A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare’s treatment of illusion and reality

A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare’s treatment of illusion and reality

in the play

A Midsummer Nights Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare,

it is a play about lovers and includes madness, mayhem, magic and

illusion. The title tells us of the inevitable confusion to come, as

in Elizabethan times ‘A Midsummer Night’ was a festival linked with

mayhem and chaos, and the fact it is a ‘dream’ conjures up ideas of

illusion and fantasy.

The play has two settings, Athens which represents reality, order and

daylight and the woods, the world of the fairies, which symbolize

illusion, magic, and a place of darkness.

There are three main groups of characters the courtiers, the workmen

and the fairies whose actions form four different plots within the

play.

1. The wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta

2. The love affairs between Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena

3. The workmen’s play, its planning, rehearsal and performance

4. The quarrel between Oberon and Titania

A Midsummer Nights Dream itself is an illusion, and to enjoy it you

must temporarily suspend reality.

Love is an important theme in the play, whether it is true love or

induced by magic; it inhibits people’s ability to distinguish what is

real or simply an illusion.

The play begins in Athens, with the preparations for the forthcoming

marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta Queen of the

Amazons. The use of these characters at the beginning of the play

gives it a real sense of importance. Egeus enters with a complaint

against his daughter Hermia; she refuses to wed Demetrius who has her

father’s consent to marry her, but Hermia is in love with Lysander.

Egeus believes his daughter could not possibly truly love L...

... middle of paper ...

...thing beautiful and magical.

There are references throughout the play to moonlight; this helps to

set up the nighttime scenes, as the play would originally have been

played in the daytime. The moon was thought to affect people’s

behaviour. This idea is portrayed in the play; the characters act

irrationally during the nighttime scenes, and appear to gain clarity

as the daytime returns. The young lovers awake, unsure of what they

have experienced, and believe they have simply been dreaming.

Puck has the final speech in the play and speaks directly to the

audience; he refers to himself and his fellow actors as shadows within

a dream, this reminds us that we have been part of an illusion just

like the characters in the play. He ends asking the audience to clap

this signals the end of the performance, and the illusion created by

‘A Midsummer Nights Dream’.