A Midsummer Night's Dream

Oberon wins his dispute with Titania. She allows him to knight the Indian prince, and in exchange he promises to free her from her humiliating devotion to Bottom. The aftermath of the dispute is revealing. Rather than bearing any animosity toward Oberon or seeking revenge, Titania seems to accept his scheming as part of life. Though she angered Oberon by defying his orders and rejecting the patriarchal structure of society, she ends the play by reentering into the dynamic and accepting Oberon’s victory over her. The chaotic night of the fairies returns to order in time for dawn; the natural, patriarchal structure of society must prevail, even in the world of the fairies.

Puck and Oberon also lift the majority of the other spells by the end of the night. The only person who remains enchanted is Demetrius, who continues to love Helena. Lysander returns to Hermia, and Bottom’s head returns to normal. However, the aftermath of the magic leaves the characters with the lingering sense of unreality. They feel as though they have woken up from a dream, and they are keen to dismiss their behavior and their experiences as something that occurred while they were asleep. Bottom struggles to even finish his sentences as he speaks about the past night; every time he tries to remember his time with a donkey’s head, his words trail away, as though the experience is too painful or confusing to remember directly. Bottom is not generally an articulate character, but the extent of his struggles to communicate suggests that the situation was so absurd and chaotic that he would rather pretend that it did not happen. Reality and order are comfortable and safe, while the chaos and magic of the previous night are dangerous and scary. Dismissing the events as a dream allows the characters to pretend that they live in a normal, ordered world, even though it is only the time they spent in the surreal world of the forest that has restored harmony to their ordinary existence. The only person who questions the other characters’ certainty that they were merely dreaming is Demetrius. Still affected by the magic, Demetrius struggles the most to let go of his memories because he is the person whose situation has most radically changed.