A Midsummer Night's Dream

Act V returns to the ordered world of Athens. The characters leave the wood, the fairies, and the magic once and for all. This return is marked by the reappearance of Theseus and Hippolyta, who represent the ordered society of Athens, with its rules and expectations. Tellingly, Theseus struggles to believe the stories of magic and chaos. He is the ruler of Athens and the embodiment of the city’s ordered society; his disbelief is a rejection of chaos in favor of order. Hippolyta is less certain. She is not from Athens and is not as entwined in the social order. She notices that Demetrius’s experiences in the woods have changed him, so she speculates that something untoward might have occurred.

Fortunately for Theseus, the magic’s lingering effects on Demetrius benefit the Athenian social order. Previously, the complicated romantic situation with Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena threatened to disrupt this normal way of life. Hermia’s refusal to marry Demetrius led her to defy the patriarchy in the form of both her father and Theseus. However, with Demetrius now in love with Helena, this issue is neatly sidestepped. Demetrius can marry Helena, leaving Hermia free to marry Lysander. Ultimately, the chaos of the fairies and their magic spells serves to preserve the order of Athenian society. Rather than being opposites, chaos and order coexist and benefit one another, fusing into one beneficial resolution.

The performance of Pyramus and Thisbe is a final twist in the depiction of magic and reality. The performance is an example of a play within a play: The audience watches as the characters become characters in their own theatrical production, giving characters such as Bottom a dual identity and drawing attention to the artifice of the play the real-life audience is watching. Adding to this irony is the tragic end of Pyramus and Thisbe. While the ending of the play most obviously echoes Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare’s adaptation of a story that evolved from the Pyramus and Thisbe myth), it is also a reminder of what might have happened without the events of the previous night. Only the intervention of the fairies defused the tense situation between Lysander, Demetrius, and Hermia. Without Puck’s spells and pranks, Demetrius and Lysander might have killed one another. Furthermore, Hermia might have continued to defy Theseus and been executed. The play within the play is a casual reminder to the audience that the resolution of A Midsummer Night’s Dream may technically be comedic, but that it could quite easily have become a tragedy.