As a playwright, William Shakespeare used various plot devices, sometimes combining multiple ones into a single work. Explore Shakespeare’s plots, metaphor, comedy and more to better understand the technical under-workings of his complex plays.

Let’s review Shakespeare’s techniques as a writer, reviewing the many used in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The reader is introduced to a classic Shakespearean double plotline: Lysander and Hermia fleeing into the woods, and Bottom’s transformation into an ass.

Artwork page for ‘Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing’, William Blake, c.1786 on display at Tate Britain. At the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, fairy king Oberon and queen Titania make friends again, and Moth, Peaseblossom, Cobweb and Mustardseed dance in a ring, while Puck claps the beat.William Blake’s fairies dance on weightless tiptoes wearing petals, leaves and gauzy.
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

A Third Plotline Thickens

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. By William Blake, c. In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called 'problem plays' Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies. ‘Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing’ was created in c.1786 by William Blake in Symbolism style. Find more prominent pieces of illustration at Wikiart.org – best visual art database. Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing by William Blake, c. 1786 A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and Hippolyta.

In Dream, two sets of young lovers have fled, and the ridiculous mechanicals, representing the lowest members of society, rehearse a play that comically mirrors the situation of the lovers. Shakespeare introduces a third plot-line, something even his audience could not have been prepared for: Act II begins in the forest, populated by the world of the fairies.

Here we meet “Puck,” a mischievous sprite who delights in misleading travelers, tripping up old women, and frightening maidens. These fairies are drawn partly from English folklore, Celtic mythology, and old literary traditions—they’re a mixture of what the scholar Northrop Frye calls “abandoned belief,” largely abandoned even in Shakespeare’s day.

This is a transcript from the video series How to Read and Understand Shakespeare. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

Like the low plot of the mechanicals, the plot of the fairy world mirrors the high plot of the blocked lovers. In the fairy kingdom, conflict is raging: Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies, will not abide by each other’s company. Oberon wants Titania to give him a “changeling boy,” to be his servant, but she refuses. It’s a battle of wills between man and woman, not unlike the battle between Theseus and Hippolyta when he wooed her with his sword, and between Hermia and her father Egeus.

The parallels in Shakespeare’s plots are important. Titania’s reason for not giving the boy is telling: “His mother was a votress of my order,” she explains, describing the marvelous adventures they shared; “But,” she concludes, “she, being mortal, of that boy did die / And for her sake do I rear up her boy / and for her sake I will not part with him.”

What does puck tell oberon about titania

Learn more about the four points of entry for understanding what’s happening in a Shakespeare play

Shakespeare’s Techniques Beyond Plot

Titania’s refusal to obey Oberon is based on her loyalty to another woman—just like the sisterly bond between Hermia and Helena that is challenged by the male suitors. Shakespeare’s tools of the block to love and friends to lovers work in this part of the plot as well. Indeed, this is often true in a Shakespeare play: To understand one plotline, one must understand all the others to see how they speak to one another.

The result of this discord and strife among the fairies is remarkable: Storms rage, rivers flood, crops fail, sickness abounds, the very seasons alter because of their rage. In short, chaos in the world of nature and the human world is caused by dissension in the spiritual world. It’s an eloquent expression of the idea that all levels of life need to be harmonized for creation to thrive. The initial crisis of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not merely the separation of young lovers; the entire cosmos is threatened by the blocks to love that open this play. Compared to his earlier comedies, Shakespeare enriched the standard comic structure, giving it a philosophical depth and complexity beyond what his contemporary playwrights had done.

Learn more about how Shakespeare created theatrical “reality” through language

The entry into the forest brings these conflicts to bear in a single space for one night. This plot point illustrates a final tool for understanding Shakespeare, what I call the green world tool. This flight into nature is a standard device in Shakespearean comedy—the unnamed forest outside Milan in Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, and the shepherd realm in Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale. In Dream, we see the whole range of meanings that Shakespeare attaches to this green world. It is far more than just an escape from the city.

We can list a whole range of oppositions that Shakespeare suggests between the world of Athens and that of the forest: Athens is the city, the forest is nature; Athens is reason and judgment, the forest is dream and imagination; Athens is law and order, the forest is chaos and love, or at least eroticism; and Athens is the human domain, whereas the forest is the domain of nature and the supernatural. Floating sandbox game machines. This is where the fairies rule.

Oberon Titania And Puck With Fairies Dancing (1786)

The play suggests that residing in only one of these domains is harmful—reason without imagination, or law without love, is a sterile, harsh life; and letting imagination, dream, or nature run wild without restraint is a kind of madness. It’s as if Shakespeare takes the warring parts of our very psyche and embodies them on the stage, and tries, in his comedies, to balance these conflicting parts of human nature; his tragedies show the failure to balance them, resulting in madness and death— another version of the altar or the tomb tool, based on the direction the plays follow.

Doing More With Metaphors

How do humans interact with this fairy kingdom? As the double plot tool suggests, Shakespeare offers two levels of interaction, one by the lovers Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius; and another by Bottom and his fellow mechanicals. Again, the double plots mirror and comment on one another. The lovers enter the forest and experience confusion, particularly of their identities and of love. Oberon sees Helena and takes pity on her for the scornful way Demetrius rejects her. He commands Puck to anoint the Athenian’s eyes with a love potion derived from the pansy, or “love-in-idleness” flower.

Learn more about how Shakespeare expands on the classical Roman model of comedy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Puck dutifully anoints the eyes of an Athenian man, but of course, it’s the wrong one. When Lysander awakens and sees Helena, he falls madly in love with her and forgets all about Hermia. Oberon then commands Puck to anoint the other Athenian’s eyes, which he does, so now both men pursue Helena—much to poor Hermia’s dismay. This storyline is all good comedy, the funny confusion of identity and love partners. Shakespeare then deepens the issues by using comedy to pursue the very meaning of love.

By Marc Connor﻿, Ph.D., Washington and Lee University

As a playwright, William Shakespeare used various plot devices, sometimes combining multiple ones into a single work. Explore Shakespeare’s plots, metaphor, comedy and more to better understand the technical under-workings of his complex plays.

A Third Plotline Thickens

Shakespeare’s Techniques Beyond Plot

Doing More With Metaphors

By Marc Connor, Ph.D., Washington and Lee University

Oberon Titania And Puck With Fairies Dancing (1786)