragic view of love and verbal tiffs among the couples intensify the problems of the play. Lots of evidence supports a strong patriarchal society in this play. Gender is given a hard look here. In Shakespeare’s another play The Taming of the Shrew, Petrucio declares his wife Katherine as “goods,” “horse,” “ass” etcetera to subdue her. He says, “For I am here born to tame you Kate.”  In this play, too, the impact of the male-dominating society is clearly observable. Hermia is fighting with her father Egeus for her love. Demetrius loves the idea of marriage to Hermia but not Hermia, herself. Still, Egeus and Demetrius have negotiated an arranged marriage between Hermia and Demetrius because Egeus does not like Lysander who devotedly loves Hermia. Egeus declares that if Hermia does not obey her father’s decision, she will be put into death. He says, “As she is mine, I may dispose of her, /Which shall be either to this gentleman, /Or to death according to our law.” Theseus, the duke, too, supports Egeus arguing that a daughter is a “helpless doll’ in the hands of her father. He also tells that Hermia is a “form in wax” to her father which he can “imprint,” “figure” or “disfigure.” So, either she will accept her father’s proposal or she has to “abjure forever the society of men and join nunnery.” But Hermia has  good insight to free herself and choose whatever she wants. She does not want to sacrifice her love for anything and so she decides to elope with Lysander to the forest where “Athenian law” cannot pursue them. Helena, the other lovesick girl, comes to know about the plan of Hermia and Lysander and tells it to Demetrius just to get his attraction and “beg love.”

          Though the couples successfully arrive at the forest in search of a peaceful life, the incorporation of the fairies who are the representatives of the green world that is free from social norms and restrictions creates further complexities in their life. Supernatural elements have a great influence in Shakespeare’s works, for instance, the ghost of Old Hamlet in Hamlet, the witches in Macbeth, the fairies in The Merry Wives of Windsor etcetera which work as “catalyst” and leave a big impact on the characters. In this play, the fairies live under the monarchy of King Oberon and Queen Titania. Both of them are now in a conflict over a page boy. Titania refuses to hand over the boy saying, “Set your heart at rest, /The fairy land buys not the child of me.” This behaviour of Titania hurts Oberon’s lordship mentality. To torment her, Oberon orders Puck to collect the magical love juice and rub it on Titania's eyelids so that she can pursue a beast with the “soul of love.” At the same time, Oberon witnesses that Demetrius is behaving cruelly with Helena where Helena is crazy for Demetrius’s love. The more Demetrius will “beat” her, the more she will “fawn” him. Oberon feels bad for Helena and commands Puck to apply the juice on the eyes of the “disdainful youth” Demetrius so that he can fall in love with the “sweet Athenian lady” Helena. However, Puck mistakenly rubs the juice on Lysander’s eyes which brings chaos in the couples’ life because it entangles a triangular love story.

           This play can be interpreted as "fantasia on love" Shakespeare explores how people tend to fall in love with those who appear beautiful to them in this play. Maestro Bard induces the idea that love is doomed to perish along with those who hold endearment to a high importance, for example, power, beauty, sex etc. In the beginning of the play, Lysander tells Hermia that love is as “momentary as a sound," “swift as a shadow,” and “short as any dream.” Ironically, the same thing happens in his own life because of the love potion. He falls in love with Helena, but this love is not divine. Rather, it is manipulated by physical attraction as he heartily wants to change “a raven” for “a dove.” Now he firmly believes that he has spent “tedious minutes” with Hermia because he was immature at that time. Moreover, Lysander calls Hermia “Ethiop” and professes his love for Helena saying, “Not Hermia but Helena I love.” It emphasizes that even a true lover’s fire can be put out by the feeblest wind since “Love is too young to understand conscience” according to sonnet 151.

           The transience of love turns Hermia and Helena’s friendship into enmity. Hermia thinks that Helena is responsible for Lysander’s change of mind and falsely accuses her for “theft of love.” She forgets that Helena and she have “two seeming bodies but one heart” and tries to exterminate Helena’s eyes saying, “But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.”

          The imbecile character Nick Bottom has also become a puppet in this love game mastered by Oberon and Puck. He has come to the forest along with his friends to rehearse the play The Most Lamentable Comedy and the Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe in the royal wedding ceremony of Theseus and Hippolyta. Puck is like Dionysus, a mischievous youth, who as written in a Homeric hymn amused himself by frightening the Greek sailors by shape-shifting tricks. Similarly, Puck’s whimsical trick on gullible Bottom turns his head into an ass’s head and Titania falls in love with Bottom as she first sees him after waking up from sleep. She says, “Mine ear is enamour’d of thy note, /So is mine enthralled to thy shape.” This type of love is absolutely asymmetric because the gracious fairy queen behaves like a stereotypical lovesick woman for the love of a lower-class, odd-looking, crass fellow Bottom.

         In this play, the ultimate aim of the fairies is to draw a happy ending. They are not as capricious and brutal as those of The Merry Wives of Windsor where it is said, “They are fairies, he that speaks to them shall dye.” As soon as Oberon gets the page boy, he rubs curative juice on Titania’s eyes and helps Bottom get back his previous shape. Curative juice is also applied on Lysander’s eyes and now his love for Hermia is as bounteous as sea. Again, love potion is applied on Demetrius’s eyes to accept Helena as his beloved. Finally, the  couples successfully end in marriage and Oberon  blesses them saying, “Ever shall be fortunate,/ Ever true loving be.”

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