A Midsummer Night's Dream Research Paper

William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c.1595), contains multiple stories and settings, some which are real, illusion or hard to tell the difference between them. Interestingly, it holds a play within the play itself, the secondary play being The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe which is performed before not only to the audience watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but also to the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This essay will discuss how A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play about theatre itself, transformation, and also the relationship between the two.

The play A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play about theatre itself which is most prominently seen in the inclusion of the play Pyramus

By using this disclaimer he is making it hard for the audience to place blame because it can be viewed as just a dream, and so no one can be blamed in the end. ‘It was just a dream’ is a good protestation of innocence, as is ‘it was just an act’. Both dreams and acting are not real but they are shown here as different versions of reality, that may also effect reality. Though both Lysander and Demetrius are effected by an illusion, which translates into reality by confusing and angering Hermia and Helena. This play within a play structure ties together the two worlds of magic and illusion with mortal and reality, and it is sometimes quite difficult to know which exactly is being presented.

In addition to the theme of theatre, the story of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has a recurring motif of transformation throughout the play. There are physical, emotional and status transformations to name a few. The most obvious and physical transformation is that of Nick Bottom, who is transformed partially into an ass through Puck’s magic. Peter Holland says that, “Robin inhabits this place of shifting surfaces, of endless and almost uncomfortable transformability” (49). This makes Robin out to be almost synonymous with transformation. When Bottom wakes up after he has been returned to his normal self, he can only describe his memories of what had happened as a dream. Jay Halio points out that this ‘dream’ Bottom has “is real and not an illusion, though not sensible or comprehensible to human intelligence by reason alone”