A Midsummer Night's Dream

Puck is a mischievous trickster whose humorousness emerges in wordplay and pranks. Puck is not just a comedic figure, however; his interference, magic, and tricks set many of the play’s events in motion. He transforms Bottom’s head into that of a donkey and uses the love potion on the young Athenians. Puck’s tricks do not always go according to plan; he uses the love potion on Lysander rather than Demetrius, for example. However, rather than reversing the spell on Lysander, Puck heightens the chaos by using the same spell on Demetrius.

Puck therefore reveals himself to take pleasure in the absurd. While Bottom represents the inherent delusional absurdity in humanity, Puck represents a willful embrace of chaos and farce. He actively instigates jokes rather than standing by as a joke for others, and his personality comes to dominate the play. As a lover of humor, nonsense, and evocative language, Puck sets the tone for much of what occurs and embodies many of the play’s key contrasts: Though he is supposedly a graceful, gentle fairy, he loves rough humor and bad behavior, and his coarse personality contrasts starkly with the reserved, princely Indian boy who causes the initial dispute between Oberon and Titania. Even his appearance is ugly and bizarre when compared to the other, more beautiful fairies. As Oberon’s personal jester, Puck’s job is to make the world a more entertaining place and highlight the absurdity that surrounds them. His behavior is therefore both good-hearted and cruel, his interests both romantic and cynical. In a play filled with contrasts between the city and the wilderness, the lower and the upper classes, and the night and the day, Puck embodies and delights in these contrasts, revealing their humor to other characters and to the audience.

A young Athenian noblewoman, Hermia is a strong female character who refuses to bow to male pressure. She first appears rejecting her father’s demands that she marries Demetrius. While Egeus supposedly has power over Hermia in a patriarchal society, she rejects these expectations and insists on marrying the man she loves. Her direct attitude, her intellect, and her rhetoric impress Theseus even as he threatens her with severe punishment. Faced with the decision between staying in the city and marrying Demetrius or becoming a nun, Hermia rejects the entire framework of the argument to elope with Lysander. Hermia does have a more conventional side—she insists on sleeping apart from Lysander before the marriage—but she is outspoken and determined even in her respect for tradition.

The night Hermia spends in the forest complicates her character. In the city of Athens, where order and rules abide, Hermia’s defiance has a target. In the woods, where magic, farce, and chaos replace order and rules, Hermia succumbs to anger and turns on her friend Helena, who is not at fault for suddenly being the object of two men’s affections. The chaos of the woods turns the two female friends against one another; they are no longer standing up to patriarchal society because they are outside of the city and outside of the normal social order.

Hermia’s calm only returns once the effects of the spell wear off. The entire experience feels like a dream to her, and she repairs her relationships with Lysander and Helena. However, Hermia is notably silent throughout the final act. While she suffered no consequences for her defiance or for her outbursts of anger in the forest, the play (and the society it depicts) effectively censors Hermia. She is relegated to the background of the scene, her power and her authority diminished. In a sense, the play demotes her to the role of silent nun after all; Hermia is forced to take a vow of silence by circumstances outside of her control. 

Like Hermia, Helena stands out as a complex female character. Though not one of the play’s main characters, she is one of the most consequential. At the beginning of the play, Helena is in love with Demetrius. However, where the other young Athenians pursue their visceral romantic feelings, Helena reflects on the abstract concept of love and the deeper consequences of romance. She admits that love is not just a matter of physical attraction but rather influenced by the mind. In a play where a characters’ eyes can dictate their romantic urges (with the help of a magical potion), her definition of love is unique.

Helena ultimately gets everything she wants. Following Puck’s interference, the lovesick young woman suddenly finds herself with two suitors. Helena is a cynic and believes that Demetrius and Lysander are mocking her. Though not entirely true, this does make Helena the only character to see through the charade of the love potion. Rather than accept the sudden outpouring of love (as Bottom does with Titania), she spots the insincerity of the emotion. At the same time, Helena’s cynicism reflects her lack of confidence. She does not believe that two young men would suddenly ditch her beautiful friend to pursue her. She worries about her appearance and compares herself unfavorably to her friend Hermia. Ultimately, she repairs her relationship with Hermia and marries Demetrius. However, the route she takes toward this reward reveals the deep insecurities which reside within her. 

Lysander is a young Athenian nobleman and Hermia’s romantic partner. He competes with Demetrius for Hermia’s affections, but he has already won the battle for her heart. Lysander is a romantic, persuasive, and impulsive young man. He is guided by his emotions, convincing Hermia to run away with him rather than deal with the difficulties surrounding their marriage in Athens.

