¶ … Shakespeare play a Midsummer Night's Dream. http://s The setting of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is extremely important to the correct interpretation of this work of literature, as well as to the development of its plot. Although the setting -- which is explicitly the time and place in which actions in a work of literature take place -- are of importance in any drama, it is all the more critical to this play of Shakespeare's due to the central theme. Like many of the bard's works, this play deals with love, its mishaps, and its reconciliation. However, it chiefly does so through the means of magi, a magic which involves the supernatural, spirits, and fairies. A close read of A Midsummer Night's Dream reveals that the author manipulates certain aspects of the setting to provide the proper background for the copious amounts of magic that fuel the play's plot and influence its theme.

In analyzing the way that the setting of this play helps to provide the necessary environment for some of the magic that is central to the development of this dramatic work, it is prudent to analyze both the time and the place in which the play occurs. The latter figures perhaps most prominently in this story. It is highly significant, for instance, that the play both begins and ends in the city of Athens. Athens is an urban environment, there are strict rules and laws there, and it provides the scene for some of the fundamental elements in the play. During the play's beginning in Athens the reader ascertains that there is a pair of unhappy lovers. And, during the play's ending in which the characters return to Athens, those unhappy lovers have now happily sorted out their romances. Therefore, it is highly pivotal to note that they were able to sort out their love affairs and feelings in a setting far removed from the staid, conventional surroundings of Athens. All of these emotions were worked out within a woods, an enchanted woods as it turns out, which is inhabited by a number of fairies ("supernatural agents") (1) who cast spells and weave the sort of magic that lovers heed. Thus, the actually physical locality of the setting in Shakespeare's play is integral to the theme of magic and the way it moves the plot, from the realistic and highly inhabited city of Athens, to the mystique of the woods and its incantations, back to Athens where everything is fine with the pair of lovers.

In addition the physical locality, the time and the timing of the setting in A Midsummer Night's Dream has a lot to do with the sort of magic upon which the play is based. As the title of the play indicates, there is a substantial amount of the play that occurs under the guise of night, in which dreams are rampant and mystery and fairies abound. Night is the time that fairies breed and work their wonders; midnight is described in this play as "almost faerie time" (2) this fact is demonstrated most dramatically in the play with the introduction of the fairy Puck and others who are tasked with helping to influence the various lovers and their feelings through one another via magic. The very characterization of the faeries themselves -- mischievous, mirthful, mysterious, ever out of the sight of the humans whose lives they greatly effect -- is typical of night in that with the absence of daylight, its mysteries are difficult to see. The juice from the magical flower that Puck disseminates over both fairies and humans alike is sprinkled during the night. Furthermore, it is done so when the various characters are sleeping at night. In this respect, then, the time in which the magic of the play is wrought and rendered is vital to producing an effect that is comical, somewhat unintentional, yet ultimately beneficial and utterly magic. This magic greatly affects the theme of the play, is largely facilitated by both the time and the location of the play's setting.

The true purpose and agency of the setting is realized, however, when one contrasts the various settings with one another. In this case, the daytime settings in Athens are contrasted with the nighttime settings in the woods. Although the contrast between Athens and the woods was referenced earlier in this document, the more dramatic contrast occurs between daytime and nighttime. During daytime, there is a sense of rigidity, a logical coherence that influences the actions of the characters and their sentiments....

During the night, however, such logic and order is disposed of, which is intrinsically related to the theme of magic. With magic anything can happen and all things are possible. This fact is realized through the play at night, when magic is working and the various characters feel enraptured in a miasma of dreams. At the play's beginning during the daylight hours, Lysander and Demetrius are both firmly in love with Hermia, who loves Lysander alone and scorns Demetrius, while Helena loves Demetrius who is cruel and harsh towards her. But once the fairies begin to weave their spells during the ephemeral hours of the night, the behavior of the characters is completely unlike that in the daytime. Suddenly, due to the charms of Puck's flowers, Helena is pursued by both Lysander and Demetrius, while Hermia is regarded as undesirable. Emphasizing the uncanny and subjective effects of the night's magic, Hermia -- who is granted her heart's desire by the sudden affection from Demetrius -- cannot even actualize her fantasy because she believes that he is ultimately mocking her. All of these unforeseen circumstances and uncharacteristic actions on the part of the four Athenians takes place under the vigilance of night, which is a dramatic difference between how they act during the day time. However, "when dawn comes to the moonstruck woods, there is a return to order" (3)There is a huge contrast in the settings and in how the characters behave during them which emphasizes the magic of the night and the woods.
Perhaps the most dramatic difference of the setting on the characters is evinced through an analysis of Titania, queen of the faeries. As the queen of the faeries she is of a stately, noble stature. Moreover, she is well renowned for her looks and natural beauty that her king, Oberon, must have desired at some point. Yet even she is unable to escape the spell of the enchanted evening in the woods, especially once Puck is able to fling a few drops from his magic flower in her eyes. Once he does so, she begins acting immensely outside of her character, by falling in love with the first person she sees who happens to be a human named Bottom. It is extremely significant that Titania does not pursue such a ridiculous, unattractive, clumsy oaf of a man such as bottom during the waking daylight hours of clarity and substance, but rather does so during the immaterial night in which shadows and darkness tend to take on a life of their own. Night is also the time during which people dream; the dream motif in this play is used to demonstrate "the efficacy of dream in effecting transformation" (4). Titania's infatuation with Bottom provides the most dramatic example of the transformation that the setting and its propensity for dreams makes in characters, which is responsible for the environment in which magic reigns and turns normal things into extraordinary, unfathomable things.

Finally, it is necessary to note the combined effect of both the temporal and physical settings. By taking the principle human characters outside of a city during the daytime and placing them in a forest setting at night time, the Bard is actually transporting them to another in which faeries, and magic, and the paranormal are the normal. The setting effectively reinforces the notion that the characters are no longer in reality as they commonly know it. Thus, they begin acting differently than they normally do. That is why the magic flower of Puck is so potent, and that is why the setting in which magic reigns is diametrically opposed to the setting in which the characters normally think and act. Moreover, this magic world that the characters are suddenly transported to because of the setting is underscored as a world that is far from reality by the dream motif that is prevalent throughout the play. In the night, in the woods, with spurned lovers becoming the object of affection of multiple lovers, such fancies are akin to dreams. This notion is corroborated by the subsequent quotation from Hippolyta, who states that "Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / four days will quickly sleep away the time" (5). Although this passage applies to the upcoming wedding festival of Hippolyta and Theseus, it also alludes to the potency of the night that is realized through its magic, and the time period in which the four Athenians are transported to a magic world.

Overall, the setting…