Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy built around the events which take place during one fantastic night in the forest. It is a play about the strange power of dreams--a power which can transform love to loathing, heaven to hell, and men to beasts. This paper will focus on the dream within the play and, more specifically, on the attitudes and judgments of the lovers, Bottom, Theseus, and Hippolyta toward the experience, as expressed in four passages which present their varying points of view.
The first of these passages, the conversation presenting the young lovers' reaction to the night's events (4.1.180-92), is brief but telling. Demetrius, the only one still under Puck's pansy-liquor spell, remains dazed and uncertain whether the dream has actually ended. He even goes so far as to ask the others, "Are you sure/That we are awake?" (4.1.185-186). His memory is also clouded; in fact, the events of the previous night are, to him, "Like far-off mountains turned into clouds" (4.1.181). He expresses no regret about his change of fortune, however, and despite the fact that he is at a loss to explain why his affection has suddenly reverted to Helena, he seems content to love--and marry--her rather than Hermia.
The women, neither of whom had been hexed by Oberon's potion, are equally uncertain about the motives behind the night's adventures; they are, however, aware of what took place, though they seem hesitant to believe the events really happened. Both of them seem justifiably perplexed and more than a little disappointed by the goings-on, and neither seems quite sure what to conclude from the experience.
Hermia, who began her evening as the desire of both Lysander and Demetrius--but by morning had been cruelly rejected by both of them and badly mistreated by Helena as well, has learned a lesson or two. She says, "Methinks I see these things with parted eye/When every thing seems double" (4.1.182-183). Thi...