Shakespeare Two of Shakespeare\'s Comedies,

Shakespeare

Two of Shakespeare's comedies, a Midsummer Night's Dream and the Tempest settings alternating from what appears to be reality to the realm of dreaming. In fact, both of them are swinging from a plan to another, creating the impression of absurd that is characteristic to the dream world. Regardless of the development of events, the audience is slowly introduced to the idea that it is witnessing a dream. Once everyone is aware that everything is just a dream, any outcome becomes easier to accept. Logic becomes redundant since dreams are known to follow strange rules, completely different from any logical explanation available in what the human senses are experiencing as reality.

The setting in a Midsummer Night's Dream is first Theseus' palace. He is Duke of Athens and he is going to marry Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, soon. These characters that are supposed to represent the realm of realty are actually surreal. History does not present us with a duke of Athens and there are no records of a queen of the Amazons. The characters are completely fictional and highly symbolical. They stand for two different worlds. The duke of Athens represents the ancient classical civilization, while the queen of the Amazons stands for novelty, a new stream of blood that is going to be joined to the old and bring freshness and a new better chance for survival. The union symbolizes a dream of a world that recently discovered new parts of itself and thus the possibility of renewal. It is a dream come true, but in the sense of wishful thinking, rather than the phenomenon characteristic to the state of being asleep. Shakespeare plays with the plans and swings from one to another in manners that are not predictable so that the whole impression of being in a dream remains powerful to the end. The characters are supposed to be invisible at times and the setting changes abruptly from an interior in a castel, to that in an ordinary house in Athens to then transformed in a part of a forest. Theseus, the representative of the civilized, ancient world, is showing his wisdom and mercy to his bride to be, pointing out that instead of taking her by the tip of his sward and injuring her, he chose to be merciful and win her in a peaceful manner. The analogy with the way explorers from the old continent have discovered and chosen to respect and not to harm the new world is evident. Actually, it is more a wishful thinking from those who are wise enough to know that any new form of civilization must be treated with the utmost reverence and considered a new chance of finding out something about our universe.

The very moods and various states of the human mind are making the same physical setting change in significance and the Shakespeare masters the transitions between one setting to another so that the inner world of his characters is revealed to the public thorough the setting. The human train of thoughts is usually interrupted and it goes back and forth in time and place. The play follows this pattern and changes time and setting, rendering the completely fantastic atmosphere closer to what goes inside the human mind during day or night dreaming. Hermia is pondering the volatility of the human representation of a place, depending on the state of mind: "Before the time I did Lysander see, / Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me: / O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, / That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!" (Shakespeare, 281).

The next scene in the play is presenting the audience with the characters that are supposed to be the most down to earth and thus anchored in reality: the commoners from the working class who are preparing a play. The setting of their play within the actual play on the stage is creating the illusion that ordinary people can play the parts of kings, queens, princesses and even animals that speak as long as everyone knows that they are acting.

The following scene is set in a part of the woods. The author introduces the supernatural creatures, superior to the human understanding and able to make their presence felt only according to their wish. Although they are supernatural, they think and act as any ordinary human being, showing love, rage, jealousy, revengeful thoughts, even melancholy and despair, sometimes.

The characters, human or supernatural creatures alike, fall asleep to wake up falling in love, in an induced trance. The sleep is giving good or bad things the occasion to take over, depending on accidental events, rather than on considerations of destiny, merit or divine intervention. Oberon uses the flower he ordered Puck to find for him in order to inflict good or bad, depending on his wishes of revenge, as in the case of Titania, or of generosity, as in the case of the lovers.

In this play, nothing is as it appears to be, appearances are deceitful and the audience's eye is not allowed to get used to a setting, in order to concentrate on the world inside the minds of the characters, rather than on the material world surrounding them. It is the aspects people are usually reluctant to reveal that the master puppeteer is willing to share with the public, instead of the conventional setting people are used and comfortable with.

The moment of surprise, that makes the unexpected translation of two opposite worlds happens when Shakespeare decides to bring Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout and starveling into the world of fairies. Love can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the person one is happening to get attached to. Love is supposed to be noble and inspiring, but also blinding and destructive. Love is also transcendental and the action in the play transcends worlds in a similar manner. The movement is both ways, the characters are moving back and forth, they are experiencing the good and the bad side of being in love. People are changing and always moving from one point to anther, just as relationships are. This movement is very well realized in the play. Reality can overcome the wildest imagination.

The sleep is also the stage when a human being is at its most vulnerable point. According to popular beliefs, the good or bad spirits can overcome one, while sleeping thus rendering him or her to a side or anther. Titania is falling asleep and when she wakes up, thanks to Oberon's cruel trick, she will fall in love with a mortal with the head of an ass, thinking that she found the most beautiful creature. On top of that, his name is Bottom. At the beginning, Bottom himself is answering her words of praise: Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason / for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love / keep little company together now-a-days; -- the / more the pity that some honest / eighbours will / not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon / occasion (Shakespeare, 288).

The forest becomes the central stage for most of the rest of the play. It is the land where magic and profane meet and fate is playing its cruel tricks on humans and supernatural creatures alike.

