Book #42
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By William Shakespeare
The Enduring Value of Words
This year, I have devoted countless hours to exploring other people’s written words during my 52-Book Reading Challenge, while also giving space to my own through my blogging journey. This experience has renewed my appreciation for the power of language.
There is a transcendent quality to words on a page- something that surpasses time, culture, race, and gender.
Last week, one of the authors whose work I have read this year passed away: Baek Se-hee, author of I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Though her life has ended, her impact continues- and her words remain a consolation for us all.
Language is a Sharp Tool
However, that being said, language is a sharp tool that can connect, but also divide. In the age of misinformation and a quickly changing verbal societal landscape, even malicious or careless words can linger, causing harm long after their creation.
Grounding Myself Through Shakespeare
In the cacophony of words that is the modern world, I wanted to reground myself in the work of one of the greatest storytellers of all time: William Shakespeare. His words have not only endured the test of time but have grown in their meaning and influence.
Of all his works, I chose A Midsummer Night’s Dream somewhat randomly. Yet, many of the themes in this book remain strikingly relevant today.
I will discuss 4 of those themes in this blog post.
Modern Applications of Timeless Themes
Transformation & Identity
Throughout the play, characters experience physical and emotional transformations. The play celebrates how easily identity can be altered by inner and outer influences- and how completely this transformation is made, sometimes even unbeknownst to the person themselves.
Here are some of the ways that characters’ identity gets transformed:
- Theseus and Hippolyta met in war but will be united in love
- The 4 young lovers are so lost in their passions that they lose self-identity and personal awareness
- The forest as a site of transformation
- Titania, Lysander, and Demetrius are each unknowingly put under a love spell
- The workmen transform into actors
- Puck changes shape and uses disguises to carry out his deeds
- Bottom turns into a donkey and back again
- Several members fall in and out of love with each other
- Helena moves from self-pity toward self-acceptance once love is reciprocated
- 3 sets of lovers turning into married couples
Shifting Identities in the Modern World
Although fantastical, these identity transformations feel quite relevant to our lives today. Modern life allows and demands that we exist as many different versions of ourselves- online and offline, professional and personal, different usernames or avatars- I even write under a pseudonym.
Each of these is a transformation, where we channel different parts of ourselves into a new, dynamic form.
Our ability to transform ourselves is unprecedented. But with such freedom comes instability.
Our identities are constantly changing and it can be tough to pin down who we really are. Are we perhaps the sum of each of our characters or personal iterations?
What impact does time spent or influence achieved have to do with “who” we are? And can we ever get to know ourselves if our identities are splintered, not cohesive?
Partial Personalities
Shakespeare actually gives very little character detail in this play. Which means the actors who play these roles have a considerable amount of freedom to shape the characters.
It reminds me of how social media shows us a tiny fraction of people but we have no idea of the larger context of their lives or who they really are as people. We fill in the details based on our own perspective and assumptions.
This creates a Frankenstein-like constructed identity- shaped in part by the individual, in part by the role they are performing, and in part by how others interpret or project onto them.
It can be difficult for us to put our finger on the exact combination of these sub-identities.
Reality vs. Illusion
The Illusion of Reality
This uncertainty doesn’t just stop at character identities. The play contrasts the real with the surreal. Even the characters often lose track of what is real, why reality has shifted, and their place within it.
In the modern world, technology and misinformation can cause reality to shift beneath our feet. There is an unreliability to thought and perception, nowadays. Which can ironically make people cling even harder to what they “know”. We feel it is harder to have the rug pulled out from under us when we are clinging to it.
This porous line between reality and illusion creates a fragile balance between other contrasts like peace and chaos, or happiness and despair. But are these only genuine if they are built on a bedrock of reality?
The Role of Emotion in Our “Reality”
The play also speaks to the role that unrestrained emotion can have in shaping our sense of reality. And how our strong feelings can make us believe that we are the self-aware captain of our thoughts, instead of internal or external forces governing these.
Shakespeare even makes fun of how contradictory a person’s strong emotions can be with their actions. One example of this is Demetrius wanting to be with Hermia even though she doesn’t love him. He wants to override her decision to fulfil his own- is that true love?
Throughout the play unrestrained emotions create distance, rather than connection. In that example, love, when stripped of reason, becomes a mirror- reflecting only the self. But of course, Demetrius has no awareness of this. He is stuck in his own illusion.