Lysander’s time in the woods deeply affects him. A fairy spell instantly replaces his deep affection for one woman with deep affection for another. What’s more, a change in personality accompanies this change in affections. Lysander does not just stop loving Hermia; he actively insults her. Whereas he once slept close enough to her to protect her, he now abandons her and wanders off into the woods. At the end of the play, Lysander forgets everything that happened in the forest. His brief affection for Helena feels like a bad dream, and he returns to loving Hermia. Nevertheless, the fairies’ mistakes and Puck’s mischievousness reveal the fragility of his affections for Hermia.

Demetrius is a young Athenian man who was once engaged to Helena but now loves Hermia. Though Demetrius has secured the approval of Hermia’s father, she is in love with Lysander and refuses to marry Demetrius. Demetrius is bitter about this and hatches a plan to stop Hermia and Lysander’s wedding, believing that he can make Hermia fall in love with him. Demetrius thus begins the play as an arrogant, stubborn, and unsympathetic character. Under the influence of the fairies’ magic, he falls back in love with Helena, declaring these feelings more sincere than his infatuation with Hermia and abandoning the bitterness and jealousy that defined him earlier in the play.

Oberon is the king of the fairies and a man in search of entertainment. He quarrels with his wife, hoping that she will allow him to make a knight out of the attractive young Indian prince she has recently added to her retinue. When she refuses, he hatches a plan; he wants revenge against his wife, but he seeks this revenge in a manner that will provide a farcical evening of enjoyment for him. Oberon forces his wife to fall in love with the donkey-headed Bottom, while also meddling in the lives of the four young Athenians whom he spots wandering through the forest.

Oberon has no qualms about forcing his wife to fall in love with another man: As a powerful being—both a king and a practitioner of magic—he is beyond the typical human trappings of jealousy and infatuation. Instead, Oberon acts on spite and boredom. Oberon reunites with Titania at the end of the play, having succeeded in making the Indian prince a knight.

Titania is the queen of the fairies. She lives in the magical world of the forest, where she challenges her husband’s authority and entertains herself. One of her latest diversions, a young Indian prince, catches Oberon’s attention. He petitions Titania to allow him to make the young man into a knight, but she refuses, wanting to keep the handsome young prince for herself. Titania is assertive and independent, challenging her powerful husband and refusing to bow to his wishes. In revenge, he forces her to fall in love with the donkey-headed Bottom, embarrassing her enough that she agrees to relinquish the Indian prince to Oberon in exchange for the spell’s removal. Oberon may eventually win the battle against his queen, but Titania has demonstrated that she is an independent and assertive figure in her own right; it seems likely that the two will continue to bicker and feud for the rest of their eternal lives.

Theseus is the heroic Duke of Athens, and his marriage to Hippolyta will bring an end to a war between his city and the Amazons. Both Theseus and this union represent the ordered world of the city, where practical concerns triumph over romantic indulgences. However, Theseus bears some similarities to his fairy counterpart Oberon. Like Oberon, Theseus is interested in entertainment, celebrating his impending marriage to Hippolyta with several days of parties and feasting. Theseus’s revelry reflects his status. He has triumphed in the war against the Amazons and now he wishes to celebrate. Theseus is not just celebrating love; he is celebrating a political victory that enshrines his position as the ruler of Athens. 

Hippolyta is the Queen of the Amazons: an entirely female society renowned for its warriors. She is engaged to marry Theseus, and their impending wedding is a cause for celebration in Athens since it will bring an end to the city’s war with the Amazons. Because the wedding is a practical solution to the very real and very bloody problem of war, Hippolyta represents the ordered, unmagical world of the humans. Her foil is Titania, who comes from a romantic, magical world where love rules over everything. The two women’s relationships with their respective husbands heighten the contrast. Where Hippolyta once defied gender norms, Theseus has largely (and literally) conquered her by the time the play begins. By contrast, Titania continues to resist her husband’s authority.

Egeus is Hermia’s father. He wants Hermia to respect her promise to marry Demetrius, but Hermia loves Lysander and refuses to marry anyone else. Egeus is therefore both a strict, patriarchal father figure and powerless. Though he seemingly rules his daughter’s life with an iron fist, he must seek Theseus’s help to compel her to follow his rules (and fails even then). His strict, authoritarian personality also reflects the dull, unmagical world of Athens and contrasts with the dreamlike world of the fairies and the magic that occurs in the forest.