A Midsummer Night's Dream

PLOTS

The play has three interacting plots: the first is the imminent marriage [and the sealing of a war victory] between Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons. A framework in which the play begins and ends; one might say, the timeline of the play and its ambassador [scholars believe that the play once was commissioned for an aristocratic wedding]. The second  are the intricate love stories among four youths fleeing into the woods to be united in true love beyond rigid patriarchal rules which is required for love relationships by the legislation of the city of Athens. The third storyline is the quarrel in the same forest between Oberon, the King of Fairies and his beloved Titania, the Queen of Fairies about her refusing to give up to Oberon her Indian changeling boy, whom Oberon wishes to have as his knight.

A secondary but significant subplot is the male theatre company from the city – some “rude mechanicals” - who have taking advantage of the peace in the woods (from urban residents' curious eyes), and are busy rehearsing a play they want to perform at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding.

In this forest outside Athens the plots are linked together during a night of different phases due to Oberon's resourceful intervention by means of Robin Goodfellow (The Fairy Servant to Oberon). Using different herbal drugs Robin gets the male youths to choose their right sweetheart and Titania to hand over the changeling to Oberon. This latter incident is maybe altogether Robin's profit who, on a whim, or the speed of a thought, implicitly take advantage of the situation and help his master in making Titania fall in love, due to the magic juice Oberon has bedewed her eyelids, with a creature with a head of an ass on the body of a man [a Shakespeare's general tribute to Greek mythology and The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, but in particular paying tribute to Ovid's Metamorphoses and Theseus fight against Eurytus, the centaur, at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia]. Robin frankly transforms Bottom's head, the boaster of theatre company, into an ass's; the moment Titania awakens and looks upon the monster she is lost, in love. Oberon mocks and scolds her for betraying him, she gives in, and as a gift of reconciliation she hands him the Indian boy.

Another scene of reconciliation arises when Theseus - early in the morning of the day of his and Hippolyta's nuptial ceremony - with his hunting party encounter the sleeping youths, maybe at the edge of a forest brow [by the no-man's land of the rural areas from where the fairies once were forced to flee, maybe another Shakespeare's tribute - [perhaps a performed political statement] - to the old cultivated land and folklore as rigid laws had nullified; or just a solemn reminder to the audience about the importance of fairy tales in keeping the wheel of life turning].

The nuptial celebrations with the reconciled love couples bring together all events in the Duke's palace in the city of Athens;  the play of Pyramus and Thisbe performed by Bottom [- drawer] and “the rude mechanicals” is the prelude of the wedding night and the fairies' blessings of the bride beds.

A DREAM?

[a bad dream awoke me this very morning; I dreamt I was climbing a steep mountain, the nano second before falling into oblivion I woke up with a heart beating and meandering like an alien inside my chest]

“But, however much A Midsummer Night's Dream is 'like a dream' it is not one'' (Holland 4)

As I read the play “A midsummer night's dream” there is just one, what I should call, typical dream; and even as Peter Holland puts it: “It [the play] contains only one description of something that may unequivocally be taken to be a dream, one ‘real’ dream, Hermia’s dream of the serpent.”(ibid.)

That conclusion do even I reach reading when Hermia wakes up in horror from her bed of sleep in a forest glade, believing that she has a serpent crawling upon her breast, which she cries out to Lysander, her friend of love, who a moment ago had his sleeping bed right next to hers.

Maybe she thinks she is still dreaming when she doesn't get his answer; how is it possibile that her great Love has deserted her, just left her alone - impossible! It must be the nightmare that still haunts her.

Here I believe that nightmare and true dream go hand in hand for Hermia. As readers, we know that Lysander did betray her with Helena when Hermia some moments ago still were sleeping and therefore we can infer that the serpent, she perceives having upon her bosom, probably is imaginary but has followed her from the dream world through the transition phase she passes between sleep and wake; the serpent is the horror that made her interrupt her sleep to get back to world of the living - and there she discovers yet another horror, Lysander's absence, which she fears will be her death unless she doesn't find him:

HERMIA: Help me, Lysander, help me! do thy best
 To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!
 Ay me, for pity! what a dream was here!
 //
 Lysander! what, removed? Lysander! Lord!
 //
 Either death or you I’ll find immediately. (Shakspeare 2.2: 151-162)

We do not know if Shakespeare had read any work on classical divination when he wrote his own dream-play, but educated men, as William, had certainly some knowledge of theories in terms of dreams. E.g. Artemidorus work, The Judgement or Exposition of Dreams,was published in English for the first time 1606 (A midsummer night's dream, 1600), earlier it existed in Greek, Latin, French and German (Holland 7). But, anyway, its thinking had been in circulation in Europre since antiquity, in a classical study named the Oneirouitica by Artemidorus of Daldis written in the second century AD (ibid., 5).

Artemidorus emphasizes, as Peter Holland claims, that a dream-analysis must not only take into account what happening in the dream but also the name of the dreamer, his or her occupation, habits and attitudes.

Artemiodoru's basic distinction is between two types of dreams, a predictive and a non-predictive, the latter he terms enhypnion; from humans themselves and their anxious daily life: lovers may dream of their beloved, hungry people dream of food and thirsty people dream of drink, to obvoiusly connected to daily life and therefore without interest (ibid., 6). A predictive dream (or vision), which he terms oneiros, occurs to not anxious people and is about something not connected directly to daily life, as in Hermia's case, having a serpant crawling upon her bosom.

Hermia's dream is predictive and allegorical, which means that it signify replacement. Holland states that “Artemidorus does offer a precise explanation for Hermia's dream; dreaming that a serpent is "'entwined about someone and binds him . . . foretells imprisonment' and 'portends death for the sick' (ibid., 7).

