Most of our research deals with looking at A Midsummer Night’s Dream from a different perspective.  With so many things going on during the play, it is interesting to looks at those details from multiple perspectives.  In our scene we provided a different perspective by using conflicting gender roles.  A different perspective to examine our scene, where different meanings can be grabbed from the text.  Each article points out something particular about the text, with a new perspective for both an audience and a reader.

Hackett, Helen.  “William Shakespeare:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  Plymouth: Northcote House.  1997  Annotated by Keith LaBaw.

Helen Hackett writes about the metamorphosis that takes place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  She asserts that the “action, imagery and themes all revolve around the different kinds of change (Hackett 5).”  Shakespeare’s language such as the use of word’s “translated,” “transformed,” and “changeling” form one basis for her claim.  Hackett narrows the discussion further when she focuses on the imagery of the moon.  She believes that the imagery ascribed to the moon in the play mirrors, that which takes place in the earth under its light.
 
Hazlitt, William.  “Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays and Lectures on the English Poets.”  Shakespearean Criticism.  Vol 3.  1986.  Annotated by Miho Hirata.

William Hazlitt argues that A Midsummer Night’s Dream should be read rather than performed because the play is too “etheral” to be presented on stage.  He believes that the delicate description of characters and the scenes of the play are “like wondering in a grove by moonlight; the description breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from a bed of flowers.”(Hazlitt)  Hazlitt continues to explain that however grand the spectacle on stage, the spirit within the play is evaporated.  He concludes by saying that theater and “the regions of fancy” are not the same thing.  The stage and poetry (which can be read and left upto the imagination) are not the same thing.

Calderwood, James L.  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Anamorphism and Theseus’ Dream.” Shakespeare Quarterly.  Vol 42 no. 4 (Winter 1991) 409-430.  Annotated by Ryan Voorhees.

James L. Calderwood speaks of a visual device known as Anamorphism.  Anamorphism was generally used in Renaissance paintings.  Anamorphism is when a painting is looked at straight on, one image is portrayed but by changing the angle of vision the painting changes.  The example given was Holbein’s The Ambassador.  Straight on, two men are portrayed with a white blur in the foreground with them.  From an angle this blur becomes a skull.  Calderwood says Shakespeare uses this technique in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  He does this by presenting the play from three angles: Athens, the forest, and Athens again.  Claiming that the forest is a mirror showing different perspectives of the Athenian world.  He also states that Athens has changed after the forest scenes.  His main focus of this argument is taken from Theseus and Hippolyta.  Calderwood says that the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta could very well be Oberon and Titania.  He quotes Theseus line to Hermia at her refusal to marry.  “Fit your fancies to your father’s will/Or else the law of Athens yields you up—/Which by no means may we extenuate (1.1.118-120).”  But at the end of the forest scenes upon the discovery of our 4 characters, Theseus says to Hermia’s father “Egeus I will overbear you (4.1.178).”  He claims that this great of a change is due to the fact that Theseus and Hippolyta had a dream—nightmare in which they are transformed into the fairy queen and king.  He uses several instances to support his claim; the demand for the “little changeling boy,” and the fact that Titania fell in love with Bottom disguised as an ass.

Hinley, Jan Lawson.  “Expounding the Dream: Shaping Fantasies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Shakespearean Criticism.  Eds. Michelle Lee, Kathy D. Darrow.  Vol. 45.  University Press.  Detroit: The Gale Group. 1999.  107-117.  Annotated by Tracy Vega.

Jan Lawson Hinley believes that the dreams in A Midsummer Night's Dream are indicative of each character’s "sexual anxieties" (107).  A main argument of Hinley's is focused on gender issues within the text.  For example, Hinley suggests that the rivalry between Lysander and Demetrius is due to their desire for the "approval of a dominant older male" (108).  This older male takes form in Egeus, Hermia's father.  Hinley suggests that Egeus' desire to have Hermia married to Demetrius is because Hermia is "the object of her father's incestuous desires, desires he can appease by delivering her 'virgin patent' to a man he can see as an extension of himself" (108).  The women of this play, equally, have their own dilemmas and faults.  Hermia, in Athens is "not a individual" (108), and Helena's "self abasement is expressed as a desire for self-annihilation, either through rape or murder" (109).  The inconstancy of the men's love toward these women cause the females to engage in a rivalry which corresponds with Lysander and Demetrius's rivalry. Hinley argument elaborates the comedic outcome of this "nightmare"(111) by stating that Shakespeare has "managed to move all the lovers closer to the standard of mature reciprocal sexuality . . . [that is] the necessary prerequisite for [a] festive comedy marriage" (111).

Schanzer, Earnest.  “The Central Theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  Shakespearean Criticism.  Eds.  Laurie Lanzen Harris, Mark W. Scott.  Vol 3. (1986) 411-412.  Annotated by Livia Vilhauer
 
Earnest Schanzer focuses on the type of love that Shakespeare presents in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is much different than his traditional treatment of love in other plays. The love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is “engendered in the imagination and blinds both reason and the senses” (411) whereas Shakespeare in the majority of his plays tends to present “a love in which reason, senses, and feelings all work together in harmony and keep perfect balance” (411). Schanzer proposes that the love presented in this play is a form in which all reality is dissolved and it is “a kind of madness” (411). To illustrate his points, Schanzer mentions various situations in the play such as the moment when the flower juice is dropped onto Demetrius’ and Lysander’s eyes at the beginning of the play and the Titania-Bottom love scenes. These moments all represent times in which the madness of love is brought to “ludicrous extremes” (411) because they represent the sudden change in love and the abandonment of reason. “Demetrius’ love for Helena changes to sudden detestation and makes him dote on Hermia who is no fairer that Helena, and certainly not as sweet-tempered” (411). Titania falling for Bottom is also a parody of Demetrius’ love- madness because of the absurdity of a queen desiring a mule. Schanzer wraps his essay up by mentioning the importance of Theseus’ speech (Act V, Scene I, lines 4-17) in the end of the play, which sums up the theme of the play. This theme is: “…a deviation from the norm of love which often leads to fickleness and inconstancy” (412). Theseus makes fun of this type of mad-love in his speech and concludes his points with the presentation of the Pyramus and Thisbe play. Schanzer believes that this mini- play has no real connection to the central theme of A Midsummer Night’s Dream but he regards the characters of Pyramus and Thisbe as similar to Romeo and Juliet. He believes that Theseus’ speech in Act V along with Puck’s comment, “ ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’ ” (Act III, Scene II, line 115) sums up the theme of this play; the madness in love that deserts all reason.
 
Walter, Herbert.  “Invitations to Cosmic Laughter in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”  Shakespearean Essays.  Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. 1964.  Annotated by Sarah Northmore.

Herbert T. Walker discusses the effect of the play on the audience—both intellectual and groundlings alike in his essay “Invitations to Cosmic Laughter in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” He says that while the uneducated would laugh at the simpler jokes in the play, the educated would recognize many allusions within it.  Herbert links the names of the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the characters from Greek epics like the Iliad, Metamorphoses, and the Odyssey, that they represent.  For instance, Walter states, “the names of the other young lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream help to summon memories of battles long ago—epic and romantic combat over ladies far.”(31) For example, Helena as Helen of Troy, Lysander and Demetrius can be likened to Paris and Menelaus, and Hermia might be likened to Hermione from Ovid’s Ars Amoris. Walter also makes a comparison between the fight over Helena to the battle over Emily in Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale.”