[In the following essay, Willson asserts that Shakespeare uses anticlimax in A Midsummer Night's Dreamas a device that underlies the entire plot of the play.]

The device of anticlimax dominates A Midsummer Night's Dream. A more appropriate word is “undercutting”, since anticlimax is identified so closely with bathos, or the descent of sense into nonsense. While there are numerous examples of poetic anticlimax in the comedy, and of pure bathos as well (“Pyramus and Thisbe” stands as a poetaster's delight), I am more interested in situations in which speakers and events threaten to move toward tragedy but are undercut by other words or events. A Midsummer Night's Dream certainly does not exhibit the melodrama associated with tragicomedy—I am not arguing for early Beaumont and Fletcher here. But in this comedy Shakespeare was certainly experimenting with the aesthetic conventions of tragedy and comedy, testing the boundary that separates the two genres. We know that Shakespeare composed Romeo and Juliet at about the same time as A Midsummer Night's Dream, and that the plot of “Pyramus and Thisbe”, those star-crossed lovers of another era, resembles in striking ways that of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare could manipulate the elements of romantic comedy and tragedy to achieve a desired and often startling effect; and, in the process, how easy it was for him to manipulate our responses to each kind of play.

The staple of tragedy is confrontation and climax, a process by which the action and actors remain well within the bounds of dramatic illusion. To use Romeo and Juliet as an example, if Friar Laurence should for any reason turn to the audience while rushing to Juliet's tomb and ask for a light to guide his way, we would surely question the propriety of the request in view of the impending tragedy. The actor could not achieve comic relief by asking such a question, for as we discover about Shakespearean comic relief it is not casually related to the events of the tragedy. The audience response to such a question by the Friar would certainly be one of embarrassment, moreover, because while he exhibits some of the traits of the bumbling clown, we have come to identify him with the serious struggle on the part of the lovers to escape their fate. If only to reinforce the tragic tension by arriving just a moment too late, the Friar must pay no heed to an audience that so desperately wants to urge him to hurry.

Because the death of the hero was essential to the Elizabethan definition of tragedy, the illusion of a separate world must be maintained at all cost. Mercutio's death serves as a useful example here, since he is identified as a comic character, and his effectiveness depends on an easy relationship with the audience. One of the striking features of Romeo and Juliet is that its tone in the first half depends on the jesting of two accomplished comedians, the Nurse and Mercutio. But Shakespeare recognized that Mercutio's continued presence after Romeo's marriage would threaten the invisible curtain of “tragicness” that must dominate the latter half of the play. Mercutio's farewell is spoken as much to the audience as to his friend; and “A plague 'o both your houses” (III, 1, 96) signals to us that Mercutio's final role is one of prophetic speaker. The intimacy established early on disappears as Shakespeare removes Mercutio to the tiring house with a witty and memorable line. So suddenly is the mood changed, in fact, that no untainted humor appears in the rest of the action; even Capulet's raucous wedding feast act fails to provoke laughter. Mercutio's plague metaphor becomes the dominant image as Juliet takes the potion, Friar John finds himself quarantined because of the plague in Mantua, and Romeo catches the disease of suicide. It is as if Shakespeare too decided to wall off the world of the tragedy, preparing us for the inevitable deaths by portraying a series of accidents that can only be observed and not prevented. We are in quarantine.

What we cannot prevent we must be content to witness in silence. Death in the theater is a difficult illusion to create, and the playwright must depend on deception in order to bring it off. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet are meant to strike us as inevitable, the result of a combination of their heedless passion and of events beyond their control. To convince an audience the playwright depends on actors to behave so that they will seem to be oblivious to the audience's presence. The tragic climax should always be experienced with a feeling of helplessness, a sensation of having witnessed some inevitable course of action that these characters seemed blinded to. Even warning them would not help. Nowhere do we feel this sensation as strongly as we do in a romantic tragedy whose main characters are young lovers from feuding families. Thus, when they take their lives they are entombed in a double sense: they are slaves to the passion that has caused the family feud and tainted by the disease of death that pervades the charnel house. Within this carefully constructed death world, the tragic fate of Romeo and Juliet is played out in uninterrupted fashion before an audience that has taken on the role of unlucky yet riveted witnesses. We are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. In spite of the horror of the scene, however, neither actor nor audience would dare to disturb the artifice. Shakespeare depends very heavily on the suspension of disbelief not only to bring off the suicides but also to allow for the Friar's detailed accounting (V, 3, 230-270) of what we already know. The unwritten contract between playwright and audience in tragedy has as its central clause the understanding that no character or event will be questioned as long as it contributes to the movement toward climax and denouement. In order to succeed tragedy depends on the integrity of the dramatic illusion.

