A Different Look Into A Midsummer Night's Dream

Strutting and Fretting Ours upon the Stage?

As God, the Creator of the universe, often uses the most lowly of His creation to deliver His divine message, so Shakespeare, the creator of A Midsummer Night's Dream uses the most awkward and bumbling character to channel his message. Bottom, after his swift recovery from the convalescence of ass-hood, delivers his role as Pyramus with a somewhat less convincing art than that of a method actor, accomplishing the delivery of Shakespeare's message with an exact manner of profound meaning stemming from Bottom's mis-articulation, which is Shakespeare’s method to convince his audience of Bottom’s foolishness. Knowing Shakespeare for who he is, one could read into the phenomenon of Bottom's quirky soliloquy as a sure-fire sign of some deep, hidden meaning. Even without the reader, as interpreter, assigning infallible knowledge to Shakespeare's purported intent, A Midsummer Night's Dream seems to have a purpose far beyond that of the capricious episodes of passion-ridden professions of love that are evident at face value. It is quite believable that Shakespeare is subtly condemning the fickle frivolity that is characteristic of man, using the ironic voice of an idiot to convey a message to his audience that the joke is on the Athenian lovers, and not on Bottom and his cohorts: this message highlights an inescapable discrepancy between the way the world is and the way it should be.

"The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen" (135 Line 220-221). This is Bottom's poorly articulated rendition derived from I Corinthians 2, featuring Paul's explanation of God's love: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him...the deep things of God" (NKJV vs. 9-10). Bottom, it seems, has gotten to the bottom of it, but is rendered incapable of disseminating this knowledge to his counterpart mechanical pals: "man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream" (135 line 216-217). Even in his folly, Bottom, it seems, has received a revelation of significant gravity, and has at least enough discernment to know that he himself is incapable of describing it.

Steven Doloff unravels a new idea concerning Shakespeare's purpose in the act five "play with-in a play" spectacle. He cites the fact that the scripture right below the previously quoted by Bottom in Act Four (I Cor. 2) contains a passage so relevant that it is difficult not to authoritatively label this passage as the motive behind the entire play:

Where is the wise?...Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but...the foolishness of God is wiser than men (I Cor. 1:20-25).

Bottom's acting and diction may be a poor vessel, but this is the salient point of the parallel to "real" life as it applied to the Athenians. His feeble attempt at grasping an ability to produce any semblance of adroitness in his role as Pyramus is indicative of a complete fool. The tomfoolery exhibited by the troupe of mechanicals would make the humblest troubadour blush. What better advocate for God's truth than an utter fool? This is the perfect orator for this statement, and Bottom follows through with the depiction, or even personification, of imbecility.

If this is the message that Shakespeare is covertly emitting, then the melodramatic seriousness of the young Athenian lovers can be labeled as the true folly in this comedy. Of course they would be laughing at Bottom during his performance, when the "Greeks seek after wisdom" (22). They are simply taking themselves too seriously to be able to understand the simple message presented unwittingly by Bottom in its atrocious form: the Athenian lovers' love has shot out in several directions, as a parasite seeking a host. It is a condemnation of the lovers' superfluous manner of flinging their affections at one another, and Bottom is inadvertently labeling this arbitrarily berthed love as whimsical, an indication of the ridiculous nature of their "dream."

The Athenian couples seem to go through one problem to the next; indeed, their fictional existence is almost entirely made up of distress.  The object (person) that would resolve this distress is near throughout, but impossible to grasp until the fairies intercede.  Given all the ludicrous declarations of love spewing from the Athenian characters, it is natural to view the resolution of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with an air of indifference.  It is a fulfilling story in the plot sense, but without some concrete validation of the Athenian’s love borne towards each other, it is hard to put much stake into all of the flowery words, words that profess love but are not substantiated for lack of concrete action to indicate that love, and no real struggle. Their love is given, not fought for. Owing to this reality in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I think Virgil Hutton’s take on the Athenian’s reality is a legitimate prognostication: 

If one could choose which world to live in, one certainly… [would] prefer the world of benevolent fairies to the fairyless world of “Pyramus and Thisby.”…If our world is a world with fairies or gods, none of our beliefs or actions can make it otherwise, any more than Lysander’s or Theseus’s lack of belief in the fairies prevents them from existing and operating... just as the godless world of “Pyramus and Thisby” would not be changed by any appeals for godly aid Pyramus or Thisby might have made.  The only choice we have is one of belief, and through A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare does seem to offer us this choice, after hinting at his own belief concerning the reality (Hutton 290).

Even from a secular perspective, heeding the caveat that we are not to take too many liberties in defining Shakespeare’s intent, this idea of (D/d)ivine providence is indicative of a reality that cannot be completely controlled.  Therefore, we should not take things so seriously.

            “Let go and let God” sounds pretty bumper-sticker, but it is, in essence, a believable interpretation of what Shakespeare’s message is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Else wise we have to stick “let the fairies handle it” on our bumper.  All of the painstaking endeavors endured by the lovers are made ridiculous due to the fact that they have absolutely no ability to initiate a relevant change in their own reality.  Far from a fatalistic approach, the “foolish” words of Bottom can evoke a functional understanding of child-like faith, prompting us as Christian readers to “Consider the lilies of the field” (Mt. 6:28).