A Midsummer Night's Dream Review

William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream couples Greek myth with English Faeries. Theseus and Hipolyta are due to be married, but there are two couples caught in turmoil because of unrequited love. When the troubled couples take their follies to the forest, they unknowingly wind up in faery territory. Oberon, the king of the invisible faeries, pities one of the unrequited lovers and orders his jester to cast a spell to remedy their troubles. But mistaken identity leads to more trouble than was originally wrought. In the meanwhile, the king and queen of the faeries have troubles of their own. Oberon's solution is to have his jester spell the queen into falling madly in love with anything she lays her eyes on so he may take her ward as his knight and they will no longer have any trouble between them. Robin causes Titania to fall in love with a member of a theater troupe, who Robin had spelled to have the head of an ass. All of the mischief is then corrected in time for the wedding, where it all seems like it was a dream and the reunified Faes dance in celebration of the marriage of three couples.

There are many tropes of Faes that seem to originate or be highlighted by this play. First is the typical connection of Faes to nature. All the faeries reside on the forest and primarily draw their powers from nature. Oberon's love potion and antidote are created from flowers and plants. Also, the lesser faeries are named after animals or plants. Another trope is Robin's mischief. He loves to witness mischief or to cause it. By nature, he misleads people, such as the theater troupe. And when he gets caught in causing more mischief than he was supposed to, he tries to use a misunderstanding of words and technicality to excuse himself from fault.  Which that attributes to Faes being attached to words, such as their inability to lie, their bargaining with words that may mislead, and geases. Finally, the number three seems to play a subtle, yet constant role throughout the play. There are three couples in the play, three main faeries that are given realistic names, and three spells to get Demetrius to fall in love with Helena.

This review is not as well-researched as I would like it to be. It is only a primary review for now and I hope to be able to be able to do more research on this book in the future.