A Midsummer Night’s Dream 951In the end, civilization asserts itself. The conflict
between Egeus and Hermia is resolved as the lovers
sort themselves out under the blessing of civic and
paternal authority. Theseus and Hippolyta reach
the end of their four days’ wait for their wedding,
and she takes her place as a submissive wife beside
Theseus. The dangerous character of the natural
world—featured in Pyramus and Thisbe, in which
an innocent may be presumed to be killed by a
ferocious lion—resolves itself in the laughter of the
parody. Nature recedes back into the unconscious,
emblemized by the conjugal sleep of the newlyweds.
If, however, the natural side of reality disturbs the
audience, Puck tells us, we may simply think of all
that has taken place as a dream.
Ellen Rosenberg
Sex and SexuaLIty in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens with cascading
themes of love, lust, sensuality, and sex. The fine
and delicately nuanced sensuality that leaves the
serious lover trembling is rarely glimpsed in this
comedy whose theme is articulated by Lysander:
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” If
eroticism exists at all, it is merely suggested in the
blank-verse poetry of the scenes between the more
elevated characters, such as Theseus and Hippolyta,
in their exchanges about the moon, such as when
Hippolyta imagines the new moon getting ready to
shoot his new bent bow. Above all, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream is a comedy about the obstacles to
love and its fulfillment.
Theseus’s complaint at the top of the play is
that he may not be able to control his desire to
consummate his upcoming marriage to Hippolyta
for the four days until their nuptial vows are
taken. While he “wooed [her] with his sword” on
the field of battle, he promises, “to wed [her] in
another key . . . with reveling” (1.1.16–19), and he
appears barely able to control his desire to heal the
injuries his sword has caused. In a nice reflection
of the stock characters of the sexually urgent male
and the conciliatory female, Hippolyta counsels
patience, reminding her betrothed that indeed
the days will pass. Theseus needs help to restrain
himself, however, and he orders his manservant
Philostrate to “Stir up the Athenian youth to mer-
riments” (1.1.13) to create some diversions so that
the time will pass more quickly. Ostensibly, the
ensuing play and play-within-the play are those
distractions.
Before the prenuptial merriment can begin,
however, in come Egeus and his naughty daughter
Hermia, establishing yet another thematic level
of besottedness, sexual interest, and frustration. If
we think of Hermia as the perennial adolescent
on the doorstep of adulthood and tangled in the
throes of sexual ripening, her rebellion against
her father makes some sense. Egeus is arranging
a marriage in what he perceives as the best inter-
est of the family. Personal feelings are beside the
point. Theseus’s suggestion of the convent as an
alternative solution to her disobedience to Egeus
thus carries with it the threat of eternal virginity.
Clearly, this is the suggestion that heightens the
stakes for the lovers and forces them into the deci-
sion to run away.
Similarly, Helena is drawn to Demetrius. Though
Demetrius will not reciprocate until he has been
enchanted by the fairies’ love potion, Helena follows
him out of love sickness. The young lovers in the
play are all vulnerable to the magnetism of first love
and in thrall to their libidos. The switching of affec-
tions, the double pursuit of Helena by the beaux, the
pursuit of Lysander by Hermia, and the struggles
between Demetrius and Lysander are good reflec-
tions of the delightfully chaotic state of adolescent
confusion, sexual attraction, and love.
The next characters to whom Shakespeare
introduces us are the mechanicals, the guildsmen
who also fill the venerable function of mummers,
comedic folk actors who often wore masks and
whose playlets date back to medieval England.
Peter Quince, the carpenter, is the director of
Pyramus and Thisbe, the entremet, or play-within-
the-play, that will be performed at the weddings.
Though he himself is not involved in love or
sexuality, his name is often taken to represent both
male and female sexuality, and in ancient times the
quince was thought to be a fruit that induced love.
One might say that he integrates the sexes through
his dramatic arts. Bottom is also an allegori-
cal character, replete with the mummer’s typical