A Midsummer Night's Dream

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Lysander’s comment on the nature of love is an ominous warning of what will happen when the Athenians enter the woods. To Lysander, Egeus and Demetrius are the biggest threats to his relationship with Hermia. He believes that the legal consequences of Hermia’s broken engagement are the clearest example of true love’s course not running smoothly. However, the magical intervention of the fairies will soon throw Lysander’s life into turmoil. Lysander might believe that the course of true love is difficult, but he cannot possibly envisage just how right he is, in part because the obstacles he imagines are mostly external—not the inner turbulence the fairies’ magic both provokes and symbolizes. 

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

Helena’s reflections on love suggest that she is more introspective than her counterparts and lay the groundwork for the interrogation of love that will occur in Act II and Act III. Puck uses a magical potion that is applied to people’s eyes and has the power to change the objects of their desire. This flower, according to Oberon, derives its power from one of Cupid’s arrows. Helena’s comments reference Cupid, eyes, minds, and blindness, foreshadowing the potion’s—and love’s—ability to override reason and even objective reality.

“First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so to a point.”

Peter Quince is the de facto leader of the aspiring actors but struggles to assert authority in the group. Quince’s quiet seething and Bottom’s boisterous arrogance are key parts of their characters reflected in this exchange. Bottom interrupts Quince frequently, giving him advice on how to chair the meeting and assign the roles. Quince’s frustration is palpable as Bottom continues to infuriate him. Bottom’s annoying personality will go some way to justifying Puck’s spell, which transforms Bottom’s head into that of a donkey. 

“I must go seek some dewdrops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.”

The life of the fairies centers on the pursuit of beauty, humor, and entertainment. For the fairies, decorating the forest and reveling in the beauty of nature is the only thing that matters. Revealing the beauty and the poetry of nature is the reason for the fairies’ existence, tying them to the woods in both a physical and a spiritual sense. 

“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.”

Oberon enters referencing his domestic troubles and their connection to the night. The magic and strangeness of A Midsummer Night’s Dream take place during the night, casting the darkness as a more mystical and less real time. Though Oberon and Titania are currently at odds with each other, their animosity is as temporary and perhaps as insubstantial as the moonlight itself. By the time dawn arrives, they will no longer be “ill met.” 

“There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.”

The extent to which Oberon knows his wife emerges in his instructions to Puck. Oberon knows Titania so well that he not only knows where she sleeps but how to hurt her. His plan is to make her fall in love with a ridiculous person, thereby wounding her pride. Oberon seeks to punish Titania for disobeying his authority, so he wants to undermine her confidence in herself. Oberon is willing to use what he knows about his wife to hurt her and regain his authority.

“Fear not, my lord. Your servant shall do so.”

Puck promises to carry out Oberon’s orders. Though he tells Oberon to “fear not,” this confidence is misplaced. Puck is an eloquent trickster; he inspires confidence in others, even when he is playing a prank on them or failing to do as he is told. In this case, Puck instantly misinterprets the order and places the love potion on the wrong person. Puck cannot be trusted, whether he is playing a prank or carrying out an order. He is only interested in entertaining himself, so attention to detail is not one of his priorities.

“Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,

Lie farther off yet; do not lie so near.”

Hermia loves Lysander but wishes to retain a sense of propriety. Even eloping, she is aware that she has a reputation to maintain, which the implication of sex might damage. Hermia’s request that Lysander lay down at a respectable distance from her signifies that, defiant as Hermia is, she has still internalized her society’s manners and etiquette. 

“Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee. Thou art translated.”

Bottom has spent most of the play irritating Quince and undermining his authority. Nevertheless, when Bottom’s head is transformed into that of a donkey, Quince exhibits sympathy for his fellow actor even as the others run away in terror. Quince initially joins them in running away, but he returns briefly to offer Bottom his sympathy. This moment reveals Quince’s capacity for empathy, which distinguishes him from the other actors.

“What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?”

Titania wakes up and sees Bottom. Both are victims of magical pranks: The love potion on Titania’s eyes forces her to fall in love with the first creature she sees, and Puck has given Bottom a donkey’s head. Despite Bottom’s monstrous appearance, the love potion takes effect. Titania falls in love with Bottom and refers to him as an “angel” (3.2.132). The absurdity of her claim has obvious comedic effect, but it also reveals the strength of the love potion—and love itself. 

“Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note.

So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape.” 

Bottom spent the early scenes of the play claiming to be an excellent actor. Now, without realizing it, he is playing an entirely unexpected role. He becomes the romantic consort to a fairy queen; Titania becomes an audience of one, tricked into thinking that Bottom is the person he has always believed himself to be. He no longer needs to act, because he has found someone who sees him as he sees himself. 

“[T]o say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”

Bottom finds himself caught in an unexpected romantic situation with the beautiful queen of the fairies. As inexplicable magical events occur around him, he comments on the strangeness of the evening. The characters’ perceptions of reality, of reason, of love, and of truth have become so warped and twisted in the forest that they can no longer discern what is real and what is a dream. Bottom comments on this idea but does not investigate it further. Instead, he accepts the dreamlike unreality and his new normal.

“When in that moment, so it came to pass,

Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass.”

