Order and disorder as the first major theme

General comments on some of these subjects follow. A word of caution is in order first. One can readily identify possible subjects for essay questions, and you should be prepared to answer on any of these. This is not the same as writing out an essay you have prepared before the exam (always a foolish idea). Questions will be worded so as to make this difficult, and to make it obvious if you do it: examiners like organized answers but dislike the “prepared essay”. Take your time to read both alternative questions carefully. It is very often the case that a question which looks hard, because of its wording, is straightforward in reality while a question which looks simple, rarely is! Order and disorder is a favourite theme of the playwright. In this play the apparently anarchic tendencies of the young lovers, of the mechanicals-as-actors, and of Puck are restrained by the “sharp Athenian law” and the law of the Palace Wood, by Theseus and Oberon, and their respective consorts. This tension within the world of the play is matched in its construction: in performance it can at times seem riotous and out of control, and yet the structure of the play shows a clear interest in symmetry and patterning. Confronted by the “sharp” law of Athens, and not wishing to obey it, Lysander thinks of escape. But he has no idea that the wood, which he sees merely as a rendezvous before he and Hermia fly to his aunt, has its own law and ruler. As Theseus is compromised by his own law, so is Oberon. Theseus wishes to overrule Egeus, but knows that his own authority derives from the law, that this cannot be set aside when it does not suit the ruler’s wishes. He does discover a merciful provision of the law which Egeus has overlooked (for Hermia to choose “the livery of a nun”) but hopes to persuade Demetrius to relinquish his claim, insisting that Hermia take time before choosing her fate. The lovers’ difficulties are made clear by the law of Athens, but arise from their own passions: thus, when they enter the woods, they take their problems with them. Oberon is compromised because his quarrel with Titania has caused him and her to neglect their duties: Oberon, who should rule firmly over the entire fairy kingdom cannot rule in his own domestic arrangements. We see how each ruler, in turn, resolves this problem, without further breaking of his law. In the love relationships of Theseus and Hippolyta, of Oberon and Titania and of the two pairs of young lovers, we see love which, in a manner appropriate to the status and character of the lovers, is idealized eventually. The duke and his consort have had their quarrel before the action of the play begins, but Shakespeare’s choice of mythical ruler means the audience well knows the “sword” and “injuries” referred to in 1.2; we see the resolution of the fairies’ quarrel and that of the lovers during the play, and all is happy at its end. But whereas the rulers resolve their own problems, as befits their maturity and status, the young lovers are not able to do so, and this task is shared by Oberon and Theseus. Oberon orders Puck to keep Lysander and Demetrius from harming each other, and Theseus confirms their wishes as he overbears Egeus’ will. He is not now breaking his own law, because Demetrius cannot be compelled to marry against his will. A ridiculous parallel case of young lovers so subject to passion that, after disobeying their parents’ law, they take their own lives, is provided by Pyramus and Thisbe. Lysander and Demetrius laugh at the mechanicals’ exaggerated portrayal of these unfortunates, but the audience has seen the same excessive passion in earnest from these two. If Lysander breaks – or evades – the Athenian law knowingly, then the mechanicals break the law of the wood unwittingly. Puck’s conversation with the first fairy in 2.1, makes clear that the wood is where Oberon and Titania keep their court, though they travel further afield. (Oberon, according to Titania, has come “from the farthest steep of India” because of the marriage of his favourite to Theseus, while the Fairy Queen has also been in India with the mother of her changeling.) When he finds the workmen rehearsing, Puck notes the impertinence of these “hempen homespuns” being so near the bower of the Fairy Queen. And when we see that bower, we see Titania with her attendant fairies, we hear the ceremonial etiquette of their speaking in turn, even to “hail” the ass-headed Bottom. The incursion of these mortals into the fairies’ domain may be somewhat of an impertinence, but Oberon lets there be no doubt that he is ruler here. The audience, taken into his and Puck’s confidence, may see the mortals in the wood as “fools”, subject to the power of the unseen spirits; but we also see how that power is exercised for the good of the uninvited guests. Bottom, in the arms of Titania, would seem to the Elizabethan audience to be playing with fire; and yet no harm comes to him. If the principal characters in the play serve to subvert or to restore order, how do we categorize Puck? By his own admission he is the most successful of all practical jokers. And his giving Bottom the ass’s head or his delight on discovering the results of administering the juice of love-in-idleness to the wrong person (“this their jangling I esteem a sport”) suggest that he is another representative of anarchy. But charged with a serious duty, he is perfectly obedient (“I go, I go, look how I go”) and he is taken into his master’s confidence. It is Puck who perfectly explains how order is to be restored to the young lovers’ confused relations:

