William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

In William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummers Night’s Dream,” the moon plays a very significant role throughout the entire play. It is a symbol that is linked to many things that take place over the course of they play, and seems to help bring about the comedic behavior that fills the majority of it. The moon also elicits the notion of dreaming which plays a very significant role in the play also. If anyone knows anything about our solar system, then the references to moons may be caught early on. Three of the characters names; Oberon, Titania, and Puck all happen to be the names of three of the planet Uranus’ moons (NASA). Although the naming of these three moons did come a long while after William Shakespeare wrote the famous play, it is still important to mention because it gives wind of how important of a factor the moon will be throughout the play itself.
The moon is first mentioned at the opening of the play in act one line three, by the character Theseus. Theseus begins the play by mentioning his upcoming marriage to the queen of the Amazons Hippolyta, and how the old moon is taking entirely too long to leave so that the new one can rise and he can finally have his chance to take her hand in marriage and also have the opportunity to sleep with her. In the case of Theseus bringing up the moon, we are shown that it is first used to show the passage of time in the play. The mention of dreaming quickly follows suit in the coming lines spoken by Hippolyta where she mentions that the two of them “will quickly dream away the time (1.1.9).”
The moon is used to symbolize many other things in this play as well. For instance it is closely related to the subject of desire in my opinion. Many of the actions of the characters take place under...

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...ke for instance in act four, scene one, when Demetrius is talking with the other three characters after waking up in the woods. He says, “Are you sure/that we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream.” His accusations are quickly followed by the other three young characters agreeing with him that they too feel as if everything has been a dream. Along with the younger characters accusations, many other mystical dream-like situations occur. You have the case where Nick Bottom is given the head of an ass by Puck during one of his mischievous bouts, which we all know cannot happen except in the state of someone dreaming. Another thing that would be dream-like would be when Puck uses the love juice from ‘Cupid’s flower’ to make the several love mishaps happen that take place thanks to the orders of Oberon and even sometimes mixing those very same orders up.