Context & Introduction

Before studying A Midsummer Night's Dream, it is essential to understand the historical, social, and literary context in which Shakespeare was writing. This lesson explores the Elizabethan world, attitudes to love and marriage, fairy folklore, the Athenian setting, the genre of comedy, and the play's possible origins.

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The Elizabethan Era

Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream around 1595–1596, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Key features of Elizabethan society relevant to the play include:

Feature	Detail
Patriarchal society	Fathers had legal authority over their daughters. A father could choose his daughter's husband, and disobedience could be punished severely.
Marriage	Marriage was a social and economic arrangement. Love matches were possible but secondary to considerations of property, status, and family alliances.
The monarchy	Elizabeth I was an unmarried queen — the "Virgin Queen". Questions of marriage, authority, and female power were politically charged.
Social hierarchy	Strict class divisions determined how people lived, spoke, and were treated. Crossing class boundaries was unusual and often comic.
Superstition and folklore	Belief in fairies, spirits, and the supernatural was widespread. The fairy world was both enchanting and dangerous.

Why This Matters for the Play

• Egeus's demand that Hermia marry Demetrius (or face death or the convent) reflects the real legal authority Elizabethan fathers held over daughters.
• Theseus's role as ruler mirrors Elizabeth's position — he exercises authority over love and marriage.
• The fairy world draws on genuine folk beliefs: fairies were thought to cause mischief, blight crops, and steal children.

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Attitudes to Love and Marriage

Elizabethan England held complex — and often contradictory — views about love:

• Romantic love was celebrated in poetry and drama, but it was not considered a sufficient basis for marriage on its own.
• Arranged marriage was the norm among the propertied classes. A daughter who defied her father's choice risked disinheritance or worse.
• Love was seen as potentially irrational — a kind of madness that could overpower reason. This idea is central to the play.

Shakespeare explores these tensions through the four lovers:

Character	Attitude to Love
Hermia	Defies her father for love — courageous but dangerous
Helena	Pursues Demetrius obsessively, even when rejected — love as degradation
Lysander	Believes in true love as a right: "The course of true love never did run smooth"
Demetrius	Previously loved Helena, now loves Hermia — fickleness as a feature of desire

Key quote: "The course of true love never did run smooth." — Lysander, Act 1 Scene 1

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Fairy Folklore

The fairy world in A Midsummer Night's Dream draws on English folk tradition, but Shakespeare transforms it significantly:

Traditional Fairy Beliefs

• Fairies were not the tiny, harmless creatures of later Victorian imagination. In Elizabethan folklore, they were powerful, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous.
• They were associated with nature — forests, flowers, moonlight, and the changing seasons.
• They could bless or curse human events (weddings, harvests, births).
• Changelings — human children stolen by fairies — were a genuine fear.
• The fairy world operated by different rules: time moved differently, appearances were deceptive, and human reason did not apply.

Shakespeare's Fairies

Shakespeare creates a fairy world that is:

• Beautiful and poetic — Titania's bower, the fairy songs, the flower imagery.
• Powerful — Oberon controls the love juice; Titania commands the natural world.
• Mischievous — Puck delights in chaos and confusion.
• Connected to nature — the quarrel between Oberon and Titania has caused floods, failed harvests, and diseased seasons (2.1).

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The Athenian Setting

Shakespeare sets the play in Athens — but this is not historical Athens. It is a fantasy version that mirrors Elizabethan England:

Athens as Mirror for Elizabethan England

Element in Athens	Parallel in Elizabethan England
Theseus's law (Hermia must obey her father or face death)	Fathers' legal authority over daughters
The court as a place of law and order	The Elizabethan court and its rigid social rules
The forest as a place of freedom and disorder	The countryside and "green world" beyond the court's control
The mechanicals as working-class tradesmen	London's craftsmen and guilds

The Court vs The Forest

The play's geography is central to its meaning:

	Athens (The Court)	The Forest
Represents	Law, order, reason, patriarchal authority	Freedom, chaos, magic, desire
Rules	Rigid — Egeus's law, Theseus's authority	Fluid — love juice, shape-shifting, confusion
Who belongs there	Theseus, Egeus, the court	Oberon, Titania, Puck, the fairies
What happens	Conflict, restriction, forced choice	Transformation, liberation, confusion

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Genre: Comedy

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a Shakespearean comedy — and one of his purest examples of the form. Key conventions include:

Convention	How It Appears
Multiple pairs of lovers	Hermia/Lysander, Helena/Demetrius, Oberon/Titania, Theseus/Hippolyta
Confusion, mistaken identity, disorder	The love juice causes the wrong people to fall in love
A "green world" where characters are transformed	The forest, where identities shift and love is rearranged
Resolution through marriage	Three weddings in Act 5
A play-within-a-play	Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the mechanicals
Comic subplot / clown figures	Bottom and the mechanicals
A festive, celebratory tone	The play ends with fairy blessings and a dance

Comedy and Darkness

Despite its lightness, the play contains genuinely dark elements:

• Egeus demands the death penalty for Hermia's disobedience.
• The love juice removes consent — characters fall in love against their will.
• Helena is humiliated and abandoned before the resolution.
• The quarrel between Oberon and Titania causes natural disasters.

Shakespeare integrates these darker elements into the comic structure, ensuring the resolution feels earned rather than superficial.

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Written for a Wedding?

Many scholars believe A Midsummer Night's Dream was written to be performed at an aristocratic wedding celebration. Evidence includes:

• The play's focus on marriage as its central theme and resolution.
• The fairy blessing of the bridal bed in Act 5 — a specific wedding benediction.
• The play-within-a-play (Pyramus and Thisbe) mirrors the kind of entertainment performed at Elizabethan weddings.
• Theseus's discussion of imagination and art in Act 5 reads like a meditation on the purpose of theatrical entertainment at a festive occasion.

This is not proven, but if true, it would explain the play's unusually festive and celebratory tone — it was designed to delight and bless, not to disturb.

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The Title: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

The title connects to several ideas:

• Midsummer Night (the summer solstice, around 21 June) was associated in folklore with magic, madness, and supernatural activity. It was a liminal time when the boundary between the human and fairy worlds was thin.
• Dream — the play constantly blurs the line between dreaming and waking, reality and illusion. Characters wake from the night in the forest unsure whether their experiences were real.
• The title invites the audience to treat the play itself as a dream — beautiful, strange, and not bound by the rules of ordinary life.

Key quote: "I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was." — Bottom, Act 4 Scene 1

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Summary

• The play was written around 1595–1596 during the Elizabethan era, a patriarchal society where fathers controlled their daughters' marriages.
• Love was seen as potentially irrational and dangerous — a theme the play explores through its four lovers and the love juice.
• The fairy world draws on English folk tradition: powerful, unpredictable, and closely connected to nature.
• Athens mirrors Elizabethan England, with the court representing order and the forest representing freedom and disorder.
• As a Shakespearean comedy, the play follows conventions of confusion, transformation, and resolution through marriage.
• The play may have been written for a wedding celebration, explaining its festive tone and fairy blessings.
• The title connects to folklore, dreams, and the blurring of reality and illusion.