“Jack shall have Jill/Naught shall go ill/The man shall have his mare again and all shall be well”.[10]

It is Puck who keeps the young men from harming each other, and it is Puck, with his broom, who leads the fairies in their blessing of Theseus’ house in the final episode of Act 5. Though the hard work of restoring harmony to his own relations with Titania, and among the young lovers is principally done by Oberon and Puck, Theseus also has a part to play. In the opening scene, he is clearly trying to calm heated passions and buy time for Hermia. He does not know how or why the four lovers are “fortunately met”, but he acts decisively in over-bearing Egeus’ will but compensates him for any loss of face with the honour of a joint wedding ceremony. In Act 5, we see how his own great happiness makes the Duke more, not less, eager to promote the happiness of the young lovers (“Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love/ Accompany your hearts”) and to show considerate approval of the efforts of the amateur performers of Pyramus and Thisbe. We do not see the threat to Athenian order posed by the incursion of the Amazons, but we do see, and enjoy with Puck, the confusion of the lovers and others in the wood, in the play’s middle scenes. Though Puck and Oberon will eventually succeed, their first efforts to help Helena lead to an aggravation of the lovers’ plight: Shakespeare contrives that each of the four, by the end of 3.2 will have a different perception (in every case wrong) of his or her situation. The serious disorder brought about in the natural world by the fairies’ quarrel cannot be shown directly, but is graphically described by Titania; what can be shown is the incongruous pairing of the Fairy Queen and ass-headed Bottom. A different kind of chaos is seen in the attempts of the mechanicals to perform a play. We actually see casting, rehearsal, revision of the text and eventual performance. The ineptitude of the actors counterpoints the virtuosity of Shakespeare’s control of the play proper. This is shown both on the small and the large scale. The linguistic variety of the play (see below) and the control of the four narrative strands are such that the play has enjoyed great success in performance. In the wood, Shakespeare will leave a group of characters alone for as long as he needs to, but we never lose touch with their story. It is typical of Shakespeare that the mortals we see first in the wood are Demetrius and Helena; at once the playwright shows us the cause of Demetrius’ rejection of Helena and lets us know that the other pair are also in the wood. We do not need to see Lysander and Hermia before they have lost their way, but we are ready for Puck’s mistake as he seeks one in “Athenian garments”.

For the proper view of their plight we should look to other characters in the play. We are invited to sympathize with their situation, but to see as rather ridiculous the posturing to which it leads. This is evident in their language which is often highly formal in use of rhetorical devices, and in Lysander’s and Hermia’s generalizing of “the course of true love” (the “reasons” they give why love does not “run smooth” clearly do not refer to their own particular problems: they are not “different in blood”, nor mismatched “in respect of years”). Pyramus and Thisbe is not only Shakespeare’s parody of the work of other playwrights but also a mock-tragic illustration of Lysander’s famous remark. This is evident in a number of similarities to the scenes in the Dream in which the young lovers are present. Before the play begins, and at its end, as Demetrius loves Helena, we see two happy couples; but Demetrius’ loss of love for Helena (arising from, or leading to, his infatuation with Hermia) disturbs the equilibrium. That Demetrius really does re-discover his love for Helena in the wood (as opposed to continuing merely in a dotage induced by the juice of love-in-idleness) is clear from his speech on waking. Unlike his “goddess, nymph, divine” outburst, this defence of his love and repentance for his infatuation with Hermia (likened to a sickness) is measured and persuasive. The critic who objects to the absence of any stage direction for the giving to Demetrius of Dian’s bud, the antidote to Cupid’s flower, can be answered thus: in a performance, the audience is not likely to detect the omission; we may suppose the effects of the flower to wear off over time, but Demetrius’ love does not; in any case, Puck could “apply” the “remedy” to the eyes of each “gentle lover”, at the end of Act 3, if the director is troubled by this seeming discrepancy. But the best reason is that Demetrius’s profession of his new-found love makes the antidote or its absence redundant in his case. Early in the play we laugh at what the young lovers say. Lysander is aware of his and Hermia’s sufferings, but to pontificate about “the course of true love” generally, to say it “never did run smooth”, is risible. The alternate lines in which Lysander proposes a reason why love does not “run smooth”, while Hermia comments on his statement, invite ridicule, as his “or” (leading to another reason) is followed by her “O”, bewailing the cause of the lovers’ suffering. In the same scene, we note how the same device (_tichomythia) is used rather differently, as Hermia and Helena expound Demetrius’ preferences: “I frown upon him, yet he loves me still”/”O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!”. Here the use of similar vocabulary with opposite meaning is made emphatic by the rhyming couplet. When Helena soliloquizes about love, at the end of the scene, she speaks wisely, in her general account, but her inability to be wise in her own situation is comic. Disclosing her rival’s flight to Demetrius, to enjoy his company briefly, seems perverse, but is wholly plausible: young people in love often do silly things. In the wood, we see the likely outcome of Oberon’s orders to Puck, as we know that a man in “Athenian garments” could be Lysander, who, according to Demetrius and Helena, is already in the wood. But the multiple confusion caused by the love-in-idleness among the four lovers is richly comic in its variety. Each has a different understanding of the situation.

