A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Act 5
 A Thematic “Summing-up”
In most Shakespeare plays, Act 5 is reserved for the denouement—the
untangling of strains in the plot, rewards and punishments, often a marriage
or a new beginning. But in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there isn’t much to
untangle. The confusion has been straightened out, with all characters
restored to their proper partners. The marriages themselves (of Theseus and
Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia, and Demetrius and Helena) have already
taken place as Act 5 begins.

On the other hand, the experiences that most of the characters have
undergone in the woods require some digesting. They are still dazzled, still a
little shaken. As Northrop Frye points out, “the wood-world has affinities
with what we call the unconscious or subconscious part of the mind: a part
below the reason’s encounter with objective reality, and yet connected with
the hidden creative powers of the mind” (47). As Theseus’s opening speech
suggests, there are mysteries still to be considered. Frye adds: “for the fifth
act we go back to Theseus’s court to sort out the various things that have
come out of the wood” (48).
 “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet”
Theseus’s long speech (5.1.2-23) is a gesture towards this reassessment of what has
happened. He takes a commonsensical approach, putting the accounts of Lysander,
Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena in the same category as the rantings of mad people,
and (notably) the fantastical tales of poets. Lovers, like these others, are “of
imagination all compact” (8)—which is to say, made up of dreams and fantasies. All
are deceived, and see things that are not there, or imagine what is there to be
something it is not.

Of particular interest (given that we are watching a work of imagination unfold

before our eyes) is “the poet’s eye”—

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Theseus seems to think of imagination as a sort of distorting mirror. Its flights
are based on something— “if it would but apprehend some joy, / It
comprehends some bringer of that joy”—in other words, it personifies emotion
in order to explain it. Similarly, it transforms the fear of the dark into something
that inspires fear: “How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” (23).

But this is not a very satisfactory account of what the lovers have experienced, as
Hippolyta immediately points out. How is it, she reasonably asks, that all four of
them should have “imagined” the same sequence of events?

But all the story of the night told over,

And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images
And grows to something of great constancy [=consistency]
But, howsoever, strange and admirable (24-28).

She seems on the point of defending the (poetic) imagination as valuable insofar
as it can produce a unified artifact, however “strange” it might be. Works of
imagination are things in their own right, according to Hippolyta—whereas
Theseus believes they are insubstantial “errors” made by the mind in a state of
confusion.
Appropriately, the evening’s entertainment is announced at this point. In spite of his
stated opinion of poetry, Theseus reveals that he knows it is good for entertainment
and diversion, at least. He asks: “Is there no play / to ease the anguish of a torturing
hour?” (39-40).

Theseus is intrigued by the way apparent opposites are drawn together in the play
proposed by the mechanicals: “a tedious brief scene… [with] very tragical mirth” (61-
62). Is this another indirect recommendation of the imagination? In any case, despite
the poor review given by Philostrate (who has seen the mechanicals rehearsing)
Theseus elects to see the play. Theseus is open-minded enough to praise the
“simpleness and duty” that have motivated the actors, and presumably willing to
overlook their ineptitude.

Hippolyta seems concerned that they will be spectators to a public failure (91-92), but
Theseus reminds her (effectively) that “it’s the thought that counts”:

Our sport shall be to take what they mistake;

And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect
Takes it in might, not merit (96-98).

Clumsy sincerity, in his view, has more value than glib obsequiousness.
The Prologue (a traditional start to a play in this era) is probably spoken by
Peter Quince—but the two versions of the play (quarto and folio) do not align
on this point. In any case, the stuttering effect that Theseus has just referred
to in the sincere but tongue-tied courtier (102) is a pretty good indication of
what the play as a whole will be like.

Then (confusingly) a second prologue (134-160), this one definitely spoken by

Quince. This is more coherent, but has the disadvantage of giving away the
whole plot.

More strangely still, it is Snout (as the Wall) who has the first speech (164-174)
in the play proper. His self-description (“This loam, this roughcast, and this
stone doth show / That I am that same wall”) has the effect of undercutting
whatever efforts may have been made in terms of staging and costumes.
Clearly, these are artists who do not trust the efficacy of their art.

This is brought home to us when Bottom (as Pyramus) overhears some

murmurs in the audience, and steps out of character to tell them that the line
“Deceiving me” is part of the artistry. It is “Thisbe’s cue. She is to enter now,
and I am to spy her through the wall” (196-198).
Pyramus blows his next lines, “seeing” a voice and attempting to “hear” a face.
And the ensuing dialogue (207-219) is wooden at best, and absurd at worst (e.g.
when the Wall “exits,” presumably on his or its own two feet).

The theme of imagination comes to the fore again in the exchange between
Theseus and Hippolyta:

Theseus: The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if
imagination attend them.

Hippolyta: It must be your imagination, then, and not theirs.

Theseus: If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass
for excellent men (224-230).

This may be an admission on Theseus’s part that “imagination” is not contained to

the “lunatic, the lover, and the poet,” but is also something the spectator must
bring to the play.
The tragic finale of “Pyramus and Thisbe” is chock-a-block with ridiculous
diction (Pyramus thanks the moon for its “sunny beams”) and unintentional
tongue twisters (Thisbe was the “fairest dame / That lived, that liked, that
looked with cheer”). These make it impossible not to laugh at the “most cruel
death[s] of the two star-crossed lovers. Thisbe’s final speech is a hilarious
parody of Petrarchan conceits:

A tomb
Must cover they sweet eyes.
These lily lips,
This cherry nose,
These yellow cowslip cheeks
Are gone, are gone!
Lovers, make moan:
His eyes were green as leeks. (345-52).

