Michael:

I think the play is one of the shortest in the canon in terms of lines and scenes, and the first act has only two scenes, totaling about 350 lines. It introduces separately two of the interconnecting “realities” of the play, the Athenian lovers and the Athenian mechanicals. No word yet of the fairy world.

The brief, seemingly “poetic” exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta, which focuses on the coming new moon, introduces the theme of their marriage. There may be a bit of minor tension in Theseus’ pointing out that Hippolyta is a spoil of his victory over her and her Amazons. He mentions that the spirit of mirth is what he wants, not the melancholy proper to funerals. Should we think of the dead of the Athenian-Amazon war in this? What is Hippolyta’s demeanor in this exchange and during the ensuing account of the lovers? Just before the royal party leaves, after hearing about the Hermia-Lysander-Helena-Demetrius problem, Theseus turns to her and says, “What cheer, my love?” Does this suggest that she’s been frowning or acting otherwise negatively about what she has heard about the “law of Athens” and its application to the lovers?

Egeus’ entry and his account of Hermia’s opposition to his desire for her marriage introduces the “classic” beginning of a comic marriage plot, the lovers desiring one thing and the heavy paternal figure an opposition to it. Here it becomes extreme, either follow the father’s wishes or die. Theseus shortly offers another option, live a life of nun-like celibacy. Lysander introduces the further complication that Demetrius, Egeus’ candidate, had wooed Helena. Since this is a comedy, we’re not too worried about the death or celibacy options, but we may wonder about Egeus’ threat of death to his own daughter.

When the royals exit, Lysander offers some literary commentary about the course of true love with some responding stichomythia from Hermia. The self-referenciality of the characters within the love story itself seems to add to the sense of artifice. After Lysander proposes his plan to meet outside the walls of Athens, Hermia responds in couplets that also seem self-consciously  literary, especially the reference to Dido and Aeneas, which seems to emphasize male treachery. From this point all the dialogue takes place in rhymed couplets, which continues the sense of artifice. This may mean that we don’t take the plight of the lovers with overwhelming seriousness. These seem heavy-duty literary lovers, pretty but not serious. But they do take themselves seriously.

The second scene brings on the mechanicals, who are presumably responding to Philostrate’s direction from Theseus to stir up the Athenian youth to merriments. The mechanicals certainly produce merriment. Their leader, Peter Quince the carpenter, seems an earnest director of the troupe, but Bottom’s enthusiasm is the focus. Bottom prompts Quince at every stage and would play multiple parts if he could. Quince must want Bottom at the center of things, perhaps to channel his enthusiasm. If he’s to play a tragic lover, Bottom says, the audience must “look to their eyes,” for he’ll move storms of sorrow. But he’d rather play the enraged tyrant, perhaps like Hamlet’s caution about the character of Herod, in that marvelous phrase, “a part to tear a cat in.” When he hears about Thisby’s role, he’d like to play that too, and perhaps he jumps back and forth as he imagines doing both Pyramus and Thisby. Quince asserts his authority, and Bottom will be confined to Pyramus. But when they get to the lion, Bottom would like to do that too, roaring enough to fright the ladies. But even an “aggravated” voice, roaring gently as any sucking dove, won’t do, and Quince again asserts authority, but in a way that tries to conciliate Bottom’s perhaps injured theatrical ambition. Pyramus is a sweet-faced man, most lovely gentlemanlike, and Bottom is won back. But he’s always stepping beyond, as if he’d like Quince’s role as well. Bottom has always seemed to me like a precocious and irrepressible child who is just discovering the mystery of theater. But he also worries about every element of staging a play, including the relation between stage action and reality. I think I once learned how old that child is, but I need to wait for act 3.

Dusty:

I think a director has the choice of playing Hipppolyta as gracious and in full agreement with Theseus, or slightly chilly toward him. Maybe the first act raises a question about marriage: does a male conqueror get to claim his defeated enemy as a bride, and does a father get to make the choice for his daughter?