Shakespeare’s Metatheatre
Besides extreme emotion, another layer of distance comes from the fact that A Midsummer Night’s Dream contains a play within it. It is a play within a play, which is called metatheatre in literary terms. Often metatheatre is used to show self-awareness of its own origin and to lead the audience to reflect on the nature of reality, illusion, and performance.
For example, the Athenian workmen putting on their own play take their production as truth. Ironically, because the workmen take their play so seriously, it punctures any illusion of its reality to anyone watching it.
Bottom, in particular, confuses his own identity with the role he is playing, speaking lines that are a mix of each.
Losing Self-Awareness Through Performance
In the modern world, we have different layers of reality. These can be tangible, imaginative, or digital- or some combination of these. Like in the play, we need to question the authenticity, ironies, and tangibility of these constructions.
So, in a way, Shakespeare holds a mirror to us, too. We are often immersed in our own performances- our roles as workers, lovers, or creators- rarely pausing to ask if we are the playwright or the actor, perhaps even the fool.
Shakespeare even ends the play on a slightly unsettling note as both the characters and audience are unsure of what is real and what is a dream. It isn’t neatly defined.
Order & Disorder
Questioning Power Dynamics
Throughout this play, Shakespeare invites us to question the structure of things- of reality, of performance, but also power structures.
The power dynamics shift constantly in this play.
It starts with the hierarchy of the Athenian court, then pivots to the strict and self-righteous authority of Egeus over Hermia. And then to Hermia’s desire for personal autonomy to choose her own lover. Lysander approves of her choice and wants to grant her this freedom, while Demetrius wants to have his own authority… And that is all within scene 1 of the first act; never mind the fairies or the workmen who each have their own chaotic structures.
For the Athenian workmen who are putting on a play, Quince is the author and producer, but Bottom gives the orders. Down is now up.
And the fairies also have a wild and playful order, especially the impish Puck, who delights in chaos.
The borders of all these power structures grind against each other like tectonic plates. There is breakdown before peace is ultimately restored.
Quickly Changing Power Structures in Our Modern World
Throughout human history, the pace of change has been much slower than it is now. These days, empires rise and fall overnight, seemingly out of nowhere. Similar empires in the past might’ve taken centuries to grow.
For each of us personally, we too move through several different power structures in a day. Our role and authority in the system vary based on context. You could be wildly powerful in an environment (physical or digital) and desperately powerless in another.
The power we have in life isn’t fixed, just like in Shakespeare’s play. It is constantly changing.
The Degradation of Communication
Shakespeare’s Use of Language
Another constant change comes from Shakespeare’s use of language. He uses this to illustrate his characters- both who they are as people and their progression throughout the story. The language varies from regal, to blustering, to foolish, to lyrical, and more varieties throughout the play.
The characters also often vary their language based on who they are talking to, such as Lysander rhyming with Helena when he is bewitched to love her. But she does not rhyme back with him because she is in love with Demetrius and thinks she is being mocked.
When the four lovers are fighting, the language becomes darker and more emotional as the misunderstandings increase. The more they talk, the less they understand as each is only seeing things from their own perspective.
Physical and personality differences become exaggerated and a process of dehumanization begins, as they call each other things like “cat”, “serpent”, “puppet”, or “cankerblossom” (a bud-eating maggot). They also stop seeing themselves accurately- internalizing the warped perspective.
Illusion and miscommunication are closely related. They build off one another. In the play, this nearly escalates to physical violence.
Communication Collapse in the Modern World
This is disturbingly similar to the path that arguments take in the modern world. Especially because in the play, the misunderstandings were sparked by an outside influence: Puck.
In our world, disagreements often arise from misinformation, manipulation, or competing interests. When we do not understand these influences, we are just as far from resolving our conflicts as the lovers were.
When people start living in different realities, language becomes not only less valuable, but can deepen divides instead of bridging them.
Shakespeare’s Timeless Lessons
“To lose touch with each other and with the world and be imprisoned in violent fantasies is one of the worst things that can happen to men, and it happens to the lovers.”
-Commentary from the Collins Classics Edition, pg. 196
To me, the above quote speaks to the heart of the play and a significant issue of our world today.
It is as if A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a reminder from Shakespeare that communication, connection, and reality are fragile, and must be carefully tended and examined.
Even though the threats of our time seem unprecedented and unsettling, perhaps there is something timeless to them- a certain logic that Shakespeare recognized more than 400 years ago.
Messy Bun Book Lover