who apparently commands the affectionate respect of his subjects, including both Hermia and Lysander, neither of whom questions or protests his decision. Instead, the lovers decide to fly the kingdom, agreeing to meet in a neighboring wood.
It is in the portrayal of Theseus that we find the first of the telling blending of English and classical personalities, meant to bring home to the Elizabethan audiences the import of the play for them. Theseus is not the king of Athens, but the Duke, a typically British title. His skepticism and rationality are essential to the good order of the state, but in denying the existence of the supernatural, they take on a rigidity, which precludes the softening force of love. Theseus, like Lysander,
has wooed and won a lady, but he has done it not through charms, but through war. His bride-to-be is the warlike Amazonian Queen, Hippolyta, whose very name summons up the powerful anticipates, and thus, in this sense, all that follows is but the dream, which precedes the wedding feast.
When the action moves from the city to the woods, all values of reality and fantasy are reversed.
More than a contrast between rational and irrational,
or familiar and unexpected, the drama investigates a full range of relationships between fantasy and reality. Ultimately it is indeed a study of dream (Miller 25).
In the wood, it is not the law of reason which prevails, but that of fantasy. Here, the ruler is not a philosopher Greek, but a king of fairies, and his subjects are the shadowy spirits of spite and frolic. It is to their kingdom that the lovers repair, in order to escape the dictates of reason, and in their moonlit domain, the extremes of the emotions which drove them from the city will be made to emerge (Miller, 27).
It is not surprising that Shakespeare should have chosen Midsummer Night for this exodus of lovers to the woods. Ancient pagan traditions surrounding this most fecund of all nigh...