A Midsummer Night's Nightmare

True to form, Shakespeare, ends his play A Midsummer Night's Dream in an anticlimactic fashion. The lovers, the romantics, the lords and ladies, all come together, ready to be married, with nothing left but a falling action. But what marks the play as so strange, what allows the play to continue far beyond the end of the plot, is the play within a play. While this may seem like an amateurish add on, something simply to end the play on a high note, it is actually the epitome of the play. A Midsummer Night's Dream is not about love, but art. It is a meditation on fate, destiny, art, and the experience of it.

When searching for entertainment for the newfound lovers, the King, Theseus, is drawn not to the dramatic, nor the comic, but the absurd. The play King Theseus chooses is "A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus // And his love Thisbe; a very tragic mirth" (Fall River Press, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5.1. 60-61). King Theseus asks "How shall we find the concord of this discord" (5.1. 63). Theseus is celebrating not the logic of it, but the lack thereof. The suggestion then being art is not found in the logical, but the absurd. Even though Theseus is warned "the passion of loud laughter [is] never shed" (5.1. 73), Theseus persists, for the brilliance of the drama exists not in the actor nor the writer but the head of the viewer alone. Art then is not that which is created by the artist, but by the viewer, distilling nonsense into logic.

Consider the presence of the fairies. Throughout the play, the fairies belittle the humans for their squabbling ways. Puck goes as far as to say "Lord, what fools these mortals be" (3.2. 135). Yet what irony this is, for it is Puck himself, the trickster, which causes this madness. Puck may blame fate, stating "Then fate o'er rules; that, one man holding troth, // a million fail, confounding oath on oath" (3.2. 98-99), but it is he who has caused such trouble. He mistook one Athenian for another and caused all the squabbling between the lovers. Shakespeare is suggesting even these most powerful beings, magical fairies, are little more than human. Oberon squabbles with Titania, Puck squabbles with all. Fate is nothing more than a bumbling fool no greater than any human.

So the fairies are a sort of allegory for the writer of the play. Each writer, each creator, is endowed with the belief of complete control. The artist thinks themself a sort of God, playing with the lives of men. But this control quickly fades, diving into chaos. When artists force a belief, force an idea, as Bottom and his men try to do, they fail miserably, for their goal is inevitably lost.

But in this failure, there is a saving grace, for the opinions of the author matter little to the audience. It is no coincidence Puck ends the play "If we shadows have offended" (5.1. 327). The fairies are not real. They are no more than a figment of the imagination. The creation is built by the artist, the light being not the creator but the art itself. The shadows then, much like fate, or destiny, is not that which exists, but that which one chooses to exist. It is an excuse to succumb to the banality of life and all that it may offer.

Sleep then is an intriguing form to induce in the lovers. It "...consistently signals bodily and mental vulnerability and subjection to other's control..." (Lewin, 2020). In a certain sense, the lover's become doomed to their fate. Dreams are not that which one chooses, but that which happens to oneself. It is an experience itself that cannot be changed, but only the outcome of it. So is art in a similar manner that cannot be changed. No matter how many times one views A Midsummer Night's Dream, it will always end the same. It is the experience, however, the expression of it, how one looks back at the play which changes. This then can be likened to the experience of the lovers. Cursed with the petals of romance, they are slaves to their love, to their desires, to their dreams. But when this curse is broken, when it is taken away from three of the four lovers, the love stays.

The love, however, stays not because of the experience, for the curse is broken, but the reminiscing of the experience, reconsidering, is what keeps them together. Put in the context of reality, all is well, for, despite the nonsense of the fairies, it is the choice of the lovers and the lovers alone to marry. Neither fate nor destiny nor any author can confound true love. Only the players, only the actors in this game called life, can make the decision.

Demetrius, however, offers a peculiar predicament. Unlike the other lovers, his curse is unbroken. At the end of the play, he is as much a slave to fate as the others are its masters. This is not Shakespeare bemoaning fate, nor the curse of destiny, nor the writer, but suggesting that the author, the artist, the creator, for the fairies themselves are but stand-ins for that very thing, can and does have a profound effect on the audience, and may even sway a mind or two. This, however, is not the fate of many, but few, so only one of the four lovers leaves as cursed as they were before.

But even in Demetrius, this curse is broken, for when he watches the play within the play, he is as amused as the others. This amusement comes not from the play itself, but the interaction with it. As Theseus says "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the // worst are no worse, if imagination amend them" (5.1. 218-219). Again Theseus' suggests that art is not found in the artist, but the beholder. Moreover, the art itself is but a shadow, and the experience is the light. Demetrius could not break his curse because he was under the assumption that the curse itself was the truth, the fact. As Demetrius says "Are you sure // That we are awake? It seems to me // That yet we sleep, we dream" (4.1. 140-143). Demetrius, unlike the others, can't separate the dream, art, from reality, his experience. So he is not yet relieved of his curse, for he cannot interact with the art without first separating himself from it.

The failure of Bottom and his fellow playwrights is their lack of imagination. They so fear confusion they overexplain every single thing that goes on in the play. So Bottom interrupts himself, stating "No, in truth, sir, he should not. Deceiving me // is Thisbe's cue" (5.1. 224-225). This is the true failure of the play. It is not that it is badly written, the failure is not in the artists' lack of skill, but rather their refusal to invest in this false truth. But where they fail, the lovers succeed, for their imagination fares far beyond that of the unskilled playwrights.

Art then, as Shakespeare suggests, is not for the elites. Shakespeare is democratizing art. It is not a question of wealth or privilege or education, but simply a question of imagination. Yes, the playwrights are nothing more than day laborers, and yes, in many ways, they do fail. But the failure does not come from their lack of knowledge. Their failure does not come from their inability to become nobility. Their failure is only that of imagination. And with imagination, even the lowliest of peasants, from Bottom to Theseus, can be a grand artist.

But at the end of the play Puck recognizes that he is but a figment of the imagination, that the play is nothing more than a false creation, and this seems rather counterintuitive. It's as if Shakespeare is suggesting none of this matters, that the viewers' ideas and opinions are nothing more than squabble. But this is not the case. This is not simply tongue-in-cheek. As Puck says, it is "No more yielding but a dream" (5.1. 330). Shakespeare is recognizing the falseness of a play, the fakeness of art, and suggesting, much like Theseus, the viewer must make what they will of it. If the viewer loves it or hates it, it is not the fault of the playwright, but the audience alone.

Imagination, then, is the key to creation. Fate, destiny, fairies, are shadows, simply figments of one own's imagination. If one strives to create, it is not a question of skill or wealth or God, but simply a matter of dedication to the art of pretending, of falseness, of fakeness, of not being. When one can indulge not in reality, but the lack thereof, then art can be at its best, and the creation can be experienced in its truest form.

Lewin, J. (2020). Sleep, Vulnerability, and Self-Knowledge in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Forming Sleep, 109-126. DOI:10.5325/j.ctv14gpd4q.9