Blog Post #2: A Midsummer Night's Dream Act IV-V

Blog Post #2: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Acts IV-V 

The main point of A Midsummer Night’s Dream revolves around the parallelism between dreams and love. Both entities are depicted as rare, fantastical, and at times, confusing and imbalanced. Throughout the play there is a constant imbalance of either too much love or not enough, and this undulating transfer of love from one person to another instills feelings of uncertainty in the main characters in regards to their significant others. This same uncertainty is seen when the four Athenians wake up from their “dream” and have no idea what happened. Much like the hazy ambiguity in the aftermath of a dream, love distorts one’s version of reality and causes a person to think irrationally. When her father denies her Lysander, Hermia runs for the hills with him, leaving behind her whole life. Helena betrays Hermia just for the slightest hint of affection from Demetrius, and when he finally pays attention to her she thinks it’s a form of mockery. This play outlines the fact that dreams and love are incredibly similar: perplexing, unexplainable and against the norm.

Demetrius is one of the most tampered with characters throughout the play. He begins the story being head-over-heels for Hermia, who loves another man. As the story develops, Puck poisons Demetrius with the juice of the flower upon which Cupid’s arrow fell, so that Demetrius is now infatuated with Helena. While Titania and Lysander are cured of their misplaced affections, Demetrius keeps his in order to balance out the love square. Here is this honest and true man, whose only crime was loving Hermia and pulling the short end of the stick and he’s the one left eternally changed. At the end of the play Demetrius is unsure of how he got to the place he was at after the “dream.” All he knows is that he now loves Helena. In this way Demetrius’ character and virtue aligns with the overall point of the play. Love for both women has blinded him against the truth, as a subconscious dream shields one from reality.

This similarity between Demetrius and the story’s point is outlined in a passage line 160 – 176, and line 186 – 192, Act IV, Scene I.

Demetrius: My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth, / of this their purpose hither to this wood, / and I in fury hither followed them, / fair Helena in fancy following me. / But, my good lord, I wot not by what power / (but by some power it is), my love to Hermia / (melted as the snow) seems to me now / as the remembrance of an idle gaud, / which in my childhood I did dote upon; / and all the faith, the virtue of my heart, / the object and the pleasure of mine eye, / is only Helena. To her, my lord, / was I betrothed ere I [saw] Hermia; / but like a sickness did I loathe this food; / but, as in health, come to my natural taste, / now I do wish it, love it, long for it, / and will for evermore be true to it….

Demetrius: These things seem small and undistinguishable, / like far-off mountains turned into clouds.

Hermia: Methinks I see these things with parted eye, / when every thing seems double.

Helena: So methinks; / and I have found Demetrius like a jewel, / mine own, and not mine own.

            Demetrius has no idea what happened to him that night. All he knows is that he went in search for Hermia, the woman he loved, and “by some power” he now loves Helena and pledges to be true to her. Both Demetrius and Hermia reflect on the strangeness that surrounds these new events, as if seeing them in a dream, and Helena admits that Demetrius’ love is skewed and untrue. Like a dream that leaves you wondering the difference between real and unreal, love too emits an essence of undeniable uncertainty.