On the Lovers of Midsummer Night¡¯s Dream

A Midsummer Night¡¯s Dream is a play of fantasy, with the fairyland background of Titania and Oberon and Puck, but it is also a farce with the plot that evolves around the lovers manipulated by the love juice, and the subplot of a play within the play. ¡°A Midsummer Night¡¯s Dream juggles apparently with several levels of representation, with plays-within-plays and visions within dreams¡±(Nevo 297). The overriding theme of the play deals with the nature of love. Underneath his frantic comedy, Shakespeare seems to be asking the questions all lovers ask in the throes of their confusion: How do we know when love is real? How can we trust ourselves when we are so easily swayed by passion and by romantic convention? We have six lovers in the play. There is a pattern of contrasted attitudes to the love that seems to elude reason and, at times, to convert human being into its slaves; a pattern, moreover, which is placed finally in the framework of a rational and social attitude to mar...