Midsummer and Elizabeth A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedic drama that centers on marriage. Indeed, it is traditionally held that Shakespeare penned the play for a friend's wedding; therefore, it should be no surprise to find that the theme of marriage runs through and through Midsummer, from the young adults to the nobility (and even to the fairy world, where marital strife is encountered). Yet, being penned in an age when the Queen of England herself never married, one may think that Midsummer serves as a kind of critique of Elizabeth. If the medieval view of women (both common and noble) was that they were for two things (either the cloister or the married state), it would appear that Elizabeth had certainly bucked that trend. Yet Elizabethan England itself was on the cusp of bucking the medieval world: it had already abandoned the Church of the old world; and Elizabeth herself may be said to have had a modern view of life. Shakespeare's plays also are a blend of the old world and the new (Hamlet is, after all, often considered a representation of the first modern man). Nonetheless, Midsummer Night's Dream reinforces the old world ideas of women and marriage -- and backs them up with a mysterious element called "love," which ultimately binds men and women to a higher realm -- a fairy realm in Midsummer, but a spiritual realm in real life. This paper will analyze...

In this little and subtle passage, Shakespeare reinforces the idea of the medieval natural order -- that the woman should submit to the man. An earlier reflection of the toppling of this order appears in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (wherein the Wife of Bath literally beats her husbands and tries to rule them). But here we see that Theseus has won the love of his bride by dominating her -- and she has submitted to be his wife (which is not to say that she has submitted to be his slave -- but there is of course always a hint of subjection in the idea of "love." Helena for example pursues Demetrius with all the devotion of one has been chained to him. She has not been chained through any physical device -- but by the heart: he made love to her, she accepted it, and now she follows him (abjectly, as she herself intimates, like a beaten dog) -- but all out of love.
How do these visions of love reflect on Elizabeth? Elizabeth, it is known, never married. According to old world standards, she renounced the woman's state (especially…