It may be significant that the two lines often quoted from the first scene are “So quick bright things come to confusion” and “The course of true love never did run smooth,” both lines hinting at disorder. Is there a dark undertone to this comedy, maintained by the references to war dead, to Egeus’s threat to kill his daughter, and in 1.2 to the ill consequences in the human realm of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania?

Hermia is quite “bold” to “plead her thoughts,” but because this is a comedy maybe we don’t think it’s irregular. But why, even though it’s a comedy, is Hermia allowed to remain alone with Lysander?

At the end of the scene Helena is left alone on stage, so her longish speech (ll. 226-51) counts, I suppose, as a soliloquy. But it’s in rhymed couplets, so (as you suggest) it doesn’t feel like introspection. By contrast, 1.2 is, as expected, in prose.
As in As You Like It, and perhaps in The Tempest, the play makes arrangements to get all the city folks out of town — into a moonlit woods where anything can happen.

Dusty:

The second act is longer than the first, but at 424 lines is still pretty short. 2.1 introduces the third set of characters, the fairy world. Perhaps the fact that the fairies appear immediately after the mechanicals depart looks ahead to a further link between their two worlds: Bottom’s infatuation with Titania. Some of the fairies speak in rhyme, and others not. As in The Tempest, we get songs composed in short lines. I suppose we might think of Puck as an ancestor of Ariel.

Shakespeare assigns long speeches to Oberon and Titania, and they serve to help establish the “fairy world.” It’s curious that the love charm is designed to produce the irrational “love” that is already on display in Helena. She too acts as if she is bewitched or “charmed.”

In 2.2. Puck charms the wrong Athenian, causing Lysander suddenly to love Helena. Shakespeare returns to this situation — in which A loves B who loves C who loves A — in Twelfth Night.

Helena wants Demetrius to treat her as a dog. How do you play this scene today? For laughs? At several moments I imagined I was in the world of Shakespeare’s love sonnets, in which the self-abasing speaker addresses his beloved with extravagant (and paradoxical) language.

Again, as in the first act, the lovers speak in rhymed couplets, suggesting perhaps that we are not in the ordinary world, and that there is, as you say, something “artificial” going on.

Michael:

If I were a director, I would go with the darker sense of the play, Theseus a bit too confident and perhaps overbearing, Hippolyta frowning and perhaps feeling not entirely pleased with this forced marriage, Egeus oddly ready to condemn his daughter to death unless she marries Demetrius, who seems indistinguishable from Lysander. And it all connects with the terrible weather they’ve been having, as we learn in Titania’s long description, which she blames on Oberon and his jealousy. The seasons are all backward. At the same time, the sense of artifice and the rhymed couplets perhaps hold this darker sense in a kind of suspension. How real is it all?

About forty years ago, I took Kate and Meg, then 6 and 5 to a performance of MND in Regents Park. It was initially rained out, though the girls didn’t mind the rain; they would have happily been soaked if they could keep watching the play. But we went back for a full performance. I had prepared them for the play, explaining the story and the characters. But I had neglected the most basic thing: what exactly is a play? After watching the first two acts and seeing Quince’s troupe come on for Act 3 and hearing Bottom’s concern about the lion, Meg (5) turned to me and asked in a loud stage whisper (that all around us heard), “Daddy, are they who they say they are? Or are they just actors?” I don’t recall how exactly I responded, but she was happy to keep watching. And of course Bottom and the rest were working on the very same issue! All of the concerns that are laid before Peter Quince seem to focus on the question of what exactly a play is. A prologue needs to address that. Lion costumes shouldn’t be so realistic that you can’t see the actor inside. How exactly should you do moonlight and a wall? It’s very phenomenology of theater.

And just when everything seems to be going along, one of the actors is suddenly turned into an ass and sucked into the fairy world. Worse, Puck has mixed up the lovers. Hermia thinks that they are all playing parts to mock her. Do all kids wonder at some point whether everyone around them is playing parts and not including them in the script? With Hermia now excluded and the males, who aren’t exactly men, both pursuing Helena, the geometry of the lovers is reversed.