The play seems to end with the two dead lovers getting to their feet to explain
themselves once more (368), but Theseus brushes this away: “No epilogue I
pray you. For your play needs no excuse. For when the players are all dead,
there need none to be blamed” (372-74).
But there is a sort of epilogue, staged by the fairies whose hour has come
again.

Their entrance, announced by Robin Goodfellow (388-407) is a final rebuke to

Theseus’s pronouncement that the things of the imagination are not real. He
will never know how wrong he is—indeed, Bottom is the only human
character who actually meets the fairies—but the audience is left with the
impression that it would be unwise to underestimate their powers. (We should
recall at this point Titania’s long speech in Act 2 on the disastrous effects on
the climate that her quarrel with Oberon has produced [81-117]).

Oberon makes it clear that his entourage is gathered for the sole purpose of
blessing Theseus’s marriage to Hipployta:

Now, until the break of day,

Through this house each fairy stray,
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessèd be,
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate (418-22).
And so the fairies disperse throughout the chambers of Theseus’s palace to
bestow good fortune upon the inhabitants and their children. This is to
suggest that the fairy world—or the world of imagination, or the world of the
unconscious mind—is invisibly present at all times.

Robin Goodfellow’s final address to the audience confirm this intersection of

the sleeping and waking forms of life:

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear (440-444).

Watching a play, a work of imagination, is thus likened to sleeping and

dreaming. It seems real enough while it is happening, but insubstantial and
incredible in the light of day.

This note of ambiguity at the end is noted by Harold Bloom who takes it as the
keynote of his essay on the play, as we shall see.
 A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
an essay by Harold Bloom
In asserting that the play has been “Bottom’s dream or his weaving because
he is the protagonist (and the greatest glory) of the play (139), Bloom opens
up a reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which the ordinary man is
shown to have imaginative capacities we would never suspect. For Bloom,
Bottom is “gentle, mild, [and] good-natured” (138), as well as

Shakespeare’s Everyman, a true original, a clown rather than a fool or jester.

He is a wise clown, though he smilingly denies his palpable wisdom, as if his
innocent vanity did not extend to such pretension…. Every exigency finds
Bottom round and ready: his response is always admirable. The Puck-
induced metamorphosis is a mere externality: the inner Bottom is unfazed
and immutable. Shakespeare foregrounds Bottom by showing us that he is
the favorite of his fellow mechanicals: they acclaim him as ‘bully Bottom,’
and we learn to agree with them (140).

In choosing such a humble, down-to-earth subject for metamorphosis,

Bloom argues, Shakespeare erases the boundary between reason and
imagination.
Unlike any other character in the play, Bottom is unafraid of the fairies, and
unperturbed by his change of state. He even takes Titania’s infatuation in
stride. The ability to take life as it comes is shown to be a strength that even
Theseus, with his earnest desire to explain away the productions of the
imagination, seems to lack. As Bloom explains, this suggests a breadth of
vision in Bottom that brings at least two of the “societies” of the play
together:

Bottom the natural man is also the transcendent Bottom, who is just as
happily at home with Cobweb and Peaseblossom as he is with Snug and Peter
Quince. For him there is no musical discord or confusion in the overlapping
realms of the Dream. It is absurd to condescend to Bottom: he is at once a
sublime clown and a great visionary (141).

Bloom’s view of Bottom as one who can comfortably inhabit two different
realms of being suggests to me another possible commentary on Lady Into
Fox. The denial that is the source of the conflict in that story might be, in
other words, a simple failure of imagination. Bottom is not irrational, but his
very rationality is elastic enough to accept the apparently impossible.
Bloom somewhat confirms this possibility in the antithesis he draws between
Bottom and Robin Goodfellow (aka “Puck”). Unlike his opposite number from
the land of the fairies, Bottom is no lover of chaos: “There is no darkness in
Bottom, even when he is caught up in an enchanted condition” (141). Given
command of the four fairies who attend on Titania, he only uses his powers
harmlessly, calling for honey and hay—when he might have asked for riches.

Like “earth” and “air,” Bottom and Puck are elemental opposites, argues Bloom,
and the contrast between them “helps define the world of the Dream. Bottom,
the best sort of natural man, is subject to the pranks of Puck, helpless to avoid
them… [T]hough the Dream is a romantic comedy and not an allegory, part of
its power is to suggest that Bottom and Puck are invariable components of the
human” (142).

It is Bottom’s very susceptibility to change that makes him, also, the most
clearly differentiated character in the play. He is certainly the most memorable.
The four young lovers are almost blank slates on which anything might be
written, and the four “regal characters” (Theseus and Hippolyta, Oberon and
Titania) are somewhat stereotyped. Bottom’s individuality stands out that
much more by contrast.
Once released from his metamorphosis, Bottom attempts to describe his
“dream” in a speech (4.1. 200-216) that famously confuses the senses and
their functions. (“The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not
seen…”). Bloom finds in this speech not confusion but something like a
restoration of an original unity of perception. Thus, Bottom “suggests an
apocalyptic, unfallen man, whose awakened senses fuse in a synesthetic
unity” (161).

Bloom connects this portrayal of unity or unification to the comment made by

Hippolyta on the subject of imagination. Unlike Theseus, she finds in the
lovers’ common dream evidence that the imagination can produce “something
of great constancy” (5.1. 26)—a sort of “weaving” that cannot be picked apart
by reason. Imagination thus emerges at the end of the play to be a sort of
common denominator. It is, according to Bloom, a “metaphor for the
Shakespearean audience, and it is ourselves, therefore, who grow into
“something of great constancy,” and so are re-formed strangely, and
admirably” (163).

As well as being “Bottom’s dream,” it is quite possible that the play is also, as
Robin Goodfellow proposes in the final lines, a communal dream entered into
by the audience.