The vulnerability of humans, which appears to be common to the world of supernatural is presented in various occasions through the play. Hermia asks Demetrius if he killed Lysander in his sleep: "Now I but chide; but I should use thee worse, / for thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse. / if thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep, / Being o'er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep, / and kill me too" (Shakespeare, 289).

The descriptions Demetrius and Titania make of the persons they artificially fall in love with are used to prove that the human mind is able to create its own universe as long as it firmly believes it holds the truth.

The moment Titania wakes up from her dream and realizes she fell in love with an ass, Oberon answers her: "Silence awhile. -- Robin, take off this head.-- / Titania, music call; and strike more dead / Than common sleep of all these five the sense" (Shakespeare, 295). He is revealing tha fact that the state of sleep, or in a wider sense, the state of blindness created by passion, rage, foolishness, or all the other mistakes humans are subject to, can lead to a perverted sense of reality. None of the five senses are to be trusted anymore, when one has resumed to consider a matter from only one side and stubbornly refused to find other possible answers. The forest becomes the place where one might loose oneself, but it also becomes the place where one can find one's rue nature.

The most important thing is the revelation that one has to follow one's heart only if the effect is not self-destructive. Imbalance, even in love, can produce negative and unwanted effects that affect more than two people.

The tempest is another Shakespearean play that is set both in the real and fantastic world. The two real are interwoven and deliberately confusing. The action of the play is swinging back and forth in time. Prospero, the Duke of Milan, is recounting for his daughter Miranda the events that led to their living on an island. The description is like he plunges deep, in a level of suppressed memories: Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it / That this lives in thy mind? What see'st thou else / in the dark backward and abysm of time? / if thou rememb'rest aught ere thou camest here, / How thou camest here thou mayst (Shakespeare, 1136).

Prospero, who has suffered the injustice of his brother trying to usurp him and take his place on the throne, has come to live on an island with his daughter. He appears to have gained supernatural powers and is able to control everyone around him, either human or supernatural. He is able to command the storm and produce a shipwreck. He is the voice of the author himself and the story takes the shape he wishes for. He is able to control every character in the play, including the forces of nature.

The characters are coming from Naples, which is a well determined place on the map, but they are rejoined in the play on an island they have never set foot before that bears no name. A completely new setting makes anything possible. People an spirits alike can find redemption here.

The redeption is made possible by the two children, Miranda and Ferdinand who are not touched by the evils of this world and fall in love.

After the shipwreck, thinking that his father died, Ferdinand is forcing himself that he will wake up soon from the nightmare: "My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up. / My father's loss, the weakness which I feel, / the wrack of all my friends, nor this man's threats / to whom I am subdued, are but light to me, / Might I but through my prison once a day / Behold this maid: all corners else o'the earth / Let liberty make use of; space enough / Have I in such a prison" (Shakespeare, 1141). The author plunges in the conscience of his characters, one of them appearing to be himself. Ferdinand is finding in Miranda his salvation from the prison of his own mind. He finds a solution to surpass the extreme conditions that led him on finding himself on a strange island, faced with his father's death: falls in love.

Various parts of the island are the setting for the play, as if everything is happening in someone's mind. The chain of events appear as if developing strangely and sometimes even surprising their author. Just like as in the case of a writers whose characters develop a life of their own letting him to be a mere recorder of their accounts, the actions undertaken by the characters are sometimes contradicting their initial thoughts and intentions. The public almost has the feeling that the players are improvising.

Gonzalo is the voice of wisdom gained from his own mistakes along the years. He is extracting the lessons everyone should learn in order to be able to reach the old age in sanity: "BESEECH you, sir, be merry; you have cause, / So have we all, of joy; for our escape / Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe / Is common; every day some sailor's wife, / the masters of some merchant, and the merchant, / Have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle, / I mean our preservation, few in millions / Can speak like us: then / wisely, good sir, weigh / Our sorrow with our comfort (Shakespeare, 1142)."

Gonzalo reveals the beauty that lays before the eyes of those who just came from the shipwreck and are inclined to see only the horror in their own tragedy. He presents them with the means of turning it into an occasion to enjoy instead of mourn. Just like the characters in a Midnight Summer's Dream, those in the Tempest appear to be subjugated by their obsessions, thus being easily subject to depression. Gonzalo is the voice of wisdom and reason. He is teaching them a lesson of reinventing themselves.

The description of the island given by Gonzalo reveals his personal view, which is, of course different than those of each of the rest. The setting differs to a great extent from one scene to another because the human mind differs when it envisages the same thing. Gonzale, though one of the wisest on the island, proves to have his own weaknesses. He is describing the island as a place before the formation of civil society, as Hobbes and Rousseau called it: "I'the commonwealth I would by contraries / Execute all things; for no kind of traffic / Would I admit; no name of magistrate; / Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, / and use of service, none; contract, succession, / Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; / No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; / No occupation; all men idle, all; / and women too, -- but innocent and pure; / No sovereignty,-- (Shakespeare, 1144)." He is admonished for his unexpected naive belief in the pure state of nature he seems to praise by those who are pointing out the advantages of living in a civil society, like the one Gonzales left to come on the island, compared to the state of nature he is now living in.