Lunatics In Midsummer Night

’s Dream Essay, Research Paper

Shakespeare.s lovers in A Midsummer Night.s Dream and Twelfth Night are

lunatics.

In A Midsummer Night.s Dream, the moon is the guiding force of

madness in the play which influences the chaotic nature and lunacy of the

characters. The moon seems to preside over the entire play and is a symbol of

change.

Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, are one example of

lunatic lovers that parallel the theme of changeability. Oberon and Titania are

quarreling over the possession of an Indian boy that Titania has mothered since

the boy was a baby. This makes Oberon very jealous. But, Oberon doesn.t help

matters much with his straying after nymphs and admiring Hippolyta. This

quarrel becomes so intense that it begins to affect the seasons on earth. Titania

describes it as:

The spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world

By their increase now knows not which is which,

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension;

We are their parents and original.

II:I 114-20

The constant changing of the earth.s state in the seasons creates chaos among

mother nature. In order to solve the quarrel, Oberon wants to teach Titania a

lesson by telling Puck or Robin Goodfellow to use a magical nectar on her and

the Athenian man called Demetrius:

Fetch me a flower; the herb that I showed thee once

The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

Will make man or woman madly dote

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

II:I 172-75

In the case of the two lovers, Hermia and Lysander, they plan to meet by

moonlight and elope in Athens. Egeus, Hermia.s father, wishes for her to marry

a man named Demetrius whom he thinks is of high stature and is fitting for his

daughter as a husband. Hermia is very much in love with Lysander and chooses

to directly disobey Athenian law and her father.s wishes by eloping. Hermia.s

willingness to risk banishment from her homeland shows that love can make a

person do irrational things.

Helena, Hermia.s friend, was once the beloved of Demetrius and if she

can win back his love, then Hermia and Lysander will be free to wed. In an

effort to gain the attention of Demetrius, Helena betrays the secret of her dearest

friend when she informs Demetrius that Hermia and Lysander are eloping. This

is another example of a .lunatic lover. in Shakespeare. Helena knows that she

must keep Hermia.s secret, but she cannot help but tell it to Demetrius in order to

get him to notice her. Helena.s love for Demetrius could cost her the friendship

that she has with Hermia but when a person is so much in love sometimes he or

she will risk anything.

A mistake made by Puck increases the chaos and madness in the play.

Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and sprinkles Lysander.s eyes with the

potion instead. Lysander awakens and the first person he sees is Helena. Under

the influence of the potion, he immediately falls in love with her. A catastrophe

is created when Hermia awakens from her slumber and finds that Lysander has

only eyes for Helena. A fight emerges among the two best friends when Helena

says:

O spite! O hell! I see you are all bent

To set against me for your merriment.

If you were civil and knew courtesy

You would not do me thus much injury.

III:II 148-51

. Puck also sprinkles the potion on Titania.s eyes causing her to act like a

.lovesick lunatic.. When she awakens, she sees Bottom who is now an ass

head, and she immediately falls in love with him. Even though Bottom is an ass

head, the potion hinders her judgment and she is attracted to him anyway.

Otherwise, Titania would certainly not be attracted to the ass head, Bottom, at

all. In these lines, Titania talks of the repulsive Bottom as a very handsome man:

Come, sit thee down upon this flow.ry bed,

While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,

And stick muskroses in thy sleek smooth head,

And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

IV:I 1-4

The madness of this type of love is reflected in the line, .reason and love keep

little company nowadays. from Act III, Scene I (145-46). Love is blind to reason

and sometimes love overpowers reason.

Theseus in A Midsummer Night.s Dream reemphasizes the connection of

the lunatic and the lover, hence the phrase .lovers are lunatics.:

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen.s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

V:I 5-11

The lunatic lovers in Shakesp

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