A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Acts 3 and 4
 Act 3, Scene 1
(Summary)

As planned, the acting company known as “the mechanicals”

(or the Clowns) now assembles in the woods to rehearse
their play.

Robin Goodfellow, the mischief-maker, stumbles upon them

and transforms Bottom’s head into that of an ass.
Abandoned by his terrified friends, Bottom sings. His singing
awakens Titania who (under the influence of the magic
flower) falls instantly in love with him. She takes him away to
sleep in her bower.
The literal-mindedness with which they approach the business of acting makes for
some pretty good comedy as it undermines the whole purpose of the art. Bottom is
worried that any stage-craft involving swords will frighten the ladies in the
audience. His solution is to label the play as “only a play” and to tell them that “I,
Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear”
(20-23). And similarly, the lion is to be identified “plainly” as Snug the jointer (45).

In the most famous work of literary theory written during Shakespeare’s lifetime,
Sir Philip Sidney defends the poet’s (or playwright’s) ability to present fictions as
though they were real by pointing out that everyone knows the difference between
the literal and the figurative. “What child is there, that, coming to a play, and
seeing Thebes written in great letters upon an old door, doth believe that it is in
Thebes?”

And so, in defiance of the role of imagination in receiving works of art, Bottom and
his friends proceed to contrive literal representations of moonlight (a lantern) and
a wall (an actor with “some plaster or some loam” [66]) so that Pyramus and
Thisbe can whisper through his fingers.

Their rejection of the imagination is ironic, of course, because they are about to
encounter creatures who are “imaginary” themselves.
The meeting between Robin Goodfellow and the mechanicals is a true
convergence of opposites. The fairy fellow is lighter than air, and can “put a girdle
round about the earth in forty minutes” (2.1.181-2). The clowns, by contrast, are
about as down-to-earth as humans can get. It is no wonder Robin is tempted to
play a trick on these “hempen homespuns” (3.1.76).

When Bottom (Pyramus) is briefly offstage for a moment, he transforms his head
into an ass’s head. When the rest of the company runs away in fear, Robin
announces that he will give chase: “I’ll follow you. I’ll lead you about a round,/
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier” (108-109).

Unlike Silvia Tebrick, Poor Bottom is unaware of the metamorphosis that has
occurred, and merely suspects that his friends are playing a prank on him.

Not losing his self-possession for a moment, he sings to show that he is “not
afraid” (126), and he is not much disconcerted to find that the now awakened
Titania declares herself in love with him: “reason and love keep little company
together nowadays” (145-6). This brief remark might be said to sum up the play
so far.
Now begins a pleasant and interesting time for the transformed Bottom. He is
under the control of the Queen of the Fairies who commands him,

Out of this wood do not desire to go.

Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no,
I am a spirit of no common rate,
The summer still doth tend upon my state,
And I do love thee (154-580).

And he is escorted by tiny fairies to her bower, and fed upon apricots,
dewberries, purple grapes, green figs, mulberries, and honey. His homely
courtesy to the fairies is also a charming touch.

Scene 2
Robin Goodfellow has seen the results of his magic and tells the story to
Oberon. He seems to enjoy the prank he has played on “the shallowest thick-
skin of that barren sort” (i.e., the mechanicals). Oberon is pleased: “This falls
out better than I could devise” (37).
But when Demetrius enters (still) wooing Hermia, Robin’s earlier mistake is now
discovered. “This is the woman, but not the man” (44), he says, and we recall
that he has anointed the eyes of Lysander instead.

Hermia cannot understand why Lysander has disappeared and so she begins to
suspect that Demetrius has murdered his rival. She can think of no other
explanation for his desertion. They have a quarrel in which Demetrius
expresses hatred for Lysander, but denies killing him. Hermia flounces off.

