The thesis for the following paper will be presented as marriage
as a theme in Shakespeare’s play as it is applicable to character
development in female characters. Shakespeare’s
portrayal of women in A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be one focus
of the paper. Another theme and thesis supporter of the paper
will be presented in the fact that in Shakespeare’s play the theme
of love is integral to the plot for both a comedy and a tragedy, as
such the presence of love in women will be examined as a
transitional tool.
Other avenues of discussion in this analytical paper will
include mothers, female prophecy, and virginity, and as Rackin
states, “No woman is the protagonist in a Shakespearean history
play. Renaissance gender role definitions prescribed silence
as a feminine virtue, and Renaissance sexual mythology associated
the feminine with body and matter as a opposed to masculine
intellect and spirit.” (329), thus, women could not be considered
even a main character in these plays unless she became married, or
as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the woman sacrificed herself for
her male counterpart.
Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not only an
allegory, but within the story there exists another allegory.
Shakespeare creates a play in which events take place as they would
in the real world, or seemingly so, but juxtaposed with this
storyline Shakespeare includes a second story with Oberon and
Titania thus presenting to the audience a layered story.
Aristotle wrote that art is an action which is defined through
mimesis; as such, the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is written
partly as a dialogue of the possibilities of life (as can be
witnessed with the humans of the story) and partly as a dialogue
for the fantastical (as is written pertaining to the faeries of the
play).
The argument then arises from, Jacobus, that offers, is drama an
imitation of life, or is life an imitation of drama, and in
Shakespeare’s play, the answer is cleverly disguised between his
layering of reality in fantasy in which the real becomes so
engrossed in the fantasy, as if the scenes set in the forest are
each under the spell of Puck. It is in Puck’s reality that
all of the protagonists exist and thereby the answer to Jacobus’
question may be analyzed.
The theme of Shakespeare’s play can aptly be stated as ‘love
in idleness’ since this is also the name of the flower Robin
Goodfellow or Puck uses to cause the characters to fall in love
with each other (Lysander with Helena then Demetrius with Helena
and as Oberon uses it to cause Titania to fall in love with Bottom)
Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness. (Shakespeare 2004; Act
2 Scene 1)
In this plot, it is revealed that drama in part is imitating
life. Love in idleness is a circular event in life that seems
abysmal in its foreplay, and desperate in its reality. As
each character falls in love with the wrong character, or is forced
to fall in love with another person, Jacobus’ claim that characters
are the building blocks of allowing the audience to identify with
the actions of the play as they relate to their life, is succinctly
pandering to Aristotle’s concepts of drama in imitation of art.
The characters frolic around the wood, hopelessly in love
with one another, and loved by the wrong person, as is shown in the
four couples Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena while the
faeries in turn present the audience with how ridiculous this love
in idleness is defined in showing Titania in love with Bottom who
has been transformed into a donkey. Aristotle’s definition
for a tragic hero is one who is not in control of his own fate, but
instead is ruled by the gods in one fashion or another (Jones
1962).
The theme of Shakespeare’s play delves into the morality of
his intent to present the audience in stride with how to perceive
their own lives and loves in relation to the events that transpire
in the woods. In context of the play, Aristotle’s mimesis
gives the audience a chance to pause and consider the motive of
love both in terms of the reality that Shakespeare delivers with
Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena and the motivation of love
when it is juxtaposed with Titania and Bottom.
As Jacobus states, although drama has the ‘capacity to hold
up an illusion of reality like the reflection in a mirror: we take
for granted while recognizing that it is nonetheless illusory’
(Jacobus 2005; 1-2). Thus, it may be extolled from this
statement that illusion transforms the allegory of the play into
applicable terms whereby the audience becomes not only immersed in
the play and its actions and characters, but also takes those
actions and characters to stand as testaments to their life
experiences.
The fact that the characters lose themselves in a maze of
darkness and fog and awake approached by Theseus and Hippolyta who
are likened to the gaurdians of the play or the characters of
reason, stand in testement to the actions of the characters and it
is accepted that Lysander and Hermia are united and Demetrius and
Helena join together in a group wedding.
Shakespeare’s play however does not end there but continues
with the theme of love in idleness with the mechanicals performing
the myth Pyramus and Thisbe in which both lovers kill themselves
because each assumes the other is dead. This is Shakespeare’s
way of contributing both the graceful and loving end of one story,
with the humans in the forest, as well as showing with this play,
how love may go awry and become a tragedy. The love in
idleness theme is subsequently debunked in Shakespeare’s play
merely by the endings in which even Oberon and Titania reunite.
