A Midsummer Night Dream - William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night Dream - William Shakespeare

In this play there are various interlacements, all hold in a common background: Teseo and Ippolita Marriage. The vicissitude develops in fairies' world and the leading characters are Oberon and Titania, fairies' king and queen, unfortunately divided by a jealousy quarrel.

The ethereal fairies' world touches mortals' world just with the most unmannerly element of the play: Bottom, even turned in an ass. Bottom is an Athens's weaver that went in the near forest with his group of rude actors for a silly drama's rehearsal: the love story of Piramo and Tisbe; so the play becomes a theatre into a theatre.

But in the magic life of the fairy forest another story gets in: the two lovers, Lisander and Ermia, flee from Athens because nobody agrees to their love. Demetrio, another Athenian that loves Ermia, and Elena, in love with Demetrio, make the story more and more complicated; and the interlacement gets worse with the interpolation of Oberon and the spells of his servant Puck.

This play has a lyric tone and it's at the same time a dream and a funny representation of the irresponsible youth love. Male and female characters are discordant: women result faithful and men fitful. The author wants to make understand that love is blind and crazy, sometimes also nasty and unfair, when it makes many people suffer. But love is also young and so most of this things pass with time, like the same love.

I can't say which character of this comedy I liked. Shakespeare gave to each figure a particular trait of men's behaviour: nobody's perfect, neither fairies and elfs, but everybody react to love in the same way. Everybody is attracted by love but everybody suffers for love. It's a very distressing situation but Shakespeare could describe it very successfully in a comedy, and not in a tragedy.

I appreciated a lot this ability of Shakespeare, but the comic tone that he used to describe this kind of love stories looks a little satiric for me, something like a way to deride youngs that fall "dangerously" in love.