Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Theseus and Hippolyta
Theseus and Hippolyta bookend A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, appearing in the daylight at both the beginning
and the end of the play’s main action. They disappear, however,
for the duration of the action, leaving in the middle of Act I,
scene i and not reappearing until Act IV, as the sun is coming up
to end the magical night in the forest. Shakespeare uses Theseus
and Hippolyta, the ruler of Athens and his warrior bride, to represent
order and stability, to contrast with the uncertainty, instability,
and darkness of most of the play. Whereas an important element of
the dream realm is that one is not in control of one’s environment,
Theseus and Hippolyta are always entirely in control of theirs.
Their reappearance in the daylight of Act IV to hear Theseus’s hounds
signifies the end of the dream state of the previous night and a
return to rationality.
The Love Potion
The love potion is made from the juice of a flower that
was struck with one of Cupid’s misfired arrows; it is used by the
fairies to wreak romantic havoc throughout Acts II, III, and IV.
Because the meddling fairies are careless with the love potion,
the situation of the young Athenian lovers becomes increasingly
chaotic and confusing (Demetrius and Lysander are magically compelled
to transfer their love from Hermia to Helena), and Titania is hilariously
humiliated (she is magically compelled to fall deeply in love with
the ass-headed Bottom). The love potion thus becomes a symbol of
the unreasoning, fickle, erratic, and undeniably powerful nature
of love, which can lead to inexplicable and bizarre behavior and
cannot be resisted.
The Craftsmen’s Play
The play-within-a-play that takes up most of Act V, scene
i is used to represent, in condensed form, many of the important
ideas and themes of the main plot. Because the craftsmen are such
bumbling actors, their performance satirizes the melodramatic Athenian
lovers and gives the play a purely joyful, comedic ending. Pyramus
and Thisbe face parental disapproval in the play-within-a-play,
just as Hermia and Lysander do; the theme of romantic confusion enhanced
by the darkness of night is rehashed, as Pyramus mistakenly believes
that Thisbe has been killed by the lion, just as the Athenian lovers
experience intense misery because of the mix-ups caused by the fairies’
meddling. The craftsmen’s play is, therefore, a kind of symbol for A Midsummer
Night’s Dream itself: a story involving powerful emotions that
is made hilarious by its comical presentation.
