emotions, and wild irrationalities. The mood is one of confusion, rapid shifts in emotions and attractions, and expresses, through this device, the very nature of what it's like to be in love.

The mood of this scene is comic but also serious, as Shakespeare continues the discussion that threads throughout the play on the relationship between reality and art/imagination. The players, particularly Bottom and Quince, worry about managing the effects of realism, showing an acute, if comic, awareness of audience, and the way audiences invest imaginatively in a drama.

Tellingly, the scene opens with the players arriving in the forest and Quince reacting to it imaginatively:

This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn-brake our tiring-house, and we will do it in action as we will do it before the duke.

The makeshift players then worry about the effects the play will have on the audience, especially the effect of Pyramus drawing a sword to kill himself and a lion coming on stage. This is comic, as the actors feel they have to stop the drama repeatedly to keep reassuring people, especially the women, that the stage action is not real. In fact, they are so fumblingly inept that nobody is likely to be fooled for a moment. Further, in their sincere concern, they also show a complete misunderstanding of the relationship between audience and art: audiences want to believe a play is all real; they want to have the bejesus scared out of them by scary scenes. 

So we laugh, but we're also invited to think seriously about art and how it functions, foreshadowing Puck's speech at the end, where he invites the audience to make its own decisions as to what extent the play is a "dream." We are drawn as well into the conversation about the relationship between imagination and love, where people fall in love (such as Titania will with Bottom in his ass's head) in ways which seems to bear little relationship to reality and much to the machinations of desire. 

I would say that the mood at the beginning of this scene is pretty comic.

This scene opens with the players (led by Bottom) talking about how they are going to do their play.  This gives Bottom a good chance to be a clown.  He starts talking about concerns he has about how the play will go.  As he does this, he tells a lot of jokes and generally acts silly.  For example, he talks about how the ladies will be afraid of the lion.  He then says that there is no wildfowl that is more frightening than a lion.

The mood at the beginning of Act 3 is playful, as Puck and the fairy banter.

By Act 2, there is a lot of trouble brewing.  As a break from the high drama, we are treated to a little bit of playful banter between Puck and one of Titania’s fairy attendants.  She asks Puck if he is Robin Goodfellow, and they discuss his antics playing tricks on mortals.

I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,(45)….
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,(50)
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale. (Act 3, Scene 1)

Although the general mood of the scene’s opening is mirthful, there is some important information given too.  They discuss the fight between Titania and Oberon over her human changeling, which has implications for the forest.  If the two continue fighting, the forest continues dying.

Although the craftsmen provide most of the comic relief in the play, there is a fair amount provided by Puck as well.  He is playful while being pointed in his barbs.  In him we learn a great deal about the fairy world, and even more about the mortals. For example, when Puck gives Bottom a donkey's head, we learn more about his character and even begin to sympathize with him and see him as more than an obnoxious blowhard.

As it opens? The mood of the characters—the rude mechanicals rehearsing for the play—is excited and focused. They want this play to be good, and Bottom wants it to be his way. For the audience, the mood is expectancy, with traces of humor. We know the lovers have gone to the woods. We know the fairies are there. Now that the rehearsal is starting, the train wreck is about to happen. It is tense; what will happen?

Although it is a comedy above all, A Midsummer Night’s Dream includes a variety of tones, from the serious to the magical to the romantic. The overarching tone, however, is a satirically humorous one.

The play begins on a rather somber, even tragic note, with Hermia being forced to choose between a loveless marriage to Demetrius, celibacy, or death, and with both Lysander and Helena at risk of losing out on true love if the marriage ends up taking place. Meanwhile, the discord between Titania and Oberon, the fairy queen and king, provides a fractious beginning to their story as well. However, by the end of the play, all is well, and all the characters have found love despite the chaos. The end of the play has a peaceful, joyous, playful tone that reassures audiences that the characters' conflicts have been resolved.

Though A Midsummer Night's Dream displays many different tones throughout, the dominant tone is one of satirical humor. Between the constant jokes aimed toward Bottom and his fellow crew of bumbling actors, Puck's chaotic mischief resulting in several instances of dramatic irony and farce, the contrast in the Athenians' poetic dialogue versus the nonsensical vocabulary of the mechanicals, and the sheer absurdity and buffoonery of the messy romantic relationships, the play has an unmistakably comical tone.