Holland hypothesises that Artemidorus “would have been proud to interpret” Hermia's “rich oneiros [dream]” (ibid., 16).

“A freudian reading of the dream (which of course Shakespeare was unaware of) would find in the object of the phallic [serpent] attac, Hermias breast and heart, a displacement from her vagina // the sexual desire that Hermia has for him [Lysander] but that she has refused to acknowledge” (ibid., 14).

This modern interpretation of the dream has hit performances in recent times, e.g. Alexandru Darie's production for the Comedy Theatre of Bucharest [1991], where the audience saw a Hermia who, in her desire, with great effort, succeeded in keeping her clothes on (ibid.).

Round ups of Dream Chats in the play, some used in metaphores others to disguise, deny or to make believe in metamorphoses;

DREAMS ...

... as an enjoyable pastime:

HIPPOLYTA: [before the nuptial ceremony] Four nights will quickly dream away the time; (1.1.7-8)

.., volatile, fast and unnoticed:

LYSANDER: [about true love] Swift as a shadow, short as any dream (1.1.144)

…; daydreaming about something that seems unattainable:

HERMIA: [destiny of love] As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers (1.1.150-155)

… to trick that reality is – a dream, if the former didn't or doesn't deliver expectations or beliefs about how reality should be constituted, to make foolish human mortals let go of the present reality letting it fade away like a dream into oblivion, to disguise mad spirits' blunders or future elaborations:

OBERON: // When they next wake, all this derision Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision, (3.2.370-371)

OBERON: // May all to Athens back again repair And think no more of this night’s accidents But as the fierce vexation of a dream. (4.1.67-8)

[the morning before the nuptial ceremonies]
DEMETRIUS: These things seem small and undistinguishable
HERMIA: Methinks I see these things with parted eye,
When every thing seems double.
HELENA: [about Demitrius] Mine own, and not mine own.
DEMETRIUS: Are you sure
That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream.
//
DEMETRIUS: [reassured]Why, then, we are awake: let’s follow him
And by the way let us recount our dreams. (4.1.186 -197)

HIPPOLYTA: ’Tis strange my Theseus, that these lovers
speak of.
THESEUS: More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains (5.1.1-5)

ROBIN: If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend (5.1.414-421)

..: the pleasure was too wonderful to even leave a trace of bottom that it really occurred:

BOTTOM: // I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. (4.1.201-204)

.., belonging to the saturated silence of the night when the world is resting for a new day to come:

ROBIN: By the triple Hecate’s team, From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, (5.1.375-377)

… were true!

TITANIA: My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.
OBERON: There lies your love. (4.1.75-77)

HERMIA'S DREAM

If we take in consideration that Hermia actually sleeps in a forest where all kinds of wild animals rummage around it doesn’t need to be so surprising if something she worries about worms its way into her dream.

It is true that she doesn't express any concern for her night camp; instead Shakespeare let Titania's train inform us about it when their queen are going to a night's rest next to the place Hermia lain herself down to sleep. It seems that the Queen of Fairies requires a lullaby to calm her worries about all that strange fauna moving around her an Hermia's surroundings:

[She lies down. Fairies sing and dance]
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen. Philomel, with melody Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: Never harm, Nor spell nor charm  (Shakespeare 2.2.9-17

One of the ancient great thinkers on dream analysis was Artemidorus, who said two important things about this context: a dream-analysis must not only take into account what happening in the dream but also the name of the dreamer, occupation, habits and attitudes, and the circumstances for the time being; lovers may dream of their beloved, hungry people dream of food and thirsty people dream of drink. Artemidorus considered dreams containing scenes from peoples anxious daily life without interest on dream analysis (Holland 1994: 6).

If one were to highlight Hermia's dream in that perspective, the serpent she dreams about is nothing more than the plausible serpent she was afraid of before she went to sleep (if one can go to sleep with such a fear - on the other hand, it goes to sleep a little to the left and right most of the time in that wood that night, and a little too unconcernedly, so to speak).

DEMITRIUS - a mortal's mirror

In my opinion Demitrius still being “under the spell of the flower's juice” is but just natural in the world where we all foolish mortal lives. Demitrius, like all the rest of us, have had his love elixirs during his lifetime, but as we all know, sometimes it just doesn't become the way we wish; for the moment it seems that Robin did the right thing, though.

Demitrius is just the Mirror Shakespeare is holding up to us, the crowd, telling us not to lose hope, that fairies one day or another will try their best to put things back in order, if needed.

The fact that we foolish mortals finally have had a glimpse of a moment how things really are codified is Shakespeare's Mirror-play simply an evidence of, if  Shakespeare "should have restored" Demitrius, Shakespeare would simultaneously have annulled the world that “A midsummer night's dream” portrays and that would be saying, as everyone understands, everything is nothing but a dream – a poetical suicide, thus.

Works cited

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.. - A midsummer night's dream / William Shakespeare ; edited by Peter Holland.. - 2008[1994]. - ISBN: 978-0-19-953586-6 (pbk) Harvard

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., date last updated (19 February 2013). Web. Date accessed (18 February 2013). <http://en.wikipedia.org/>


PS About Bikes & Robin/Puck in the Movie from 1999 featuring Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer

A MOVIE audience never would let themselves be fooled into believing that upper class youths would leave a town without means of transportation, seven leagues is a pretty far trip walking; a plain way to present, as well as to convince a MOVIE audience that the character Robin Goodfellow is not human but a curious little rascal that will put things upside down; in a scene in this movie, while some youngsters are sleeping, he examines one of their bikes, as he never have seen one before (this is a strange adaption though, if Robin originally was, as in my opinion, partly representing a trickster [like Loki]; a puck, a lob pushing/forcing people to invent cultural artefacts, like bikes...).