Insofar as the fifth act of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream has thematic significance (the main purpose of the
play-within-a-play is to provide comic enjoyment), it is that the
Pyramus and Thisbe story revisits the themes of romantic hardship
and confusion that run through the main action of the play. Pyramus
and Thisbe are kept apart by parental will, just as Lysander and
Hermia were; their tragic end results from misinterpretation—Pyramus
takes Thisbe’s bloody mantle as proof that she is dead, which recalls,
to some extent, Puck’s mistaking of Lysander for Demetrius (as well
as Titania’s misconception of Bottom as a beautiful lover). In this
way, the play-within-a-play lightheartedly satirizes the anguish
that earlier plagued the Athenian lovers.
Given the title A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it
is no surprise that one of the main themes of the play is dreams,
particularly as they relate to darkness and love. When morning comes,
ending the magical night in the forest, the lovers begin to suspect
that their experience in the woods was merely a dream. Theseus suggests
as much to Hippolyta, who finds it strange that all the young lovers would
have had the same dream. In the famous final speech
of the play, Puck turns this idea outward, recommending that if
audience members did not enjoy the play, they should assume that
they have simply been dreaming throughout. This suggestion captures
perfectly the delicate, insubstantial nature of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream: just as the fairies mended their mischief
by sorting out the romantic confusion of the young lovers, Puck
accounts for the whimsical nature of the play by explaining it as
a manifestation of the subconscious.