Jacobus states, “The action of most drama is not drawn from
our actual experience of life, but from our potential or imagined
experience” (Jacobus 2005; 1-2), thereby exhibiting the idea that a
play can give the audience different proscenium displays or
possibilities by which they may lead their life, or a review of
what life may become. The subject of drama as it applies to
life then becomes more focused on avenues of probability and
possibility. Thus, in Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream
the audience envisions three different chances of love; with the
humans, with the faeries and with the doomed lovers as performed by
the mechanicals.
Drama then is a way in which a person may identify with
fictitious characters and design their own possibility of pleasures
through that character. Often times drama leaves an audience
member questioning life, be it positive or negative and thereby
adhering to Aristotle’s ideas of reflection, and it is this
reflection that makes us human. In being given these
different paths of love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the audience
is given the oppurtunity to envision life differently and
vicariously through these characers.
In fact that is the purpose of drama, to present the audience
with a vicarious option of examining life. Although there is
no ritual or religious interpretation associated with drama today
(unless the playwright intends it) the genre of drama is best
described as not only entertainment but a tool by which reality may
be examained through make-believe characters in real life
situations and themes.
In the theme that is present in Shakepeare’s Midsummer
Night’s Dream love in idleness is a very prevalent topic.
Although each character in the play has a deep devotion to another
character such passion is lost in the woods when the characters are
left to the devices of Puck, and his chicanery. The guiding
light of love in this play may best be seen with Oberon and Titania
as they are the ruling factors of love. Their love however
has been thwarted due to the presence of an Indian child and the
jealousy of Oberon and the bullheadedness of Titania. The
theme within the theme in this context may best be described as
compromise.
The relationship between Oberon and Titania my be defined as
a quintessential part of the character develoment between male and
female, “…Shakespeare depicts male protagnosts defending
masculine…projects against both female characters who threaten to
obstruct those projects and feminine appeals to the audience that
threatedn to discredit them. IN shakespeare’s later…plays
thos rfeminine voice become more insistent.
They both threaten to invalidate the great, inherited…myths
that Shakespeare found in his historiiographic sources and imply
that abefore they masculine voice…can be accepted as valid,it must
come to terms with women and the subversive forced they
represetn. However, as soon as Shakesperae attmpts to
incorporate those feminine forces, marryign words and things,
spirit and matter…(it) becomes problematic…” (Rackin 330).
This statement suggests that if Shakespeare did not marry off
his female characters the audience would believe it as possible nor
would they accept it. In the case of Titania and Oberon, it
is Oberon’s masculinity that must make Titania’s will submissive to
him and to give him what he wants (in this case her Indian).
In this case, the two characters are already married and this
struggle of wills suggests that a man must constantly be
domineering and gain what he wants through force and trickery.
This shows that the dynamic of marriage in Shakepseare’s
plays is exhibited with force. In the other characters in the
play, the one’s who are not yet married, that is Hermia and Helena,
they are full of anticipation to get married but both had to first
experience what it was like to not have their counterpart and
suffere through the period of not being love; neither of the men
truly suffer in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which suggests that
Shakespeare’s female characters must prove their love, while the
men of the play have no such duties.
The difference then between the marriad and the unmarried
woman in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is that the unmarried women must
convince the men that they are loved while the married woman,
Titania, must re-learn obedience.
The theme of love is envisioned well in this play as
Shakespeare chooses to focus on the power of love through marriage
as a tool of union. In union is found the relevance of
transisiton. The characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream only
become fully aware of their own intentions and feelings after they
are given the drug from Puke and spend the night in the
forest. When awakened each character realizes their true
desires. In these desires in the morning the women are
quieted because they feel as though they have seen the measure of
their desire reflected in their male counterparts and as such it is
only through marriage that they may be tamed. Thus,
Shakespeare’s female characters are revealed to be counterparts.
This essay has argued for the interpretation of Shakespeare’s
characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be the classical female
archetypes such as wife, or lover. The plan in the play
reveals how women are induced to persuasion and almost hypnotized
by love and desire as is seen with Titania, Hermia, and
Helena. Each character is in love, and at the end of the play
this love becomes true instead of the farce of the beginning and
middle of the play. Love is the conquering power over women
in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Work Cited
Jacobus, L. The Bedford Introduction to Drama.
Bedford St. Martins. 2005.
Jones, John. On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1962.
Levin, R. Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean
Tragedy. PMLA, Vol. 103, No. 2
(Mar., 1988), pp. 125-138.
Price, J. R. Measure for Measure and the Critics:
Towards a New Approach.
Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2. (Spring, 1969), pp.
179-204.
Rackin, P. Anti-Historians: Women’s Roles in Shakespeare’s
Histories.
Theatre Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3, Staging Gender. (Oct.,
1985), pp. 329-344.
Shakespeare, W. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Washington Press. 2004.
