"...reason and love keep little company together nowadays..."

books:


	• A Midsummer Night's Dream (Signet Classics) William Shakespeare Signet Classics, 1998 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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A Masterpiece

This play was one of Shakespeares best. It was beautiful,magical and it made me laugh.The fairies were the perfect piece of magic to make this play work. I loved how Shakespeare combined the real world and the spiratual world together. My favourite character of all of Shakespeares character was definately Helena. She reminded me of myself. Shakespeare was great at showing how the course of true love never does run smooth with the four characters. I recommend this play to everyone. It was simply beautiful.

Shakespeare's Done It Again

I must say this book has really touched me, right down to my soul. I sure know that my husband loved it as well; Bill has officially become a true fan of Shakespeare's work! After reading this heartwarming comedy, my husband always manages to find a little time in his extremely busy day to settle in and take to a good book. And let me tell you, I will stand by my man!

Throughout the entire script, Shakespeare uses fine vocabulary, and incredible detail to craft a truly engaging story of love, loss, and ultimate triumph. A Midsummer Night's Dream has honestly changed me, in person and in soul; I think I'll become a Republican.

...On second thought, no.

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"...reason and love keep little company together nowadays..."

Even though in most of his comedies the entertainments are punctured by sarcastic comments and comic relief, Shakespeare, who has demonstrated keen devices of opposites, from long dignified prose to comic verse, strives not to repeat himself. Shakespeare seems to have enjoyed playing variation on a theme, dwelling on an idea (further developing an idea) hinted at in other parts of a play or in another play. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM embodies both. The play sets in Athens, in the midst of summer, which is associated traditionally (and surreptitiously) to magic. Immediately the opening act sets the romantic plot and whimsical air in motion by presenting the conflict between the young lovers and their elders.

The interesting thing is that it seems A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM could be a swinger: the situation as it stands could validly issue in either tragedy (similar circumstances in ROMEO AND JULIET, in which families thwarted what meant-to-be love) or comedy. Shakespeare quickly resolves the dilemma and provides light to the darkness of the situation. He nudges the story to a direction in which the style does not involve the audience too snuggly in the lovers' emotions. The love entanglement engenders enough body and reference to larger concepts to be viewed as image of some universal human experience: one so true-to-life that it inevitably and in no time provokes sympathy. The lovers' lines are not completely out of place in a romantic comedy because the lines are generalized: because soon after the crisis Lysander brings forward a plan by which he and Hermia may get out of their difficult situation. Hermia will neither be forced to marry Demetrius or perpetrate defiance of the pre-arranged marriage that surely promises prosecution. So the hints of pathos and possibility of tragedy echo ROMEO AND JULIET.

One of the recurring themes in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, as well as in TWELFTH NIGHT, and in LOVE LABOUR'S LOST, concerns the irrationality of love. In TWELFTH NIGHT, the gender disguise causes the confusion of love and identity of twins, and magic adopts the same course in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM as the King of Fairy decides to squeeze love juice onto Demetrius whom he has mistaken for Lysander. The idea of the tension between what people ought reasonably to feel and what in fact they do feel further gravitates to make a lasting impression. What is meant to make Demetrius requite the hapless Helena's passion takes an unexpectedly convoluted turn to anoint Lysander's eyes and he feels madly in love with Helena. Ironically he attributes this novel affection to his reason, which a mechanical later brings up in a sarcastic manner the antithesis between love and reason, whereas we know that the change has been effected by Puck's juice.

Variation of a theme that is hinted at in other parts of play is no more quintessential than the seemingly irrelevant speech that demonstrates poetic merit. The exquisite speech on irrational weather bears significance that is otherwise easily dismissed as mere decoration. So much Titania might have alluded to the inclement weather, the passionate tirade provides the ground for the idea that quarrel between the young lovers causes confusion in the seasons. For in the height of Helena's agony, she speaks about the danger of disaster and malevolent forces of nature and the caprice and irrationality of love. An atmosphere of a spell of illusion persists throughout the play, redolent of a recurrent notion of a dislocation between the senses, and between the senses and the brain. A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, shrouded by comic confusions, sheds light on lovers' failure to reason and to keep pace with their emotions.

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"The course of true love never did run smooth."

I recently re-read A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM prior to attending The Colorado Shakespeare Festival's performance of this play under the summer stars here in Boulder. Shakespeare (1564-1616) produced this romantic comedy between 1595 or 1596 and published it in the First Folio in 1623. It follows the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors under the influence of fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The play is Shakespeare's most popular and is widely performed across the world.

It play tells three stories connected by the wedding celebration of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. In the opening scene, Hermia rejects her father Egeus's request that she marry Demetrius. Rather than facing death or lifelong chastity as a nun, Hermia and her lover Lysander decide to elope. Hermia tells her best friend Helena of her plan. Helena, who has been recently rejected by Demetrius, tells him of Hermia's plan to elope. Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius all escape into the forest where they become romantically entangled under the influence of fairies.

Oberon (King of the Fairies), and his queen, Titania, arrive in the same forest. Oberon enlists the mischievous Puck (aka "Hobgoblin" and "Robin Goodfellow") to apply the magical juice from a flower to Titania's eyes while she is sleeping. The juice makes the victim fall in love with the first living thing he or she sees upon awakening. Oberon also instructs Puck to spread some juice on Demetrius's eyes. Instead, Puck puts the juice on Lysander's eyes, causing him to fall in love with Helena. To correct the error, Oberon then orders Puck to apply the juice to Demetrius's eyes, causing him to also fall in love with Helena, much to her confusion (now having two suitors).

Meanwhile, in a subplot, a band of "rude mechanicals" have been preparing a play in the forest about Pyramus and Thisbe for Theseus' wedding. Puck transforms the head of one actor, Nick Bottom, into that of an ass. When Titania is awakened by Bottom's singing, she immediately falls in love with him. Puck eventually restores Bottom's head, and lifts the spell from Lysander, but leaves Demetrius in love with Helena. The lovers conclude the night's events must have been a dream. Puck ends the play with a soliloquy.

G. Merritt

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