Play Review: A Midsummer's Night Dream is a play about love and the imagination, perhaps written by someone who was in love at the time. The various elements of the play echo the elements of love. There is fantasy and magic, passion and crudeness, jealousy and anger, beauty and confusion, comedy and tears. Lovers' quarrels and the games lovers' play, all are here. Who hasn't felt like an ass when struck with love? Even oafish but lovable Bottom, seemingly the last person to ever to fall in love, suddenly encounters the unexpected and doesn't quite know what to make of it. The play spans the spectrum of love (of the time) from the quiet, stable passion of Theseus and Hippolyta, to the spell-struck love of Titania and Bottom, to the comically and clumsily enacted love story of Pyramus and Thisbe (similar to Romeo & Juliet). There is also desire, not only the desire of the couples for each other, but the desire of the audience for the young lovers to succeed. (Well captured by the 1968 British adaptation of the play, with Judi Dench.)
The world of A Midsummer Night's Dream is divided into the sensible, civilized city and the wild, chaotic wood. The city is ruled by the restrained logic of its King, Theseus, and the wood by the untamed emotions of its rulers Oberon and Titania. In the city Egeus can make harsh demands under the law (he insists she marry a man other than the one she loves -- much like Juliet) and receive an orderly hearing (he accuses Lysander of having "bewitched" his daughter -- little does he know!). In the wood anything is possible and everything can happen, no rules, no limits. "Bewitched" is an understatement.
All the female roles are especially engaging, well rounded and individual, compelling and attractive: the Queen of the Amazons, strong, proud, and reserved; the Queen of the Fairies, strong, fanciful, but deceived; and two lovely girls whose only wish is to love and be loved. Helena and Hermia are best of friends become bitter rivals. The interplay between the four lovers is complex, both comic and heartbreaking. Hermia has two suitors though she loves only one (though Demetrius first loved Helena before Hermia, fickle as Romeo), then Helen has Hermia's two lovers, but believes neither. Helena is as irrationally (or youthfully) infatuated with Demetrius ("I am your spaniel ... to be used as you use your dog") as Demetrius is with Hermia (she says, "I give him curses, yet he gives me love," "The more I hate, the more he follows me"). Hermia boldly swears to meet her love, Lysander, "By all the vows that ever men have broke/ (In number more than ever women spoke)." Helena challenges social norms and Demetrius' gentility: "Fie ... Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex. We cannot fight for love as men may do. We should be wooed and were not made to woo." But at night in the wood, Hermia modestly tells Lysander, "For my sake, my dear,/ Lie further off yet. Do not lie so near." Egeus, Hermia's cruel father, is the only unredeemed character in the play, Theseus generally seeming fair and sensitive (for the times, I like how in the first scene he carefully left Lysander and Hermia alone to commiserate). Oberon is more mercurial, but not without his better moments; he's capable of wrong, but also does right. Lysander and Demetrius are ruled by their passions, enchanted and otherwise.
Throughout the lovers' play, there is the comic relief provided by Oberon's servant, the mischievous Puck (Robin Goodfellow), and by the rustic tradesmen awkwardly attempting to stage a romantic play for the Duke's wedding. And the faint reminders of Romeo and Juliet. But there's also the Duke's insight that "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet" all live solely in their imaginations. Imagination and love is the essence of A Midsummer Night's Dream, as it ends with a horde of wild fairies from the magic wood invading the Duke's palace to bless the happy couples. [4½★]
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