Archetypes In A Midsummer Night's Dream

All of literature is littered with symbolic archetypes, from the night to the forest to the hero to the star crossed lovers, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream is no exception. In this piece, as with every other great work of fiction, Shakespeare shapes his characters and the setting to fit into these universally recognized molds. Before analyzing this piece of literature through these archetypal eyeglasses, it is crucial to understand what archetypes are, and why they are used.
An archetype, by definition, is “the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies” (Mirriam-Webster). In other words, an archetype is a perfect example of something. Northrop Frye says that "archetypes are the recurring patterns

There are “the lovers”: Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena (there are other lovers, but these lovers are the main focus of the story). This is a comedy, so in the end they all end up with who they belong and live happily ever after as do all archetypal lovers in comedys. Shakespeare dives even more in archetypal depth than that. There are the clowns, or what might be called “the fools”: Quince, Snug, Bottom, Flute, Snout, and Starveling. They are poor in wealth, they are poor actors, and lack a reasonable amount of common sense, which is shown when they feel the need to explain themselves in the play. Any rational person knows that it is just a play and that the actors are not actually experiencing the events they are acting out, but they are "the fools," who are never rational. They decide it is a good idea to make sure the audience knows that it is not real, which is clearly absurd. Even within their group there is the ruler or leader of the fools, Bottom. He even gets his chance at being a more powerful ruler when Titania falls in love with him. He orders around the fairies like servants and is an ass both literally and figuratively, the kind of foolish ass of a ruler that would abuse his servants and subjects. Oberon is “the magician”, who is pulling the strings and basically conducting the whole play from the background. He decides who loves who, and orders his servant, Robin Goodfellow/Puck to conduct business for him. Puck is slightly mischievous, and although he messes up on accident, he doesn’t hesitate to sit back and laugh at the trouble he has caused, which earns him the archetype of “the