Comedy, on the other hand, requires different responses from an audience. Here the understanding is that the playwright is not only free to step through the invisible barrier between spectators and actors, he is expected to do so. Shakespeare, for example, gives us considerable inside information in A Midsummer Night's Dream; in particular, we know that none of the dilemmas of the earthly lovers will be solved until the quarrel between Oberon and Titania has been patched up. Comic irony, like tragic irony, rests on the principle of a character's ignorance of events that directly concern him: Bottom proves to be even more of an ass by failing to comprehend the mystery of Oberon's revenge. Yet even as Bottom continues to miss opportunities to seduce Titania, Shakespeare seems to invite us to question whether he is the most ridiculous figure in that exchange. Titania's blindness, which has led to her enthrallment, appropriately characterizes the anticlimactic mood of the comedy by illustrating the playwright's purpose of deflating human pretensions. Her love for an ass signifies the ultimate comic trope, the hauling down to our level of one whom we regard as superior. Attendant upon this phenomenon is the corollary effect of Bottom's arrival among the gods. The impact of the scenes between Bottom and Titania can be traced back to the understanding between Shakespeare and his audience that in this aesthetic world no one will escape some form of embarrassment or ridicule.

Anticlimax or undercutting proves to be the underlying force of the entire plot. Beginning on a note of confrontation, the comedy threatens to turn sour even before we have had a chance to laugh. Egeus will have the son-in-law of his choice or his daughter will die. Hermia's defiance creates the specter of Theseus having to preside over her death or imprisonment on his own wedding day. He cannot refuse to hear Egeus's complaint, moreover, since the angry father has invoked the strict Athenian law. The scene bears some rather striking resemblances to Shylock's courtroom demand for a strict reading of his bond with Antonio. In The Merchant of Venice, however, the threat to goodness is boldly confronted by Portia in the role of a “neutral” judge so that Antonio may be freed from imminent death. Climax is followed by denouement. But in A Midsummer Night's Dream, whose form rests not so much on reversal as on surprise, Shakespeare chooses to break the dramatic illusion by having Theseus turn to Egeus and Demetrius to employ them “in some business Against our nuptial and confer with [them] Of something nearly that concerns [themselves]” (I, 1, 124-126). This hint of conciliation, of collective bargaining in private, is so strong that it cannot be overlooked as a winking by Shakespeare in the direction of his audience. Theseus has shown his public self in urging Hermia to follow her father's wishes; but he then proves to us that he has a personal stake in resolving this question of authority. The pattern of anticlimax established in the opening scene strikes the keynote for the remainder of the action: those who wield power in this comic world will let their victims down easily.

Oberon demonstrates this comic rule most vividly. He stands above the action in the forest world like a benevolent god or doting parent qualified to prevent these mortal children from hurting each other. His quarrel with Titania is settled with the same potion he uses to “punish” Demetrius for his rejection of Helena. While Puck's error complicates his plan to bring the lovers together, Oberon takes none of the delight in the mix-up that his servant shows. This stance reassures us about Oberon's behavior toward erring mortals; he acts as a substitute for the playwright, whose attitude toward the characters and their “fates” is a matter of concern in the play. The best illustration of anticlimax as a means of reassuring us about the consequence of misbehavior is the handling of Oberon's revenge against Titania. What promised to be a climactic scene between these ruling powers—the demand for the return of the Indian boy—never materializes. We only hear that Titania gave the child to her lord in an off-stage encounter following her “dream” (IV, 1, 60-63). While it may be argued that Titania has been the object of sufficient ridicule, I think Shakespeare arranges the reconciliation in this fashion in order to avoid an unnecessary complication and to provide the model for handling later questions of authority. We should remember that this off-stage approach to settling potentially explosive situations was foreshadowed by Theseus's opening scene invitation to Demetrius and Egeus. The procedure is repeated at the close of Act IV, when the happy disposition of the couples overrides Egeus's claim of paternal right. Once again a potentially troublesome test of wills is short-circuited, and tragic tension melts in the warm light of romantic love.

