ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE: William Shakespeare´s A Midsummer Night´s Dream – Tragic Aspects and Social Significance

Abstract

Throughout the years, A Midsummer Night´s Dream has often been performed with a variety of interpretations made by different directors. At the Royal Shakespeare Company, Dream is frequently performed. This is unsurprising; full of mirth, laughter, drama and magic, why should this play not be one of Shakespeare´s most amusing comedies, if not his greatest one? With a forest inhabited by faeries, a flamboyant king and queen, a foolish henchman called Puck and four lovers who get lost and affected by the royal couple´s marriage problems, it is all but impossible for the play not to produce laughter. However, this research does not focus on how comic Dream is. Instead, the focus of this paper lies on the play´s tragic nature. By defining what elements are included in Shakespearean tragedy, I show that Dream has many tragic features. The results of this analysis demonstrate that the play is an intricate interplay of Senecan elements, Ovidian metamorphosis, Aristotelian dramaturgy, Greco-Roman mythology, plots, philosophy and modern literary theories. I will use concepts from feminism/patriarchy and post-colonialism to create a gender-colonial perspective (concerning foreignness and Otherness). I will also use neurosis from Freudian psychoanalysis. This essay aims to investigate the tragic aspects of Dream and its social significance to provide a deeper understanding of the play. Despite ending with a wedding celebration where the lovers are permitted to wed alongside Theseus and Hippolyta in Athens and a comic meta-play that sounds tremendously silly, the combination of the aforesaid elements allows audiences or readers to understand that Dream might be a classified comedy, but is has many tragic aspects of social significance that can help us understand the play in a different way.