Plot construction in A Midsummer night’s dream
Plot construction in A Midsummer night’s dream
Robert Ornstein suggested that A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects Shakespeare’s mastery of dramatic structure. It is because in this play Shakespeare brought together diverse elements and put them together in a seamless way. The play has one main plot and one subplot. The main plot involves three stories. The first story relates the love and marriage between Theseus and Hippolyta, the story which serves as the frame for the rest of the stories. The next story concerns the amorous confusion and subsequent reconciliation between four Athenian lovers. One of the major stories presents the feud in the world of the fairies. And the subplot involves a group of rustic Athenians, the Mechanicals, who prepare to present a theatre before the Duke. The plot develops through exposition, climax, and resolution, and makes a fusion of three disparate worlds – The real world of Athens, the imaginary world of the fairies, and the world of art represented by the activity of the Mechanicals. And this fusion is greatly contributed by the language of the play and its setting.
The play begins with Theseus and Hippolyta looking forward to their wedding day, and ends when the wedding has already taken place. It is Theseus whose caution compels Lysander and Hermia to leave Athens and reach the forest. No Athenian has the right to question his decision. Even the rustics depend on him regarding their economic prosperity. Thus, the plots serve as the frame for the rest of the stories. In the next story, Egeus, an Athenian gentleman, wants his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius, but Hermia loves Lysander. Demetrius had previously been in love with Helena who now remains destitute. Incidentally, they all reach the forest and get into confusion by the juice of a magical flower. At last, they are all reconciled and everything ends happily.
In the forest, there are the fairies who are right now divided into the camps of their king, Oberon, and their queen, Titania respectively. Their feud caused a great disorder in the natural world. Oberon’s intrigue to secure the Indian boy, the cause of discord, from Titania further complicates the situation, involving both the fairy world and the human world. Puck, a mischievous, fun-loving spirit takes an active part in the entire scheme. But like the preceding two stories, this story also ends with a reunion of Oberon and Titania. And the sub-plot concerns the Mechanicals who make preparation for a theatre and ultimately produce it in a clumsy manner on the occasion of the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.
It is very interesting to study how Shakespeare managed to interlink various elements in the plot. Egeus depends on Theseus, a character in the first story to make a verdict in his favor, and Theseus orders Hermia, a character in the second story, to think in the way her father thinks. The lovers arrive in that part of the forest where there is the bower of Titania, a figure in the third story. Puck appears as the pivotal figure who intervenes in the human world by applying love juice to the eyes of Lysander and Demetrius. Puck also interferes with the subplot when he changes Bottom’s head into an ass’.
The plot begins with an exposition, which introduces the important characters and the main problem. Situational complexity leads the characters into the forest. The climax is the most emotionally pact part of the story when the crisis reaches its most intense point. The moment of climax begins when Oberon realizes that Puck has mixed up the lovers, making both men fall in love with Helena. At this moment, the four Athenian lovers begin to have a very heated quarrel. The resolution, or the denouement, is a situation when all the complications are resolved. It occurs in this play when Theseus finds the four lovers in the forest and permits them to marry.
When the complexity in the first plot is resolved, the interlude becomes the main focus, and this has led many critics to interpret this last section as an unnecessary appendage. But a careful observation reveals that this play within a play, the metatheatre is no isolated issue. The rustics with their farcical activities contribute to the comic mirthfulness of the play. Bottom becomes a part of the Oberon-Titania story. The authenticity of the interlude can be traced back to the first scene of the play when Theseus declares that he will marry “with pomp, with triumph, and with reveling “, and when he ordered philostrate to “stir up the Athenian youth to merriments”. This urge for merriment reveling and amusement is represented through the interlude. The interlude also emerges as a commentary on the condition of the drama of that time as well as on the importance of imagination and craft in the production of a play. It also highlights how drama is associated with the economic aspect of society. It also gives a profound insight into the limitations of dramatic art.
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