It’s amusing that Hermia thinks that Helena has prevailed because she’s taller, and Helena says that Hermia, though small, is fierce and a vixen when they went to school. Lysander remarks that Hermia’s complexion is darker, an Ethiope or a tawny Tarter. They decide they hate the other one whom they’re not in love with. They’re clearly ready to fight physically, and Puck then leads them on, as Lysander and Demetrius pursue one another in the dark and fog. And finally they’re worn out and lie down to sleep. Are these lovers as young children imagine them?

The Puck can finally sort them out, but still in child-like terms, “Jack shall have Jill.” And the language seems fairytale-like.

Dusty:

Act 3 is in some respects the climax of the play, with the comic effects of Puck’s charm producing laugh-out-loud situations. It’s funny, and with good lighting and music probably can be very theatrically effective on stage. It’s a little thin  — and even, I found, tedious —  on the page. It’s a clear demonstration of the consequences of reason keeping little company together with love. Lovers’ eyes are “charmed” and there is no explaining why this particular Jack loves this particular Jill. (When I reminded Gale of the plot, she suggested that it presents a pretty cynical view of love.) But apart from that central conceit — and Puck’s comment that “What fools these mortals be!” —  there’s not much human nature. The two men, as you suggest, are pretty much interchangeable. So too are the women. Even in their own minds they are “two lovely berries moulded on one stem.” They could probably exchange lines and it might be hard to tell who is speaking. (Gale wondered whether directors and costume designers made efforts to distinguish them, so we could keep track of who loves whom. I wonder whether in some productions they are dressed alike, so as to make the point that the lovers are indeed interchangeable.)

Puck enjoys the “sport” of it all, but Oberon wants to restore “peace” between himself and Titania, and wants to restore the lovers to their true loves too. By the end of Act 3 we are in some sense at the end of the comedy, as Puck promises that “all shall be well.”

I am struck with how much more Shakespeare does with identity and mistaken identity, with magic, and with bedtricks, in such later comedies as Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, All’s Well, and The Tempest, and how much more humanity there is in those plays.

Michael:

I agree that Act 3 is the climax of the play; all the significant plot events, such as they are, occur there. I think the women, though not the men, are distinguished in the action. Helena is a couple of times noted as tall in relation to Hermia; Lysander calls Hermia a dwarf, minimus, knotgrass, a bead, an acorn. Helena calls Hermia a “puppet,” and Hermia calls her a “painted maypole. And Hermia is said to have a darker complexion; Lysander calls her an “Ethiope” and tawny Tartar. I expect the men could be similarly distinguised, though I don’t see any reference in the text. It would be funny if Demetrius were quite short and Lysander tall (and blond?). Of course Lysander’s characterization must be comically exaggerated.

I think the lack of genuine human characterization in the lovers is intentional, a part of the joke. I may cling to the idea that these are lovers that emerge from a childlike imagination, maybe especially in the way they chase each other around.

Bottom’s ease among the fairies is quite wonderful, as if he’s always yearned for such treatment and feels he deserves it.

Theseus finds it quite easy to dismiss Egeus’ suit when he finds it convenient, as of course he does when the lovers have paired themselves off comfortably – with Puck’s help. This may conciliate Hippolyta. It’s as if this part of the comedy ends here, so all that’s left is the mechanicals’ play.

Bottom’s soliloquy about his dream is surely one of the high moments of the play. He puts all future critics in their place when he declares that “Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.” Is his declaration that the ballet, ballad, he wants Peter Quince to write be called “Bottom’s dream, because it hath no bottom” a lucus a non lucendo? (I’ve always thought Isador of Seville invented the phrase, but it may just be that he was guilty just of inventing such etymologies.) In any case, Bottom’s wonder and happy acceptance of his experience seems to elevate him among the characters of the play.