· Lysander sees no reason why he should not reject Hermia (in spite of his rash promise: “And then end life, when I end loyalty”) as love justifies this conduct, an exaggerated version of Demetrius’s disloyalty to Helena previously.

· Demetrius loves Helena, and wishes to resume his earlier claim on her affections. Each man loves her and cannot see why she doubts him.

· Hermia has no doubt that they love Helena, but believes Helena to have used doubtful means to steal Lysander’s love (Egeus has earlier accused Lysander of doing this to woo his daughter).

· Helena disbelieves all three, assuming that Hermia’s complaints are feigned, and that “she is one of this confederacy”. The characters have no proper understanding of what they feel; the whole episode is a Night’smare magnification of the madness love ordinarily can lead to. And when the men “seek a place to fight”, they are serious in their purpose. But the audience is assured by Oberon’s vigilance and Puck’s activity that “all shall be well”. And the proper response to them is to agree with Puck: “Lord, what fools these mortals be”. The actors should play the parts without any sense of irony, however.[11]

For a more sympathetic view of the lovers, we should consider Theseus’s attempt (1.1) to show Hermia how much she would lose, to “endure the livery of a nun”. The appeals to “desire”, “youth” and “blood” show his awareness of the sexual desire of a young woman, while his comparison of the “rose distill’d” to that on the “virgin thorn” delicately advertises the attraction of maternity. Hermia’s reply shows her understanding of his reason, and her determination. In the duke’s presence she is shown at her best; when he leaves, her conversation with Lysander is touching initially, as they comfort each other, but soon becomes overwrought, exaggerating their passion. In Act 4, suddenly with no cause for further enmity, there is no hint of a grudge on the part of any; each has, impossibly, it seems, the prospect of immediate marriage to the preferred partner, while the feuding of the previous Night’s is remembered but, in its many confusions (changes of desire, seeming betrayals, quarrels, voices from nowhere) thought of as a dream. This view is anticipated by the pair of six-line stanzas spoken by Helena and Hermia at the end of Act 3. Each is a moving expression of despair and resignation (though Helena’s “O weary Night’s, O long and tedious Night’s” has a hint of Pyramus’s “O grim-looked Night’s, O Night’s with hue so black!” about it. If Puck hints at how we are to see the lovers in the wood, Theseus is able, in the final act, to articulate our happiness at the comic resolution: “Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love/Accompany your hearts”, while we inwardly endorse the fairies’ blessing and Oberon’s promise that the lovers’“issue” shall “ever…be fortunate”, the couples “ever true in loving”. We rejoice to see Lysander’s pessimistic utterance contradicted.

1.3. Having said about Shakespeare’s comedies we dare to say that it is the most important milestone in the creative activity of him. But even amongst his immortal works of this kind the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” stands in the special play. The first reason of this lies in the period of writing of it. The play is referred to the third, last period of creative activity, it is seemingly summarizes the whole life of the dramatist and the death of the main heroes at the fourth act is a hint for the closest death of Shakespeare himself. So one another reason for the significance of the comedy follows just after: it maybe the only work of Shakespeare where the humour and laughter are being mixed with the tragedy. And this mixing appears on the background of the exact description of humans life and characters which are closely similar to the historic chronicles. In our work we tried to demonstrate this spirit of comedy mixed with the tragedic chronicles of the author himself.