Oberon and Theseus, then, act as surrogate playwrights, reassuring the audience through their desire to avoid conflict of the integrity of the comic and romantic spirit. In Bottom we have another character designed to give assurances that the tragic potentiality of “Pyramus and Thisbe” will not be realized. By alternating the rehearsal scenes with those involving the young lovers, Shakespeare adds to the bathetic tone of the action. Very quickly in the forest world we see how the mechanicals' burlesque style begins to infect the behavior of the pairs of lovers. (From this perspective the potion proves superfluous, or simply a catalyst to hurry along changes that are predictable.) Quarrels over height by Hermia and Helena and pretensions to heroic swordplay by Demetrius and Lysander soon begin to look and sound like the antics of the rustic players. Demetrius's waking flight of hyperbole—“O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?” (III, 2, 137-144)—could have as easily been spoken by Bottom in praise of his fair Thisbe. As literal and symbolic weaver Bottom's task is to demonstrate how widespread bad acting is among those who have caught the disease of love.

When the play within is in fact performed, it comes as an anticlimax. The question of the lovers' pairings and of Oberon's jurisdiction over the Indian boy are settled by the close of Act IV. Thus “Pyramus and Thisbe” takes the stage as a curiosity, a spectacle on which the royal audience can sharpen its wits before bed. But to dismiss the play within as a pleasant after-piece to the main action would be to misunderstand Shakespeare's comic art. “Pyramus and Thisbe” stands and falls as an exaggerated version of the star-crossed story we have observed in the main action. In a similar way the play within pretends to a tragic form but descends into burlesque because of “bad” acting. Through its tattered curtain of illusion, moreover, Shakespeare allows the theater audience to delight in the blindness of the stage audience. While Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius point a mocking finger at the ineptness of the mechanicals' acting style, we may delight equally in their inability to see themselves in the antics of Bottom, Flute, and the others. Here too one can observe the effect of undercutting. After they “awoke” from their dream, the lovers professed to see their actions in the forest with “a parted eye” (IV, 1, 195), suggesting both disorientation and distance. As they report to Theseus and Hippolyta their newly acquired appreciation of one another, they seem to exhibit the wisdom that comes from experience. But as the play within goes forward it becomes apparent from their remarks that the lovers retain their youthful self-assurance, their utter faith in the romantic vision of love. They have in effect learned nothing.

A central symbol of Shakespeare's relationship with the theater audience can be found in “Pyramus and Thisbe”—the wall. By arranging to have a man play this “part”, the mechanicals unwittingly create the circumstances for double entendre as they refer to the wall's stones “with lime and hair knit up” (V, 1, 194), and to its hole. More important, however, is that the chink in the wall provides not only a means for the lovers to whisper to each other but also a crack in the dramatic structure through which Shakespeare can speak to his audience. What he communicates is not just the reassurances about Theseus's or Oberon's intentions but something about the function of comedy as well. Put another way, the wall between classes, between formal and informal approaches to life, must be cracked and in the end come down before the festive mood is able to prevail. Theseus's “For never anything can be amiss, When simpleness and duty render it” (V, 1, 82 f.) functions as the philosophical and aesthetic base for the gift of the play within. It contributes to the general sense one has about the larger play: that the characters have only acted foolishly when they have swerved from the principles of simpleness (especially in language) and duty. And when Bottom, in an anticlimactic resurrection, announces at the close of “Pyramus and Thisbe” that “the wall is down that parted their fathers” (V, 1, 359 f.), he is speaking more than just an epilogue for both the play within and the lover's plot. He gives us an emblematic description of the avoiding of tragic confrontation and a celebration of the means to establish a comic tone. No epilogue is required for comedy, moreover, because it is a form that celebrates life in its most realistic actions. “When the players are all dead,” observes Theseus, “there need none to be blamed” (V, 1, 364-366); under these conditions, in other words, moral assessment would prove anticlimactic.