And would his parody of St. Paul have driven the Puritan anti-theatricalists mad?

I wonder if Bottom and Theseus are counterpoised.

In Act 5, and right after Bottom’s Dream speech, Theseus gives an account of the imagination that instead elevates “cool reason.” He doesn’t dismiss the imagination, it appears, but just defines — and limits –it confidently. But then Hippolita seems to dissent, pointing out that the consistency of the lovers’ account suggests something more than mere fancy and grows to “something of great constancy,” however strange and admirable.

Theseus’ decision to hear the Pyramus and Thisby play does suggest a breadth of acceptance and sympathy, even though he’s too much the reasonable adult to be genuinely satisfied. The initial prologue and introductory prologue are in rhymed quatrains, as are Pyramus and Thisby’s speeches, though they slip into couplets later. There are of course jokes sprinkled throughout, like the mistaken punctuation of the first prologue and the archaic alliteration at the end of the second. The side commentary of the gentles seems rather annoying, and maybe it is meant to be. Moon’s prose rejoinder to the discussion seems to suggest that. The nursery-rhyme-like dimeter and trimeter at the end moves things along quickly. The bergomask dance that ends the mechanicals’ play must have been a rustic sort of thing, like something morris dancers still do.

Does Theseus’ casual reference to “fairy time” bring on Puck and Oberon and Titania, as if the words conjure them? Puck’s epilogue blurs the distinction between playing and dreaming, amusingly apologizes for the play and appeals for the expected applause.

This is surely the lightest of Shakespeare’s plays, but one that plays with what theater is all about. I think Bottom is the major role — and perhaps the imaginative center.

Dusty:

You’re right that it’s possible to distinguish the women: tall vs. short, dark vs. pale. But except for their appearance, aren’t they pretty much the same person?

Yes, Theseus is the skeptical rationalist. Maybe Shakespeare invites us to consider skeptical rationalism as limited, and insufficiently aware of the power of “imagination” to “body forth” a world. But after suggesting that poets are like lunatics and foolish lovers, Theseus describes the power of the “imagination” in what are perhaps the most remembered lines from the play, suggesting that readers and playgoers think they represent the tribute of the playwright/poet himself.  And Theseus is not a stickler for reason. He is happy to hear the play, overruling his advisor, even though he knows it is likely to be clumsy. He’s a bit like Puck. Both of them enjoy “sport” — that’s how Puck thinks of the foolish lovers and how Theseus thinks of “Pyramus and Thisbe.”

There’s a subtle difference between Theseus and Hippolyta on this point, maybe suggesting that there has always been a little difference between them. She finds something “strange and admirable” in both love and poetry. Interesting that she focuses on “great constancy” — a rarity in Shakespeare’s world. It’s a very moving line.

We hear explicitly for the first time that there has been some sort of play competition. Bottom was earlier sure that their play would be “preferred” and indeed it is. While reading the prologue I found myself thinking of the end of Romeo and Juliet, where one lover erroneously thinks the other is dead. With the interruptions from the courtly audience, and the reply from Bottom, I thought of “The Murder of Gonzago,” where the audience comments  and then Hamlet breaks things up by explaining the ending.

It strikes me that the mechanicals’ play is indeed “mechanical,” the product of men’s hands not heads, a crude and material (and parodic) way of bodying forth the imagination. When the stage is clear Shakespeare brings back Puck and the fairies, and we get a final instance of the power of the imagination to conjure and body forth a world. In a good staging I think the ending of the play could indeed be “magical.”

Interesting that Puck invokes the dangers of the night, dangers that are kept under control by the fairies, in the same way that the setting in a moonlit night keeps at bay the threats of natural violence, and the play keeps the dangers of the human world of demanding fathers and irrational lovers under control.

Michael:

Final thought on MND: it’s amusing that the plot of Pyramus and Thisby bears a resemblance to the other play Shakespeare was working on close to MND, Romeo and Juliet; maybe it’s a kind of imitation such that Athenian mechanicals would come up with.