In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the social order of both the fairy world and of Athens is disrupted and complicated by a series of mishaps, conflicts, and mistakes. In the fairy world, the trouble starts between Oberon (King of the Fairies) and his wife Titania. They are fighting over a changeling, which Oberon wants in his retinue but which Titania refuses to give up as it belonged to one of her devotees. The squabble causes the fairy king and queen to separate. In Athens, the problems abound as well: two young lovers, Hermia and Lysander, are fleeing Athens because of Egeus (Hermia’s father), who has refused to assent to their marriage (Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius). Hermia does not wish to wed Demetrius; Helena loves Demetrius; but Demetrius wants nothing to do with Helena (he has loved Helena once but now has eyes for Hermia). Demetrius follows after Hermia and Lysander into the woods, and Helena after Demetrius so that all four end up getting lost in the forest, where quarrels ensue. Also in the forest is a group of amateur actors attempting to rehearse a play in honor of the wedding of Duke Theseus and the Amazon Queen Hippolyta. The amateur actors, the fairies, the four lovers and the Duke and Queen all end up being involved in the resolution of the multiple conflicts of the play, and social order is restored—thanks to the help of Oberon and his trusty servant Puck. The restoration of social order has everything to do with the work of the fairies and the special love potion that Puck puts on the eyes which helps the lovers to sort out their problems. This paper will explore how social order is re-established through the intercession of the fairies (with some very necessary albeit indirect help from winged Cupid) by examining a few select scenes from the play in detail. From the beginning, the indirect role of Cupid in solving the social conflicts in the play is announced by Hermia—the true lover of Lysander. After Egeus has sued to Theseus to force his daughter to marry Demetrius (or die), Lysander and Hermia plot their escape. Hermia announces in an act of foreshadowing, “I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow, / By his best arrow with the golden head… / To-morrow truly will I meet with thee” (1.1.176-185). Her reference to Cupid’s bow sets the stage for Oberon who will use a flower, pierced by one of Cupid’s missed arrows, to win back his own wife as well as to set things right among the four young...

It is also quite fortuitous that Oberon knows of this flower (which in effect works just like one of Cupid’s own arrows to make the person touched by it fall in love with what is first seen after being touched). Without out, the complications and social order would not be restored. Theseus has already announced by the end of Act 1, Scene 1, that he knows of Demetrius’s love-making to Helena: “I must confess that I have heard so much, / And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof; / But, being over-full of self-affairs, /
My mind did lose it” (1.1.116-119). He admits that being consumed with his own upcoming wedding he has not taken the time to address Demetrius’s misbehavior. Thanks to the intervention of the fairies, Theseus does not end up having to force anyone’s hand—but the social order would surely have been disrupted to a much more exacerbating extent had the happy ending concocted by Oberon and Puck not allowed things to work out for the good for all involved.

Oberon tells Puck of the flower pierced by Cupid’s arrow—“love-in-idleness” (2.1.540)—as it is called by maidens (so says Oberon). Oberon orders Puck to retrieve the flower that it might be applied to Titania’s eyes while she sleeps. Oberon’s plan is to have her fall in love with a “lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, / On meddling monkey, or on busy ape” (2.1.554-555) and then get the changeling (she’ll be too in love to care). When Oberon sees the quarreling lovers, he decides to do what Theseus did not: compel Demetrius to love Helena. Oberon orders Puck to use the same flower and apply it to the eyes of the Athenian youth Demetrius so that when he wakes he will see Helena and be in love with her. Puck mistakenly applies the love potion to the eyes of Lysander so that he falls in love with Helena and spurns Hermia. This creates quite the confusion—but Oberon and Puck eventually sort it out and apply the right potions to the right set of eyes so that both Hermia and Helena are satisfied in the end.

The trick plays out equally well for Oberon regarding his own wife. The juice is applied to Titania’s eyes when she sleeps and she ends up falling for one of the amateur actors working on his part in the woods as well. The actor is named Bottom, and Puck has played an extra bit of mischief on him by giving him a donkey’s head (which frightens off…