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A
Midsummer Night's Dream
SYNOPSIS
Having
defeated her people, Theseus, Duke of Athens, is to wed the Amazon
queen, Hippolyta. His enraged counsellor Egeus suddenly interrupts
the pre-wedding preparations by asking for judgement on his daughter
Hermia, who has refused his order to marry the young nobleman Demetrius.
Theseus upholds Egeus and the law, which insists that Hermia must
obey her father or choose between death and a nunnery. Nevertheless,
Hermia decides to elope with Lysander, the man she truly loves; and
the two lovers confide their plans to Helena. Helena in turn tells
Demetrius, with whom she is desperately in love, and the four young
Athenians arrive at various points of a wood near the city.
Yet
this forest is enchanted, and in it Oberon, king of the fairies,
quarrels with his queen Titiania over the possession of a changeling
boy. Seeking to punish Titania for her obstinacy, he orders his servant,
the mischievous Puck, to obtain the juice of a magic flower which,
when trickled into the fairy queen’s eyes, will make her fall
in love with the first person she sees on waking. Later, having overheard
Helena pleading with the hard-hearted Demetrius to return her affections,
he instructs Puck to drop the love-juice into Demetrius’s eyes
as well. But Puck confuses him with the sleeping Lysander, who, woken
by Helena, falls instantly in love with her! Puck tries to correct
his mistake, but he slips up again, and Demetrius is suddenly also
besotted with a now highly suspicious Helena.
The
lovers are not alone in the magical forest, however. A group of Athenian
artisans have formed an unlikely amateur dramatics troupe, and are
rehearsing the play Pyramus and Thisbe, which they
are eager to present at the Duke’s wedding celebrations. Puck
discovers them, and impishly gives an ass’s head to their leader,
a weaver called Bottom. It is he whom Titania
first sees (and adores!) when she wakes, and she leads him off to
her fairy bower.
Meanwhile,
Demetrius and Lysander fight over Helena, who believes she is the
victim of a cruel joke designed to humiliate her. Hermia is also
incredulous at her lover’s change of heart, and the four young
nobles proceed to brawl and quarrel until exhausted. Oberon’s
magic eventually unravels all, and as Theseus and Hippolyta’s
wedding day dawns, the Duke reverses his judgement and matches Hermia
with her Lysander and Helena with her Demetrius. Bottom and his troupe
perform their unintentionally hilarious play to the assembled court,
while Titania and Oberon are themselves reconciled, before Puck finally
urges the audience’s applause. Shakespeare’s
most persistently popular comedy, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream is much more than a piece of gentle fairy-fun. While
it is of course brilliantly entertaining, the play’s concern
with the anguish of unrequited desire is not merely comic, and Shakespeare
was investigating the uncanny wonder of dreams centuries before Freud.
As we laugh, we are encouraged to examine the nature of illusion
and reality; and it is an indication of his genius that Shakespeare
could write a side-splitting parody of love-drama (in the mechanicals’ performance
of Pyramus and Thisbe), just as Elizabethan audiences
were weeping at the intense tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. |
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