Of the many instances of anticlimax in the dialogue (Puck's “When in that moment, so it came to pass, Titania waked and straightway loved an ass,” III, 2, 33 f., deserves at least passing notice), the one that functions best in illustrating the theme occurs in Act V, Scene 1. Theseus opens this Act with a now-famous speech about the deceptive power of imagination. He concludes that those possessed of “seething brains” (V, 1, 4) conjure up fantastic images that, while intriguing and a pleasant way to pass the time, may never be believed. Critical comment has tended to regard this speech as an encomium to the poet's genius, especially when the speech is wrenched out of its context. Read in context this exercise in rhetoric has been cited as Shakespeare's means of returning us to earth, to the realm of “cool reason” (V, 1, 6), where a clear understanding of the difference between truth and illusion is required. Seen in this light the speech adds considerably to Theseus's reputation for wisdom, a reputation that has kept his feet firmly planted in the daylight world of reasonable Athens. Following this line of thinking we may conclude that order and degree have returned to the mortal world with the reassertion of male rationality over feminine passion, thereby paralleling the resolution of the Oberon-Titania disagreement in the supernatural world. So much for readers and critics who are wedded to the notion of Elizabethan hierarchy and who are thereby led to select quotations with a single eye.

But Shakespeare has shown us, through Bottom's outline of the dangers of dream interpretation and by means of the lovers' post-dream comments, that we must view events with a “parted eye.” The comic vision requires this unfocused perspective in order that we better understand the laughable side of our own natures. With this purpose in mind, Shakespeare directs Hippolyta to complete the description of experience that Theseus has only begun:

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

(V, 1, 23-27)

Hippolyta's observation is delivered as testimony in the case of imagination's true character. But we cannot help feeling that it serves to undercut Theseus's somewhat self-satisfied judgment in this matter. Hippolyta's speech asserts the claim of imagination or passion to establishing “something of great constancy” (V, 1, 26), namely the multiple marriages. It may also be a subtle reminder to Theseus that in his opening speech he reprimanded the step-dame moon for cooling his passion as an anxious suitor. In a gentle, almost off-handed way, Hippolyta pays tribute to a force beyond reason out of which both imagination and love must grow, her metaphor emphasizing the life-giving impulse of these feelings. With the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, then, we sense an almost allegorical union of reason and love, the qualities Bottom claims keep little company nowadays.

But Hippolyta's reminder must also be seen in relation to comic form and its dependence on anticlimax. For the purpose of puncturing inflated egos anticlimax is essential to all comedy; and in A Midsummer Night's Dream, with its hyperbolic lovers, bathetic mechanicals, and pontificating dukes, the device proves indispensable. Entering the play's topsy-turvy world we soon learn that it functions on the principle of continuing surprise, or, in Hippolyta's words, by a succession of “strange and admirable” (V, 1, 27) occurrences. Shakespeare understands that we wish for some kind of resolution in the world of comedy, but he also knows that to bring about that resolution by means of climax or confrontation implies a finality that is alien to the form. Even as A Midsummer Night's Dream ends it promises beginnings; Oberon blesses the marriage beds and speaks magic to prevent disfigured children. Despite the fact that Theseus's cool reason tells us we must reenter the realm of substantial shapes, we are assured by Shakespeare (in Hippolyta's awe-filled words) that the so-called real world also offers rewards of constancy thought to be available only within the boundaries of art. In order to convey that idea Shakespeare employs an anticlimactic structure in A Midsummer Night's Dream, giving himself the freedom to escape the confines of his fiction and to play the humble host.