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A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

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Student Question

Compare the ruler of Athens to the fairy rulers in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Quick answer:

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus, Duke of Athens, is portrayed as a responsible mortal ruler, while Oberon and Titania, the fairy King and Queen, take nothing seriously and rule over a realm where their actions have no consequences, since everything can be achieved by magic.

Expert Answers

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As a mythical hero with a string of fantastic accomplishments to his name, Theseus, Duke of Athens, is almost as far removed from ordinary mortals as the fairies are. Nonetheless, he appears in A Midsummer Night's Dream carefully performing the functions of a temporal ruler. At the beginning of the play, he reinforces the paternal authority of Egeus. At the end, however, he graciously watches the play within the play, Pyramus and Thisbe, as he celebrates his marriage revels. He seems to have put his wild and heroic past behind him and to be everything one might expect of a dignified, serious ruler.

Oberon and Titania have a much less responsible attitude toward their rule. For most of the play, they divide the fairy kingdom over the trivial matter of the little Indian boy and over their petty jealousies. Oberon does not hesitate to make his Queen look ridiculous as he schemes against her. The audience is left with the impression that this behavior is characteristic of both the fairy King and Queen and that it does not matter much. They live in a realm where there are no consequences and everything can quickly be put right by magic. This is also the atmosphere in which the play ends, meaning that the sternness of Theseus in the first scene comes to seem more dreamlike than any of Puck's antics.

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