A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an enchanting comedy that presents many dominant views widespread in the society of Shakespeare’s time. Ideas of love and romance are central to the play, and notions of gender and male-dominance prevalent at the time surface throughout the text. Modern audiences may find such notions confronting, whereas Jacobeans might find other elements of the play such as the rampant disorder, uncomfortable.

Love is one of the central ideologies present in this text. Shakespeare endues love with numerous traits and flaws, elaborating on the nature of love with statements made by the young lovers. Through Helena‘s soliloquy, Shakespeare describes many of the frustrating characteristics attributed to love. When considering this monologue in terms of Jacobean ideals of order and sensibility, some elements of love seem contradictory to such ideals.

‘(…) Things base and vile, folding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity:

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

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:

Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:

And therefore is Love said to be a child,

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjured every where :(…)’

Helena describes many of love’s apparent qualities, one such quality is love’s ability to affect one’s reason and judgement; to take ‘Things base and vile, folding no quantity,’ and then to ‘transpose’ them ‘to form and dignity’. This phrase not only suggests that love can make ugly things seem beautiful, but that love is greater than reason, and can overpower a man or woman’s ability to be logi...

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... time could never question the leadership and wisdom of men.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream many widely accepted beliefs in the society of Shakespeare’s time concerning the nature of love and particularly the roles of men and women, are inseparably linked with concepts of universal order and balance. Although at certain points there may be scenarios or ideas presented that would appear strange or unnatural to Jacobean audiences, overall this play reinforces the values, beliefs and attitudes of Elizabethan society. The ideals presented in this play are far more foreign to contemporary audiences, with notions of love and gender within play seeming to be in fact quite unnatural in modern society. The complexity of this play mirrors the complexity of love itself, and reveals that relationships between men and women have always had their issues, conflicts and trials.