Our work aimed to show the novelity of the play though it was written three-four centuries ago, we tried to prove that even being a dream the narration does not lose the real character. We made our conclusion that fairy tales cannot but link with the real life and the problems of life, love, happiness, sadness, revenge exist in both at the Heavens and the Earth.

2.3. In our qualification work we tried to give some light to the following items:

a) To show the unusual, unique compositional structure of the play on the example of the most significant scenes of each act of the play.

d) To compare the different features of the main heroes in their controversy and similarity.

Having worked on our qualification work we could do the following conclusion and notes:

2) The main idea of the play was to show the interrelations between life and dream, the different state of minds of illiterate but kind and passionate wandering actors and foolish, cruel, envious power “handers”.

3) The main themes of the play are order and disorder, love and marriage, appearance and reality.

4) The genius of the author is concluded in mixing and installation of one narration into another, assistance of prose and poetry with single repliques and comments.

In the very end of our qualification work we would like to say that the play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” seems to us as the most meaningful not only for those who is interested in Shakespeare but for the whole humanity.

2. Alfred Bates The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 13. ed.. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1996. pp. 152-157.

3. Вильям Шекспир Комедии, хроники, трагедии.Собр. соч. в 2тт., Т.1 М. ИХЛ. 1988 стр7-31

5. ADAMS, JOSEPH QUINCY. A Life of William Shakespeare. New York; Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1923.

7. BARBER, C. L. Shakespeare's Festive Comedy.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.

8. BENTLEY,GERALDEADES. Shakespeare,a Biographical Handbook. Theobold Lewis, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.

9. BETHELL, S. L. Shakespeare and [he Popular Tradition. London: King and Staples, 1944.

10. BROWN,JOHNRUSSELL.Shakespeare and His Comedies.London: Methuen and Co., 1957.

11. CLEMEN, WOLFGANG. The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery. London: Methuen and Co., 1951.

12. CRAIG, HARDIN. An Interpretation of Shakespeare. New York: Dryden Press, 1948.

13. ELLIS-FERMOR, UNA M. Shakespeare the Dramatist. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1948.

14. PALMER, JOHN. Comic Characters of Shakespeare. London: The Macmillan Company, 1946.

15. PARROTT, THOMAS MARC. Shakespearean Comedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.

16. PRIESTLEY, J. B. The English Comic Characters. London: The Bodley Head, 1925; reprinted 1963.

18. SITWELL, EDITH. A Notebook on William Shakespeare. London: Oxford University Press, 1928.

21. WILSON, J. DOVER. The Essential Shakespeare. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1932.

21. Аракин В.Д.История английского языка. М., 1985

22.Иванова И.П. Чахоян Л.П.История английского языка. М., 1976

25. Смирницкий А.И.История английского языка.(Среднеанглийский и новоанглийский период). Курс лекций. М., 1965

26. Ярцева В.Н.Историческая морфология английского языка. М., 1960

27. Ярцева В.Н.Исторический синтаксис английского языка. М., 1961

28. Ярцева В.Н.История английского литературного языка IX – XV веков.М., 1985

32. Морозов М.М. Парфенов А.Т.Комментарий. ЯзыкШекспира

[2]Alfred Bates The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 13. ed.. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1996. pp. 152-157.

[3]ВильямШекспирКомедии, хроники, трагедии. Собр. соч. в 2тт., Т.1 М. ИХЛ. 1988 стр7-31

[4]BENTLEY, GERALD EADES. Shakespeare, a Biographical Handbook. Theobold Lewis, ed. New Haven: YaleUniversity

[5]BROWN, JOHN RUSSELL. Shakespeare and His Comedies. London: Methuen and Co., 1957.

[6]. CLEMEN, WOLFGANG. The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery. London: Methuen and Co., 1951

[7]ELLIS-FERMOR, UNA M. Shakespeare the Dramatist. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1948.

[8]PARROTT, THOMAS MARC. Shakespearean Comedy. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1949.

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