Puck and Oberon chuckle at their plan to undermine Titania’s pride. Puck explains how his spells have made her fall in love with the donkey-headed Bottom, and he reverts to his job as Oberon’s chief entertainer to drive the point home. Puck revels in the mischief he makes, so much so that his words take on a singsong quality that manifests in meter and rhyme. The blunt rhyme between “pass” and “ass” is comical, delivered in a couplet of iambic pentameter that adds a bouncing rhythm to Puck’s words.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Puck and Oberon look on the people from Athens as fools who cannot tolerate life in the magical world of the forest. To the fairies, the mortals are simply entertainment. While Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena treat their situations with great sincerity and concern, Puck and Oberon mock them. In doing so, they occupy a position comparable to the audience members the play invites to laugh at the absurd aspects of romantic love. 

“What, will you tear

Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?”

The disagreement between Helena and Hermia results from the magic spell placed on Demetrius and Lysander. Both men are suddenly infatuated with Helena, who suspects that a joke is being played on her. Hermia resents that Lysander has apparently fallen in love with Helena, who, always reflective and thoughtful, calls on Hermia to help her find a rational explanation for the situation. However, Hermia abandons any rationality in exchange for passionate anger. She wants “impatient answers” even though they are not available (3.2.288). The argument between the women reveals fractures in their friendship as well as the truth about their underlying personalities. The insecure Helena wants to reflect on strange events, while the passionate Helena demands easy answers. 

“O, when she is angry she is keen and shrewd.

She was a vixen when she went to school,

And though she be but little, she is fierce.” 

Even as Hermia insults Helena, Helena tries to understand her friend. The two women have known each other from a young age, so Helena can trace Hermia’s passionate outbursts back many years. While she does not immediately forgive Hermia, she does understand that these outbursts are a part of Hermia’s personality. Helena shows that she is an understanding and thoughtful person, even in a strange situation where her friend has turned on her. 

“When they next wake, all this derision

Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision.”

Oberon looks at the chaos he and Puck have brought to the lives of the Athenians. He reverts many of the effects of his spells and dismisses any concerns that the Athenians might struggle with the aftermath of his actions by assuming that they will remember the night as a dream. Oberon is correct but not necessarily moral. He interferes in people’s lives for his own amusement and publicly shames his own queen to win an argument. Oberon is a powerful and wise figure, but his actions suggest that he—like the fairies of European folklore—does not abide by or understand human morality. Although the rules and order of Athenian society restrict human behavior, this can sometimes be an advantage.  

“O weary night, O long and tedious night,

Abate thy hours.”

Helena’s experience in the forest is not fun or magical. Though she enters the forest with the hope that she can win Demetrius’s love, the reality of his love is not as satisfying as she hoped it would be. She treats the romantic attention she receives from Demetrius and Lysander with suspicion, and she laments the argument with her friend, Hermia. While the fairies might view the events of the evening as hilarious entertainment, Helena provides a different perspective. To her, this disruption to reality is exhausting and insincere. Now that she has the love and attention she always wanted, she simply wants to return to normality. 

“Methought I was enamoured of an ass.”

Titania is the queen of the fairies, but even she is willing to assume that the events of the previous night were nothing more than a dream. If Titania truly fell in love with a man with a donkey’s head, she would feel ashamed and embarrassed. She soothes her ego by loudly proclaiming that she was mistaken. Even the fairies would rather embrace a comforting dream than address the strangeness of reality.

“I have had a most rare vision. I had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”

Bottom tries to grapple with his experiences from the previous night, but his attempts trail away. After having his head transformed and receiving the romantic attention of the fairy queen, Bottom dismisses his memory as a dream. However, he does not believe any human could reasonably explain the contents of this dream. Language cannot adequately express everything Bottom has experienced, so his speech contains numerous dead ends and pauses. Bottom’s attempts to wrestle with reality illustrate the sheer strangeness of the magical woods and their incompatibility with the human experience. 

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.” 

As someone who embodies the order and rationality of Athens, Theseus is particularly skeptical of the story the young Athenians tell about their night in the woods. He suggests that love, among other things, makes people prone to flights of fancy, and that this explains the nobles’ experiences. However, the wording leaves open the possibility that imagination might sometimes perceive things than rationality misses. What’s more, the speech associates dreams and fantasy not only with love but with poetry, suggesting that the play itself has this capacity for “apprehension.”

“Then know that I as Snug the joiner am

A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam.”

Like all the laborers who perform the play, Snug is utterly deluded as to the extent of his talents. He believes that he will be such a convincing lion that the women in the audience will panic. This delusion creeps into the performance, as Snug explains to the audience that he is not actually a lion. His comments draw attention to the inherent unreality of the play and accidently reflect on the nature of reality itself. No one in the audience can be truly certain that what they are seeing or what they have experienced is real.

“Not a mouse

Shall disturb this hallowed house.

I am sent with broom before,

To sweep the dust behind the door.” 

Puck claims that he will be returning peace to the palace of Athens and that he will clean the house, removing the dust with a broom. The dust symbolizes the chaos he has brought to the lives of the Athenians, and the cleaning Puck provides is not an actual cleaning service but a way to magically undo the damage that he has done. He removes (most of) the spells he has cast and brings general peace and quiet to the sleeping city of Athens. Puck may never actually touch a broom, but he metaphorically cleans up the mess he and Oberon have made.