Demetrius now lies down and falls asleep. This, of course, is Robin’s
opportunity to do what he intended to do before, and he pours the flower’s
juice into Demetrius’s eyes. This will have the desired effect of gaining poor
Helena the suitor she desires—”All fancy sick she is, and pale of cheer” (98),
according to Oberon. He will ensure that Demetrius remains asleep until Robin
can find Helena and bring her to the spot.

One does wonder a bit why the fairy kingdom takes such a close interest in
human affairs. Well, Oberon himself has had his love troubles and knows how it
feels to be spurned. And secondly, they are fairies: they don’t have to have a
reason.
When Robin returns bringing Lysander and Helena, it becomes clear that his
motivation is at least partly the sheer pleasure of watching the confusion that
will ensue:

Shall we their fond pageant see?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
…
Then will two at once woo one.
That must needs be sport alone.
And those things do best please me
That befall prepost’rously (116-118; 120-24).

Helena is still under the impression that she is being mocked by Lysander. Or, if
not, she guesses that he does not love either one of them: “Your vows to her
and me, put in two scales, / Will even weigh, and both as light as tales” (135-
6).

Her suspicions are compounded when Demetrius awakens, suddenly

professing love for her—and in an exaggerated Petrarchan idiom that suggests
he is no poet (though he may sincerely believe his own unlikely metaphors):
O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?
Crystal is muddy. O how ripe in show
Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!
That pure congealèd white, high Taurus’ snow,
Fanned with the eastern wind, turns to a crow
When thou holds’t up thy hand. O, let me kiss
This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss! (140-48).

Understandably, Helena is not moved by this silly speech and doubles down on
her indignant protest that she is being mocked. She calls their words insincere,
“A trim exploit, a manly enterprise, / To conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes”
(160-61).

Lysander tends to agree, and asks Demetrius to quit joking around. Everyone
knows he loves Hermia, and he will happily give up his suit of Hermia if
Demetrius will give him ground with Helena.

As with the mechanicals and their play (that is not really a play) and as with
Titania’s deluded love for Bottom, things are now almost exactly the opposite of
what they should be.
All that is needed to make the confusion one degree worse is the entrance
of Hermia, the only character still to be unaware of the extent to which
things have changed. As soon as she asks Lysander to explain why he has
deserted her, she too becomes entangled in the comedy of misdirected
desires.

When Lysander admits that he has left her for love of Helena, Helena
understandably thinks that Hermia has been conspiring with the two men
to make fun of her:

Now I perceive they have conjoined all three

To fashion this false sport in spite of me—
Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid,
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived,
To bait me with this false derision? (199-202)

And she rebukes Hermia for betraying their long friendship, times when
they were “two lovely berries molded on one stem” (216).

Of course Hermia has no idea what she means: “I scorn you not. It seems
that you scorn me” (226).
Now ensues a scene of real confusion. The two men are about to fight a duel over
Helena, both of them repelling Hermia with insults. Demetrius does not believe
that Lysander loves Helena (because he has been so keen to woo Hermia) and he
is forced to tell Hermia that he hates her (295). Hermia then turns upon Helena
and accuses her of stealing her lover:

You juggler, you cankerblossom

You thief of love! What, have you come by night
And stol’n my love’s heart from him? (296-98)

And so it goes. The female characters begin to spar over their physical stature
(Helena, evidently, is taller)—

Hermia scoffs: And are you grown so high in his esteem

Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak!
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes (310-314).
The four-way fracas at last dissolves with all four characters exiting—with hurt
feelings, anger, defiance, and petulance—or some combination of these
emotions. When all are gone, Oberon and Robin meet to consult about what shall
be done to repair the damage. Robin refuses to take the blame for the mistake,
saying instead that he has rather enjoyed the spectacle: “And so far I am glad it
did so sort,/ As this their jangling I esteem a sport” (373-4).

