“And yet, to say the truth, reason and love/keep little company together nowadays” (3.1.137-138). This excerpt from Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, describes the ultimate unpredictability of love and the mark it leaves on its victims. In the play, the characters blindly stumble about completely entangled in the comedic web Oberon and Puck weave. Trudging through the woods, Hermia, Demetrius, Lysander, and Helena encounter obstacles they must overcome in order for their true love to persevere. Shakespeare contrasts darker elements of the woods with the lighter ones of civilized life in Athens through the juxtaposition of night and day, the whimsical fairy land and mortal society.
Throughout the play, a definite tone of domineering masculinity prevails. Theseus underlines this concept when he says to Hermia; “To you your father should be as a god,/One that composed your beauties, yea, and one/To whom you are but as a form in wax,/By him imprinted, and within his power/To leave the figure or disfigure it./Demetrius is a worthy gentleman” (1.1.47-52). Theseus creates a false sense of man's ownership of women. Rather than obediently abide by her father and Theseus' wishes, Hermia decides to run away with Demetrius, clearly expressing her wishes to marry whom she pleases with no regard whatsoever to Athenian law. The headstrong attitude of women in A Midsummer Night's Dream completely undermines the chauvinistic one the men try to project. To Theseus' earlier statement of a father's control of his daughter's destiny, Hermia flippantly replies, “So is Lysander” (1.1.53). Instead of displaying fear in front of Theseus, she stands her ground in the name of her true love for Lysander. Theseus continues to threaten her, carefully picking his words to best frighten her; “Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,/You can endure the livery of a nun,/For aye to be in shady cloister mewed,/To live a barren sister all your life” (1.1.69-72). Theseus' use of the word “barren” rather than “chaste” in describing the possible lifestyle that lies ahead of Hermia, adds a more daunting tone to his speech emphasizing the obvious differences between men and women.
In the woods, Shakespeare highlights blatant differences between nature's elemental components as well. For example, the several references to the moon's powerful sway in relation to subjects concerning love and other passionate emotions such as anger, violence, and possession, contrasts to daylight's warm ability to literally shed light on matters and clear up confusion. “Helen, to you our minds we will unfold/Tomorrow night, when Phoebe doth behold/Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass,/Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass/(A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,/Through Athens' gates we have devised to steal” (1.1.208-213). Demetrius and Hermia's plan their passionate escape for nightfall, when emotions peak and shadows obscure all reasonable vision. Towards the end of the play, all the lovers seek only to sleep until daybreak, when confusing matters will resolve themselves and all will return to normal; “Come, thou gentle day./For if but once thou show me thy gray light,/I'll find Demetrius and revenge this spite” (3.2.418-420). Lysander looks to the promise of daybreak as means to settle the pandemonium Puck and Oberon create amongst the lovers. Helena too finds comfort in the approaching day; “O weary night, O long and tedious night, /Abate thy hours. Shine comforts from the east, /That I may back to Athens by daylight” (3.2.431-433). Helena feels mocked and assaulted by the on-goings of the night and yearns for daybreak, something familiar and certain, to resolve the issues.
The mischievous Puck and his master Oberon operate by night. Their world, one full of fairies, fantasy, and potent potions, coincides perfectly with the shifting shadows and concealing darkness of the night. Where the mortals in the play ultimately desire daybreak, the fairies relish the nighttime as a stage for their impish magic. Toying with the concept of dreaming at night, Shakespeare presents the fairies, in particular Puck, as the masterminds behind dreams, as mortals are disadvantaged during their sleep. Bottom admits to this disadvantage in his closing speculation on the night's proceedings; “I have had a/dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. /Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream” (4.1.203-205). Puck continues his pieced-together logic with a stark contradiction; “I will get Peter Quince to write a/ballet of this dream” (4.1.212-213) that ironically underscores man's lack of sound reason and analysis.
Shakespeare explores the deeply passionate and somewhat forbidden aspect of love through symbolic tainting and discoloring of flowers. Flowers, commonly thought of as a symbol for fertility and purity, become corrupt when “[Cupid]…loosed his love shaft smartly from his bow, /As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. /But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft/Quenched in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon,/…fell upon a little western flower,/Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound” (2.1.159-167). The visual imagery in this passage relates to the deep passion of the mortal world and the fairies' interference in that world. Shakespeare's use of the word “fiery” to describe Cupid's bow illustrates the passion behind the act of falling in love. The violent nature of love, closely intertwined with passion, shows in the purple coloring of the once white untouched flower. The resulting potion represents the instability of love as well as its power to completely envelop those who fall victim to it. Oberon's act of rubbing the juice of this flower on one's eyes to induce deep, true love shows the fairy king's ignorance regarding love and the ease with which he plays with human emotion.
The darkest aspect of love comes through in the competitive nature of Hermia and Helena when fighting over Lysander and Demetrius. The retorts between them evolve to an immature exchange of petty insults about physical stature and appearances; “And are you grown so high in his esteem/Because I am so dwarfish and so low? /How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak! /How low am I? I am not yet so low/But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes” (3.2.294-298). The violence nature of love almost conquers all reason in this scene as the women let their anger develop.
The dark aspect of love causes a meddlesome intrusion on its truer form overwhelm the characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Each character battles to overcome this interference, all the while staying true to Shakespeare's shrewd claim that “The course of true love never did run smooth…Making it momentary as a sound,/Swift as a shadow, short as any dream” (1.1.134-144).
