With the title of any Midsummer Night's Wish, the suggestiveness of the value of dreams and thinking in the play cannot be more conspicuous. However, the concept of dreams and thinking is so cleverly used in the play that it's not as plain and simple as it seems. This essay will try to engage with this issue and investigate how the notion could be interpreted from different perspectives.
In Robert Crosman's essay "What is the Dream in A Midsummer Night's Dream?", he suggested that Shakespeare "depicts a global where people mistakenly consider their weird experience as "dreams" and are thus unaware of the true, unseen makes that condition their lives" (Crosman 3). Directly related to this theory is Kheler's theory of "poetry imagination", stating that Shakespeare exercised his control as a article writer to accomplish catharsis by depicting "the existing disrepute", an expression of "truth to reality", "an increased fact" (101). The embodiment of dreams and dreaming is most noticeably in Puck's speech at the end of the play. In case the audience is "offended" by dark and troubling elements in the play, Puck urges them to think of them as nothing but "a aspiration" also to imagine that they "have but slumber'd here" (A Midsummer Night's Desire V: i). The concept of metatheatricality is highlighted as Puck attempts to reassure the audience regardless of the occasions in the woods and the play-within-play. Puck's repeated emphasis of earning amends (A Midsummer Night's Aspiration V: i), thus, calling the audience's focus on the partnership between dreams and creative control. Through the act of blending the author's implications into the world of metatheatricality, A Midsummer Nighttime' Dream has an opportunity to go through the mind of the unconsciousness and various thoughts exhibited by the individuals.
Based on the aforementioned observation, the dark elements and emotions contained in the play could be the actual audience experience in everyday life yet do not or cannot be confronted. Mangan distributed a similar point of view, directing out the similarity of Freud's psychoanalysis theory and Shakespeare's incorporation of the thought of dreams and thinking in to the play (157). He suggested Shakespeare "intuitively talk about this belief in the meaningfulness of dreams", which Shakespeare experienced built his play on the normal Elizabethan belief that "dreams can be seen as a kind of fact" (157). Oberon's jealousy, his ability struggle with Titania, the conflicting interest among the four enthusiasts and even Hippolyta's marriage to Theseus could all be areas of human unconsciousness which serve as a "interpretative body" (Magnan 158) for the understanding of human desires and needs. How the audience interpret and react to the subliminal emails depends on that they "transform[ing] the latent aspiration" (Holland 2). Indeed, the way that Shakespeare manipulated the idea of dreams is strongly allied to the Freudian psychoanalytical strategy of abreaction.
Despite the attempts of managing the characters, configurations, plots and the audience's encounters, Puck's soliloquy offers an substitute for the audience to reject the messages indicated in the play. Approximately Shakespeare attempted to control the character types and the audience, he was only successful in the second option only when the audience is prepared to accept the embodiments in expense of any superficial but delightful interpretation. As Brooks stressed "We can only think of the woodland theatre as a dream, but only, in fairness, by embracing Puck's invitation" (cxlii). In a way, the closing speech hands over the control to the audience - to choose whether they want to take care of the goal as a resolution, or as an imaginative creation which could relate to their personal experience the truth is. You can find, therefore, a detailed affinity between Shakespeare's purpose and the setting up for (the majority of) the play. The environment of the night period of the day and the woods signifies uncertainty, insecurity, secrecy and unknown. With reference to other imageries related to the nature, "the setting [ ] is widened beyond the real wood, and becomes of the world of mother nature itself to take in hostile features. " (Brooks cxxvi). In relationship to the world of aspect will be the fairies. The world of fairies is extended too, by fairies such as Oberon and Titania whose empire "stretches to the farthest step of India" (A Midsummer Night's Fantasy II: i) and Puck's ability to try out various pranks and travel across the world in fourty minutes ((A Midsummer Night's Goal II: i) (Brooks cxxvii). Hence, it is the setting up and the heroes which allows Shakespeare to, through the mouths of the heroes, frequently send the events in the forest as a desire - whether as a literal reference or a metaphor. The woodland is more than just a location - it functions as the image resolution of the emotional disturbances for the audience who need it so.
It is because of "Shakespeare's unwillingness to select from two mutually exclusive views" that Shakespeare must demonstrate another perspective "through metatheatre" (Crosman 4). With the play-within-play as the previous act, an alternative solution finishing to the enthusiasts' entanglements is acted by the mechanicals. Taking into consideration the relationships and matrimony is granted to the four lovers by Theseus in the first world of Act Four, the play-within-play is given a great deal of relevance since it is the main focus of Work Five. The play will not only share people with an identical record, but also, significantly, share the same environment of countryside and day of their time which is an important element of creating a dream-like world. Shakespeare even went so far as introducing the imagery of moon - which really is a repeating imagery throughout the play- in the play-within-play, supplying Moonshine a conversation. As the audience it is almost impossible to overlook the true function of this agreement. True, the play-within-play is provided comically, but A Midsummer Night's Wish all together "juggles conspicuously with multiple degrees of representation, with play-within-plays and visions within dreams" (Nevo 110). Using the interchanging of reality and dream, the fantasying aspects could aid as a justification of an "weak and idle theme". (A Midsummer Night's Wish V: i)
A further facet of dreaming that is to be mentioned is the colonial wish that is displayed metaphorically in the play. According to Hendricks, the representation of ethnicity and "oriental illusion" is "unmistakably racist" due to the Indian changeling boy (38). That is visible when Oberon and Titania combat over the ownership of the Indian changeling, the thought of ownership and control is specially strong as the few would associated risk their romantic relationship for a mortal young man, and also with the fact that Oberon's tremendous jealousy over the matter:
The king doth keep his revels here tonight.