In Oberon’s view, the only way to rectify the situation is to restore Lysander to his
love of Hermia. He instructs Robin to “overcast the night” in fog (376) and cause
the young men to chase each other (without actually meeting) until they are
exhausted. Then Robin will have a chance to use the magic flower again, and
order will be restored:

When they next wake, all this derision

Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision.
And back to Athens shall the lovers wend,
With league whose date till death shall never end.
(391-95)

In a similar spirit of “reversing” previous actions, Oberon’s own plan is to find

Titania and gain the possession of the Indian boy—in return for releasing her
from the enchantment of loving a stranger with an ass’s head.
As morning approaches and the fairies’ allotted time is winding down, Robin and
the two couples execute a kind of mad dance around the forest. At last, the
humans give up in exhaustion and lie down to sleep. This time, Robin applies the
flower’s nectar to the correct pair of eyes (Lysander’s) and, at the end of the
scene, we anticipate a waking in which the right “Jack” will be paired with the
appropriate “Jill.”

Has this long scramble been all about nothing, then? E.K. Chambers
acknowledges the ludicrous aspect of these comic scenes, writing that here “the
central idea of the play [that is, love] is carried to a point that is almost farcical”
(93). He adds, however, that the element of magic is in a way superfluous. What
we have is simply an exaggeration of the fickleness that humans exhibit in love
all the time: “The magical love in idleness really does nothing more than
represent symbolically the familiar workings of actual love in idleness in the
human heart. Boys in love change their minds just so, or almost just so, without
any whisper of the fairies to guide them. The mystery… which is bound up with
the central idea of the play is the existence of that freakish irresponsible element
of human nature out of which, to the eye of the comic spirit, the ethical and
emotional vagaries of lovers take their rise” (94).
 Act 4
A summary of the two scenes of Act 4 almost seems like a conclusion to the play.
Where the first three acts have been concerned with “winding up” entanglements
and creating suspense, Act 4 does a pretty complete job of disentangling the
confusion and subduing the dramatic energy:

Titania and her attendants pamper Bottom, who falls asleep with her. Oberon,
watching them, tells Robin that Titania has given him the Indian boy and thus they
can now remove the spells from Bottom and Titania. Reunited, Titania and Oberon
use music to charm Bottom and the four lovers into a deep sleep, and then exit.

Theseus and Hippolyta, accompanied by Egeus and others, have come to the
woods to celebrate May Day. They discover the four lovers asleep and wake them.
Lysander now loves Hermia again, and Demetrius loves Helena. When Lysander
reveals how he and Hermia fled Athens, Egeus begs Theseus to punish him. But
when Demetrius announces that he now loves Helena, Theseus overrides Egeus
and decrees that Lysander will marry Hermia and Demetrius Helena at the occasion
of his own wedding to Hippolyta. As the lovers depart for Athens, Bottom awakes
and attempts to recall his night’s experience, which seems now like a dream.
The first scene opens with Bottom very much at home with his hostess Titania,
being attended by her loyal fairies. He gives courteous orders to Peaseblossom,
Cobweb, and Mustardseed. Comically, he finds himself “marvels hairy about the
face” and with a craving for oats and hay (25, 34-36)—not to mention “dried peas”
(39). As none of these (one supposes) is obtainable in the middle of the forest, he
falls asleep in Titania’s arms.

It seems that Oberon’s plan has worked. He has met Titania earlier in the wood as
she foraged for “sweet favours” for her new love-object (“this hateful fool,” he
calls him [50]). She is so besotted, evidently, that she gives up the disputed boy to
him without a murmur.

Now, as Oberon uses his second magic potion—the nectar of “Dian’s bud” that will
undo the previous enchantment—he also “restores” things to their proper status:

Be thou as thou wast wont to be.

See as thou wast wont to see.
Dian’s bud o’er Cupid’s flower
Hath such force and blessed power (73-76).

Note the implication that Cupid is associated with madness. The power to restore
sanity comes through “Dian,” or Diana, goddess of chastity.
Once the ass’s head has been removed from Bottom, a brief celebration ensues
to mark the reunion of the King and Queen of the fairies—complete with a
reminder of another celebration to come: the wedding of Theseus and
Hippolyta. This, of course, has been in the background since the beginning of
Act 1, but it is re-announced here as a reminder of the ultimate imposition of
order that a marriage usually symbolizes.

