Midsummer Night’s Dream, A, is a comedy by the English dramatist William Shakespeare. It is one of his finest and most popular plays, dating from the second period of his artistic development. Shakespearean scholars believe that it was written in 1595 or 1596, probably for the celebration of a courtly wedding. However, scholars differ over which wedding this might have been. The play was first published in 1600. It has no single chief source, but Shakespeare evidently drew on the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer and on translations of the Latin poetry of Ovid and of The Golden Ass by Apuleius of Rhodes.
The play is set in and around the city of Athens, Greece, where preparations are being made for a wedding between Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons. Most of the action takes place in an enchanted forest outside the city, a customary haunt of the fairies. Two young men, Lysander and Demetrius, and two young women, Hermia and Helena, have come into the wood. Hermia and Lysander want to escape the harsh Athenian marriage laws that are forcing Hermia to marry Demetrius, whom she does not love. Hermia in fact loves Lysander, and her friend Helena loves Demetrius. For his part, Demetrius, who once loved Helena, now loves Hermia. So the two young men love Hermia and ignore Helena. All four young people wander about together and become lost. Oberon, king of the fairies, orders the mischievous elf Puck to anoint Demetrius’ eyes with magic drops that will make him love Helena. However, Puck mistakenly anoints Lysander’s eyes, creating much comic confusion. Puck finally straightens out the mix-up.
In a subplot, Oberon quarrels with Titania, his queen. He then anoints Titania’s eyes with the magic drops while she sleeps so that when she awakens, she will love the first living thing she sees. At this time, Nick Bottom, a weaver, and his comical friends, who like him are Athenian tradesmen, are rehearsing a silly play about Pyramus and Thisbe that they plan to present at the duke’s wedding. When Titania awakens, she sees Bottom and immediately falls in love with him. But to increase Titania’s humiliation, Puck has given Bottom the head of a donkey. Aided by her fairy attendants, Titania woos the donkey-headed Bottom until Oberon releases her from the spell. The play ends with the duke’s wedding. The two young couples—Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena—also marry during this ceremony. Bottom and his friends perform their hilariously absurd play at the wedding celebration.
For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare wrote some of his most richly descriptive poetry. Oberon tells Puck, “I know a bank where the wild thyme blows / Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows.” The passage transports the audience in imagination to a magic wood where flowers bloom and fairies play. Shakespeare balanced this romantic fantasy with the rough humor of Bottom and his friends. The self-centered Bottom ranks as one of Shakespeare’s finest comic figures. The comedy also has a serious side. Light-heartedly but firmly, it makes fun of romantic love. As Puck comments, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
