A Midsummer Night's Dream Summary

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overview

"Lurking Oberon"
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**I am in the process of updating this post to break the play down into Act/Scene division for easier understanding, so stay tuned**

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first printed in 1600 in Quarto format. A second Quarto was printed in 1619; Q2 differs from Q1 by making a few corrections. The play was also printed in the First Folio in 1623.

The main plot follows four young lovers’ journey into the forest and reveals the strict laws of Athens enforced by Duke Theseus. The first sub plot focuses on the fairy King, Oberon, and the fairy Queen, Titania, as they fight over the Indian Boy. The second sub plot follows a group of people, who are identified by their full time jobs by day, are actors in their spare time. In this summary I refer to them as the artisans; your text may have a different name for them. In the span of the play all of the plot lines intertwine, chaos ensues, and magic goes awry. The events in the play are supposed to take place for four consecutive days.

The play begins in Theseus’s palace which is in Athens, Greece. Theseus is the Duke of Athens, and he has just returned from battling the Amazons; since the play takes place in Greece, in this case an Amazon means a woman, usually strong, from a group of female warriors. It is clear Theseus has won the war and has taken the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta, to be his wife; the wedding is in four days (the course of the play). Egeus comes to the Duke and asks for his help in making his daughter obey him. Egeus appears to have a close relationship with Theseus; he and his daughter, Hermia, live in the castle with Duke Theseus which indicates his high status. Hermia wants to marry Lysander, but Egeus wants her to marry Demetrius. After some confrontation, Hermia and Lysander decide to run off into the woods together to live with his aunt. Helena, Hermia’s childhood friend who is madly in love with Demetrius, tells Demetrius about Hermia and Lysander, so Demetrius follows them to try to stop them while Helena follows him. Meanwhile, the artisans meet and decide who will play which role in the play they will perform: Pyramus and Thisbe. Pyramus and Thisbe is often referred to as the play within the play. [A quick summary of Pyramus and Thisbe is provided at the end.] Meanwhile still, Oberon and Titania are arguing because Titania has taken a Changeling to care for, but Oberon wants the human child for his servant. Since Titania refuses to give Oberon the Indian Boy, Oberon decided to play a trick on her by making her fall in love with the first creature that she lays eyes on; all he needs is a flower pierced by Cupid’s arrow, so he send Puck, his right-hand fairy man, to go get the flower.

After Hermia and Lysander are on they run for most of the night, they decide to spend the night in the forest. In a different part of the forest Helena is still following Demetrius who tells her several times how much he dislikes her and keeps trying to get her to leave him alone. Oberon is able to see the exchange because one of the fairy powers allows fairies invisibility to humans. Oberon seems to feel bad for Helena because he tells Puck to find the gentleman wearing “Athenian” clothes and sprinkle the juice from Cupid’s pierced flower on his eyes. Oberon successfully drips the flower juice on Titania’s eyes while she is sleeping. Puck, not knowing what Demetrius looks like, sprinkles the flower juice on Lysander’s eyes while Lysander is asleep. Helena, in the middle of looking for Demetrius, sees Lysander and goes to check on him to make sure he is fine. When he wakes up, he immediately falls under the spell of the flower juice and tells Helena he loves her. Helena thinks he is being cruel because she knows he loves her best friend, so she runs off. Lysander runs off after her leaving Hermia alone sleeping. Hermia wakes up from a nightmare and notices Lysander is gone; she goes to look for him, but when she sees Demetrius she accuses him of harming Lysander. Oberon finds out Puck got the wrong Athenian, and they sprinkle the juice on Demetrius’s eyes. Now both Demetrius and Lysander are in love with Helena. This leaves Hermia completely confused, and poor Helena thinks the three of them are playing a cruel joke on her. Oberon and Puck watch while the four of them fight as if they were an audience watching a play.

The artisans meet in the forest to practice their lines for the play and the weaver, Bottom, gets turned into an ass (a donkey). All of the others run away from him after his transformation and he is left in the forest alone. Bottom stumbles upon Titania who, upon awaking, falls in love with him and begins pampering him and having her fairies pamper him as well. Oberon and Puck enjoy laughing at Titania’s actions and watching her fawn over Bottom. Finally, Oberon decides to right the chaos between the lovers, so he magically puts them all to sleep and reverses the power of the flower juice from Lysander’s eyes. Soon Titania forgets about the Indian Boy and Oberon is able to take him from her. Once he has what he wants he reverses the power of the love potion and return Titania to normal and she is horrified to see Bottom asleep next to her; Titania goes off with Oberon as if they had not fought a few days before.

The four young lovers awake when Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus stumble upon them in the woods. Theseus says they must have been out celebrating May Day. When asked what happened to them the four young lovers can’t make sense of what has happened to them in the woods the past few days and decide they must have been dreaming. Egeus is angry and demands Theseus make Hermia marry Demetrius, but Demetrius speaks up and says he loves Helena and wants to marry her. Theseus grants that Demetrius and Helena will marry, and he grants Lysander and Hermia will marry. They return to the castle for the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. All three couples get married.

Meanwhile, Bottom has returned to his human state and has been reunited with his friends. Everything that happened to him as an ass he believes is a dream which he will call, Bottom’s Dream. He tells his fellow artisans about his dream. They perform Pyramus and Thisbe for the triple wedding at Theseus’s castle. Occasionally one of the newlyweds will comment on how terrible the performance is, but they watch it until the end anyway. A Midsummer night’s Dream ends with Puck directly addressing the audience with an apology; he maintains all wrongs will be corrected.

Pyramus and Thisbe is a tragic love story. The artisans have decided that when they perform they must break the fourth wall to explain the scene to the audience. Sometimes one of the artisans plays an inanimate object (Snout plays the wall) and announces what they are to the audience. Pyramus and Thisbe talk through a crack in the wall. They decide to meet in the middle of the night, but a lion comes upon Thisbe and scares her away. Thisbe drops her cloak which the lion tears to shreds. It is also stained with blood from the lion’s mouth. Pyramus sees the destroyed cloak and thinks Thisbe is dead, so he stabs and kills the lion. Pyramus stabs himself because he is so distraught and takes a comically long time to die. Thisbe returns and sees Pyramus dead, so she stabs herself and dies.