I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact.
These are the words of Duke Theseus near the end of Shakespeare’s luminous and enchanting play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Theseus’s speech invokes some of the play’s central issues, principally about the nature of love, which can seem at times like unreasonable madness, full of change and impermanence.The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.
The madman sees things that aren’t there. But it’s also true that a person may appear mad simply because he or she has seen something real that no one else has. This is what links the apparent madman, the poet, and the lover: the experience of things “unknown.” They are mysteries, like the mystery of being in love. Perhaps this apparent madness is really a deeper insight into reality, a “most rare vision,” in the words of another character from the play, Bottom the Weaver.When we love, we see qualities of the beloved that others aren’t been privileged to see, much like how the poet communicates what he sees about the world through his art. Theseus’s speech paradoxically criticizes and praises poetry, which takes “the form of things unknown”—such as the mystery of love—and gives them “a local habitation and a name.”
Shakespeare does precisely this in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He explores and celebrates the unfathomable subject of love through a delightful, lighthearted, yet profound comedy set in ancient Athens and the woodland fairy realm.
Mixed Up Lovers
Written in about 1595, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” combines several plots into one. Duke Theseus is preparing for his wedding to Hippolyta, when his subject named Egeus comes to him with a complaint: Egeus’s daughter, Hermia, is in love with a young man named Lysander and won’t marry her father’s choice, Demetrius. To avoid the Athenian law that demands a girl marry her father’s choice, Hermia and Lysander run away to the forest, which happens to be the realm of the fairy king Oberon, and his queen, Titania. They’re having their own marital conflict.
To further complicate the matter, a girl named Helena is in love with Demetrius, who used to swear that he loved her back.
Oberon sends his servant, Puck, to use a magical flower to make Demetrius fall in love with Helena again in order to resolve the lovers’ conflict. But Puck accidentally puts the juice of the flower on Lysander’s eyes, who’s asleep. Upon waking, he sees Helena and falls in love with her. Demetrius gets subsequently “juiced” as well.
Eternal Themes of Love
As Shakespeare scholar Gideon Rappaport wrote in his book “Appreciating Shakespeare,” this play “delves sweetly but profoundly into the mystery of human love. Do we love by choice or necessity? Do we love this person and not that because of conscious preference? Unconscious predisposition? Nature? Fate? Hormones? ... social expectation? Magic? ... The play doesn’t exactly answer these questions. But it meaningfully and joyfully reconciles us to the irreducible mystery of love.”Two words in the play’s title offers insights into its themes: “dream” and “night.” The word “dream” suggests several meanings. Sometimes we use it as a synonym for mere “illusion” or “fantasy.” It also can be tied to the concept of “vision.” In the Bible many people receive visions in their dreams. These communicate divine truths, things ordinarily above human knowledge or reason. The word “dream” points to how love can be both “illusory” when false and “visionary” when true; indeed, it can be the key to seeing things as they really are.
The nighttime atmosphere is established through moonlight in the play. The moon and moonlight imagery that dominate the play suggest changeableness and instability since the moon has long been seen as a sign of change and even madness. Prior to the play’s resolution, we see great inconstancy in the young suitors, Demetrius and Lysander, who profess their love for one maiden one minute and the other the next.
Shakespeare also associates the moon imagery with chastity. In Act II, Scene I, Oberon says “‘But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft/ Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon.'” By its definition, chastity is something stable and determined that resists impulsiveness. Chastity in marriage, moreover, is linked to fidelity to one’s spouse. In the references to the moon, then, we have both changeableness and stability.
This pattern of imagery again suggests the paradox in love. When uncoupled from reason or virtue, it’s intemperate and changeable. But when committed and guarded by chastity, it becomes something permanent.
The will of man is by his reason sway'd; And reason says you are the worthier maid. Things growing are not ripe until their season So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason; And touching now the point of human skill, Reason becomes the marshal to my will And leads me to your eyes.
Under the influence of the flower, Lysander rationalizes his new “love.” “I used to be young and immature, but now that my reason is fully formed, I made the rational calculation that you are the better maiden and decided to love you instead of Hermia.”
We all know that’s not how love works. Nor is it what really happened to Lysander. The dramatic irony of the scene is that we know Lysander is actually under a magic spell, pure and simple, yet he assumes his newfound love for Helena is the result of some syllogistic, rational process. It’s self-deception, and absurdly funny.
There’s a deeper truth here, though. Man’s will isn’t always swayed by reason, whatever he might tell himself. We sometimes make irrational and inexplicable choices. Love isn’t the product of logical deduction, though reason is involved in understanding the good qualities of our beloved. This is one reason love can feel so maddeningly unpredictable. Again, we are confronted with the question: what is really driving our love? Reason? Impulse? The full moon? The stars? How are these mysteries, tensions, and paradoxes of love to be reconciled?
The answer is in marriage, and three marriages occur simultaneously at the end of the play. In marriage, the lovers receive the joy of union, the balm to their maddening desires, and the permission to embrace the impetuosity of desire. At the same time, they obtain stability through exclusivity. They acknowledge that love brings not only privileges but also responsibilities, both to the beloved and to society. Desire and durability are here reconciled. Rappaport provides us with the key to understanding the play’s resolution: “Harmony is achieved with the union of natural feeling, conscious desire, and free will choice.”
But, my good lord, I wot not by what power,— But by some power it is,—my love to Hermia, Melted as the snow, seems to me now As the remembrance of an idle gaud Which in my childhood I did dote upon; And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, The object and the pleasure of mine eye, Is only Helena. To her, my lord, Was I betroth'd ere I saw Hermia: But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food; But, as in health, come to my natural taste, Now I do wish it, love it, long for it, And will for evermore be true to it.
With the help of a flower flushed with divine power, Demetrius has been made faithful to his first love. The “magic” in this case hasn’t placed him under a spell; on the contrary, it’s freed him from one. It’s restored him to his “natural taste,” as Rappaport rightly points out. So there is a mystery to fidelity. Part of that mystery is that we may need help from a higher power to persevere in it.
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