Lunatic, Lover, and the Poet

¶ … lunatic, lover, and the poet -- Why Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's Dream is still relevant today

Because William Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's Dream seems so delightful and fantastic as a spectacle, it is easy to overlook its serious themes that still relate to the way human beings over-value romance, and the power struggles and violence that are masked by romance in male-female relationships. Interpretations such as the1935 a Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Max Reinhardt & William Dieterle tend to undercut the philosophical implications of Shakespeare's contrast between the 'real' world of orderly Athens and the fairytale world of the forest. Beneath the comedy is the disturbing implication that what we consider real love is not love at all, merely an illusion, and that love is full of sublimated (or not-so-sublimated) tensions between men and women, parents and children, and lovers and the beloveds.

Because the 1935 film and many subsequent interpretations eliminate or cut the roles of Theseus and Hippolyta, a careful student of a Midsummer Night's Dream should not forget that the comedy begins with what could be said to constitute a forced marriage, between the Amazon queen and Greek king. Love and violence are almost automatically intertwined in ways that will prefigure the adolescent lovers' war in the forest, and the more dramatic war for authority in fairyland between Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the forest: "Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,/and won thy love, doing thee injuries" says Theseus (I.1).

The power struggle between female autonomy and male patriarchy is dramatized in the struggle between Oberon and Titania as well, as the two engage in a war over ownership of a young boy, the child of a dead woman from India who was a votress of Titania. Their conflict disturbs the heavens, unlike the conflict of the pairs of teenage lovers, but it also raises the question of what is the nature of love -- it implies that love is violent and possessive, rather than beautiful. Love is also fickle: Titania and Oberon love women and men, as well as one another, and their mix of hate, love, and jealousy creates a "progeny of evil" in nature and results in Bottom temporarily losing his humanity, as part of Oberon's attempt to humiliate the queen (II.1).

The most dramatic part of the play demonstrating how love and ownership are often conjoined is waged over the coupling of four young Athenians -- Hermia and Helena, and Lysander and Demetrius. In the first scene, the controlling nature of human relationships in Athens is depicted first in the personas of Theseus and Hippolyta, then between Hermia and her father. Hermia's father Egeus states that he wants his daughter to marry Demetrius, even though she loves Lysander. Interestingly, although Egeus seems inflexible and harsh, he does say something that resonates with the rest of the play, namely that lovers are impressionable and Lysander has "stolen the impression of her fantasy" with little else other than:" bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits" that he gave to Hermia (I.1). Demetrius is equally inconsistent. He played false with Helena when his affections inextricably switched to Hermia. Hermia refuses to obey her father, but in a strange turn of events, to win Demetrius' love back, Helena acts in a traitorous manner to her friend and tells her former fiancee that Hermia is running away with Lysander.

The quick shifts of the young lovers' giddy affections thus take place in the 'real world' of Athens, just as they do under the power of Puck's magic. Love in fairyland is not that different from the real world, it only looks different on stage and screen. Even when there are misunderstandings, these misunderstandings are often merely illustrations of a larger truth, as when Hermia wrongly accuse Helena of taking Lysander from her -- she correctly accuses Helena of betrayal, just the wrong kind of betrayal. And Hermia unwittingly, temporarily won Demetrius from Helena in the real world, just as Helena wins the affection of both men in the forest, because of Puck's magic. The ways in which the never-never land of the woods parallel 'real' life in Athens point out how dreams and desire, while they may seem separated from real life, are also heightened reflections of real-world concerns. The true nature of affection and the ability of it to be swayed and to devolve into male-female power struggles are merely heightened by Puck's mistake. "Am not I Hermia? are not you Lysander?/I am as fair now as I was erewhile./Since night you loved me; yet since night you left me" says Hermia to her bewitched Lysander, echoing Helena's despairing words about Demetrius in the real world, as Hermia marvels that Lysander no longer loves her (III.2; I.1)

While Lysander is made to love Helena by magic, Hermia's unwitting 'real' magic in Athens won Demetrius. But Demetrius ends the play enchanted to love Helena. The four lovers wake feeling that they have found truth, with only the dim awareness of Helena that Demetrius is a "jewel" that is her own and "not her own" (IV.1). The forest reveals the true nature of human and fairy love -- it is fleeting, although the fairies understand this, and morals do not. "Such image-magic makes its victims believe that they gained enlightenment, maturing to reason, exactly when succumbing to its influence; while its lasting impact is the confusion of the senses, or the power to distinguish and discriminate" (Szakolczai 2007, p.1)