As dawn breaks (also symbolically) Theseus and his party now appear on the
scene. Oddly, they are planning to release a pack of hounds into the forest—a
hunt, in other words, whose “music” will add to the festivities of their wedding
day.

Before this can happen, they stumble upon the sleeping bodies of Hermia,
Helena, and the two suitors. Theseus remembers that this was the day when
Hermia was to have declared her choice (marriage to Demetrius, or the
convent). Lysander tries to explain, but Egeus cuts him off with a renewed
demand that Theseus enforce the law. Notice that his language remains that of
control and authority: he rather harps on the idea of his “consent” as being
“defeated” by their attempted escape from Athens (163-66).
Demetrius now has an opportunity to demonstrate that the force of love is
stronger than the force of law. (Except when love is an enchantment.) His
speech is an interesting mixture of Petrarchan conventions, and an attempt
to separate what is “real” in love from what is “unreal.”

I wot not by what power

(But by some power it is) my love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow, seems to me now
As the remembrance of an idle gaud
Which in my childhood I did dote upon,
And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,
The object and the pleasure of mine eye,
Is only Helena. To her, my lord,
Was I betrothed ere I saw Hermia.
But like a sickness did I loathe this food.
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it.
And will forever more be true to it (171-183).

His love for Helena is this associated with “faith” and “virtue” and “health”
and “natural taste,” while his love for Hermia was like “an idle gaud”—that is,
a childish toy which has no value to the mature man.
It is especially interesting that this explanatory speech is given by Demetrius as
he is the only one who is still under an enchantment. Lysander has loved
Hermia all along; Helena has loved Demetrius all along; and it was no
enchantment that caused Demetrius to reject her love, but what he insisted
was his greater love for Hermia. Lysander was enchanted accidentally, and is
now restored. But Demetrius was enchanted deliberately, and has been left in
that state. So why should we believe a word he says?

The only doubt that is expressed is Demetrius’s own:

Are you sure

That we are awake? It seems to me
That we yet sleep, we dream. Do you not think
The Duke was here and bid us follow him? (201-204)

But when all agree that the Duke has indeed just left, Demetrius is easily
convinced: “Why, then, we are awake” (208).

We are reminded of Bottom’s lack of surprise that the Queen of the Fairies has
fallen in love with him: “reason and love keep little company together
nowadays” (3. 1. 145-6). Perhaps it doesn’t matter that Demetrius is now and
remains not quite in his right mind.
Bottom, at any rate, gets the last word on the form of madness known as love.
Northrop Frye has called his speech (4. 2. 210-229) “one of the most extraordinary
speeches in Shakespeare” (50):

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what
dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I
was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was and methought I had—but
man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of
man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste,
his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter
Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’ because it
hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play…

Frye observes that the speech “is absurd [but] like many absurdities in Shakespeare,
it makes a lot of sense. Bottom does not know that he is anticipating by three
centuries a remark of Freud: ‘every dream has a point at which it is unfathomable; a
link, as it were, with the unknown.’ …But it was Bottom the ass who had the dream,
not Bottom the weaver, who is already forgetting it. He will never see Titania again,
nor even remember that she once loved him…. But he has been closer to the centre
of this mysterious play than any other of its characters” (50).
As Bottom has been the only character among the humans in the play to
consort with the fairies, it is fitting that he is the last to be reunited with his
proper company.

Quince and the other players have been wringing their hands over his absence,
agreeing that no other man can play his part, and lamenting the loss of the
reward they have been anticipating from the Duke for their upcoming
performance.

And then in a final stroke of clearing up confusion, he appears and urges his
friends to get ready for the celebrations, which will include their play:

Get your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your
pumps. Meet presently at the palace. Every man look o’er his part… (35-38).

Whatever suspense remains in this play is now concentrated on its grand finale:
“the most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.”