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possibly the wedding of the
young Elizabeth de Vere to the
Earl of Derby in 1595. Others
dispute this idea, but the play
does indeed seem to take the
pattern of an elaborate masque.
It begins with the announcement
of a wedding—so often the
endpoint of a drama—and finishes
on the night of a triple wedding.
The weddings—in Athens, the
world of reality—are brief scenes
that frame the wild and spectacular
journey into the fairy forest. There
is a symmetry and movement
between the world of lovers, fairies,
and “mechanicals” that is like a
marvelous dance, coming together
in the magical torch-lit procession
that ends the play. The play can be
seen both as an exquisite wedding
gift and an instruction on the true
nature of love that the watching
couple must learn before embarking
on married life.
City and forest
A Midsummer Night’s Dream has
a triple structure. It begins in the
city, journeys into the forest, and
then returns to the city again. The
city is the world of order, reason,
and discipline, but order in this city
has broken down. The characters
must voyage into the wild in order
to learn lessons for their real work.
THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S MAN
In many ways, it is an interior
journey—a journey of self-
knowledge—but the journey is as
much about society rediscovering
what matters as it is a personal
journey. Clearly, there is much to
learn in Athens about marriage.
At the opening of the play, Theseus
explains how he won Hippolyta,
the queen of the Amazons (a tribe
of female warriors), by force:
“Hippolyta, I have wooed thee with
my sword, / And won thy love by
doing thee injuries” (1.1.16–17).
Old Egeus calls for the death
penalty if his daughter Hermia
refuses to marry Demetrius. Even
Theseus’s “reprieve” only offers
Hermia the choice of life in a
nunnery instead. It is clear that
Theseus and Egeus may have the
law on their side, but their world
of “reason” and “sense” has little
understanding of human love and
feelings. Indeed, Theseus’s vision
is entirely out of sympathy with
imagination and poetry, as well as
love, which he equates with a kind
of madness: “The lunatic, the lover,
and the poet / Are of imagination
all compact” (5.1.7–8). Love, for
Theseus, is a frantic delusion.
Poetry is a frenzied rolling of
the eye. ❯❯O long and tedious night,
Abate thy hours.
Helena
Act 3, Scene 2An English idyll
The forest in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream is said to be
outside Athens, but it is really
an English wood, like the
forest of Arden Shakespeare
knew so well. The play can be
seen to be a hymn to England,
full of magic, yet down-to-
earth and real—a reminder,
perhaps, to distant rulers
of what really matters.
The wild flowers Oberon,
the king of the fairies, tells
of are those of an English
wood, brought to life with a
tenderness and knowledge
of a writer who had walked
those woods since childhood.
Shakespeare gives Oberon
these words:
“I know a bank where
the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the
nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with
luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and
with eglantine” (2.1.250–253).
The fogs and sodden
fields and the tired ploughman
that the queen of the fairies,
Titania, describe are scenes
from England, not from
Athens, and the artisans
who put on the play are
as solidly English as one
can imagine.The lunatic, the lover,
and the poet
Are of imagination
all compact.
Theseus
Act 5, Scene 1