The Universe Within A Midsummer Night's Dream
Deriving Setting and Scenery from Shakespeare's Text
Nov 27, 2008
The setting in A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be attributed to Shakespeare’s literary genius within the text. The language provokes the imagination to envison a world that is vast and fantastical, yet concrete and believable, as the setting for events in the play. This article analyses several aspects:
The Forest
The woods can be seen as a contrast to the Athenian Court. There is a romantic element, such as when Lysander and Hermia lie down:
One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
One heart, one bed; two bosoms, and one troth.’
Here the woods are the setting for romantic exchanges, impossible in a logical and stifling Athens. As the mysterious element where the fairies exist, it is also a region of natural beauty, where Oberon describes Titania’s sleeping place:
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.
However, the woods are not entirely benevolent. Away from familiarity, Demetrius recognizes the danger in the "ill counsel of a desert place". The lover’s quarrels and confusions later are indeed set in a wood which is similarly dark and disorderly. They are manipulated, "Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briers", before being awakened to reality. Yet the hardship originates not from fairies, but from human flaws within themselves. Here, the woods become a place where the inner thoughts of the characters are allowed to surface, with troubling implications.
The Moon
As a celestial object, the moon has held a place in the arts and literature, and this holds true for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For three different couples, there are different shades of meaning:
- Thesus and Hippolyta: When Thesus relates the slow waning of the moon to the delay of marriage, Hippolyta replies that it is but a matter time before of time when they are married under a new moon, "New-bent in heaven". Here, the moon can be seen as a type of timekeeper, its own birth mirroring the consummation of marriage for the couple.
- Lysander and Hermia: For Lysander, the moon is a cloak to conceal a "lover’s sleight". The clear moon is expressed with: ‘Her silver visage in the wat’ry glass, Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass-’ The beauty of the moon here might seen to reflect their young love, precious and illuminating, yet mere light, without substance or reality.
- Oberon and Titania: For the Fairy King and Queen, the moon is a subordinate, a backdrop which reflects their emotions. When they quarrel, it is the angry "governess of floods", wracking rheumatic disease. When they are together again, the image of Oberon and Titania flying together, "Swifter than the wand’ring moon", incites the imagination and reinforces the mystical and fantastic nature that the fairies hold in the play.
The Horizons
The language used by the characters constantly point to their existence within a vast world of which the theatre affords just an aperture, rather than a contained universe framed within a picture which we can view entirely.
- Fairies: A fairy's answer to Puck summarises the scope within which the fairies wander: Over hill, over dale, Thorough bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire: I do wander everywhere. Oberon and Titania’s conversations throw up exotic names and places, such as the "farthest step of India" or the melodious "mermaid on a dolphin’s back". This points to the fairies not being created on the spur as plot devices, but drawn from a rich heritage.
- Mortals: During a hunt, Thesus calls for the "music of my hounds", and here their baying is seen to resonate throughout the world within which the characters wander: ‘The skies, the fountains, every region near Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.’ Apart from the poetically charged and musical exchange between Thesus and Hippolyta, which is often quoted to show Shakespeare’s poetical skill and mastery of language, the music of the hounds and the references to far-off lands convey a sense of vastness and magnificence within their world.
Many readers will share Mark Van Doren's view that it is "a wonder that such things can be at all, and be so genuine". Shakespeare's envisoned setting, first expressed in the Globe Theatre, is now rendered in areas as vast as lavish theatre productions, the silver screen, or a school play. Each interpretation of the setting, while different, draws on the same creative source of the text in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Bibliography:
- The Norton Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition'edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean Howard, Katherine Eisaman Maus
- Shakespeare by Mark Van Doren
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