Showing his usual dexterity in creating dramatic frameworks, Shakespeare, in this play, interweaves four separate plots and four groups of characters. Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons and Theseus’ fiancée, are the first characters introduced. Theseus is a voice of law and reason in the play, as shown by Egeus’ entrance into the drama: he needs Theseus to adjudicate a dispute he is having with his daughter, Hermia.

The second plot features Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander. These four young lovers stand on the boundaries of the law. Like many adolescents, Lysander and Hermia rebel against authority, in this case, by refusing to accept Theseus’ laws and, instead, plan to escape from Athenian tyranny. Although the lovers have one foot in the conventional world of Athens, the play forces them to confront their own irrational and erotic sides as they move temporarily into the forest outside Athens. By the end of the play, though, they return to the safety of Athens, perhaps still remembering some of the poetry and chaos of their night in the forest.

This irrational, magical world is the realm of the third group of characters: the fairies. Ruled by Titania and Oberon, the enchanted inhabitants of the forest celebrate the poetic and the beautiful. While this world provides an enticing accommodation for the lovers, it’s also dangerous. All the traditional boundaries break down when the lovers are lost in the woods.

In the play’s fourth plot layer, we see the adventures of the ‘Mechanicals’ (Quince, Bottom, Snug, Flute, Snout and Starveling) as they cast and rehearse their version of the play Pyramus and Thisbe to perform in celebration of Theseus’ wedding.

In the final scene, the play has come full circle. The lovers are truly matched and the ‘Mechanicals’ perform their play to entertain Theseus and his wedding guests. The play is the most hilarious mixture of valiant endeavour and ‘ham acting’. Theseus is intrigued and argues that even the best actors create only a brief illusion; the worst must be assisted by an imaginative audience. The play ends with Puck’s final speech, in which he proposes that A Midsummer Night’s Dream was indeed no more than . . . just a dream.

Adapted from an article published by Course Hero, Inc. 2023.