Take heed the queen come not within his look.
For Oberon is moving fell and wrath
Because that she, as her attendant hath
A lovely guy stolen from an Indian king.
She never had so nice a changeling.
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his coach, to trace the forests untamed: (A Midsummer Night's Aspiration II: i)
While Titania may promise her relationship with the changeling's mortal mom as grounds (A Midsummer Night's Goal II: i), Hendricks pointed out that the Indian guy is merely a plot device on the textual level and that as the foundation of conflict, therefore the boy does not have to be an Indian to serve the same function (41). Yet, as Hendricks seen, despite the fact that he has no lines and functions mainly as a level prop (37), his marternal ethnic origins is described in an sophisticated manner (41), describing his mom as "[] a votaress of my order/And in the spicЁd Indian air by night/Full often hath she gossiped by my side[]" (A Midsummer Night's Wish II: i). When the personal information of the son is given with an intentional goal, this personality is then an emblem of the oppressed races and a metaphor of the aggression possessed by the Elizabethans. However, such a depiction is excused due to the dream-like dynamics of the play. What seems just like a deliberate and racist treatment is obscured by the dreamlike talk about the play intentionally enforces (Hendricks 38). Additionally, Oberon's desire to have the ownership of the Indian guy "is linked to Oberon's political power" and "very much connected to desire to have domination over Titania" (Hendricks 53). Oberon's control of the Indian son wouldn't normally only signifies his superior electric power in the fairy world, but also his control over Titania.
Hendrick's argument in the representation is valid with sufficient data and convincing interpretation, the role of the Indian changeling is nevertheless minuscule. To state that the predominant usage of the thought of dreams is to conceal the racial stereotypes is hyperbole. The problem of gender as well as power rivalry between different sexes, however, seem to be to experiment with a much bigger role and therefore deserve a deeper dialogue. True, the fairy couple's resources of conflict comes from the dominance of the Indian young man; yet what in the end activates such sense of hostility is the power have difficulties in their own realms, which is apparent right from the start of the next function through the Act Four Landscape One. Though Hendricks possessed brought up this, she acquired but only briefly. The motif of male dominance works through the play. Titania loses the power struggle once she is infected with Oberon's love drink in the woods, and throughout the dream-like occasions of that nighttime the audience see how Queen Titania manages to lose complete control of her body and mind and eventually succumbs to patriarchal dominance. How she has transformed from a woman who has 'forsworn [her husband's] bed and company' (A Midsummer Night's Desire II: i) to a tamed better half 'new in amity' (A Midsummer Night's Fantasy IV: i). Interestingly, Titania's position appears to promote similarities with Hyppolyta, whom we know has a certain degree of military and political electricity from the Amazons (A Midsummer Night's Desire II: i) and is only married to Theseus after being defeated (A Midsummer Night's Goal I: i). It really is a further example of the range of conversations that dreams and thinking could widen in this "highly intellectual, highly speculative funny" (Nevo 57).
In final result, this article has attempted an investigation into Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream regarding the notion of the representation and prominence of dreams and thinking. This article has hypothesised that whilst the role of dreams and dreaming within a Midsummer Night's Goal is express, the interpretation of how, why and what Shakespeare manipulated dreams could be multifaceted. As recently discussed, dreams will be the process of abreaction that allows the audience to confront troubling, inner issue. At exactly the same time, the dream-like point out helps blur the severe reality of happenings and serves as an escape route for those who could not deal with the problematic issues in a conscious express. Dreams are 'a repetitive setting [that] invests the complete play, almost to an extent that seems to insist on repetition as you of its central concerns' (Hawkes 16) and Shakespeare has evidently exercise his cathartic opportunity to reveal designs such as competition, colonial ideology and battle of the sexes (Nevo 104) through the use of an effective setting up. Notwithstanding, though dreams and thinking complicates the comedy by opening up new areas of dialogue, it is interesting to understand how Shakespeare and his counterparts identified the dubious and obscure mother nature of dreams, its relation to subconsciousness and the role of thinking in the theater when the idea was still yet to be broadly developed in their era. It really is, perhaps, why A Midsummer Night's Aspiration still appeals to the modern audience whom may have difficulty relating to fairies and spirits due to cultivating quality of the mind.
(1942 words)
