In “The Ecology of Self in Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Robert Watson argues for a reading of Shakespeare’s famous comedy as a challenge to the common Renaissance era idea of the “autonomous self”(Watson 34). Watson points to the human characters’ lack of reason and free-will; love is characterized as ephemeral and illogical, and heavily influenced by factors beyond the lovers’ control. A common theme in the play is the existence, and sometimes confusion, of multiple layers of reality: real events are mistaken for dreams; the tradesmen worry that their audience will fail to distinguish fiction from reality. Watson reads the play as “dream-like blurring of species-boundaries that undermines humanity’s proud and foolish claims to insularity”(Watson 38); in other words, Shakespeare breaks down humanity’s claims to superiority over and distinction from other species. While the confusion of realities in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in some ways supports Watson’s reading, as it emphasizes the foolishness and lack of reason of humans, I propose a more nuanced reading. While the human characters’ confusion of realities demonstrates their foolishness, the very fact that they can conceptualize of multiple distinct realities supports the Renaissance era view of humanity as a distinct and superior category.

The distinction between dreams and reality is addressed often in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. These modes of consciousness are confused by characters throughout the play: the lovers are convinced, after the reversal of the love juice’s effect on Lysander, that the chaotic events of the past day were only a shared dream. This confusion emphasizes the foolishness of the lovers, who can not distinguish between waking and dream life. Furthermore, their ready acceptance of the idea that they have all had the same dream indicates their misunderstanding of the mechanics of dreams and consciousness. Similarly, Bottom mistakes his time spent with an ass’s head as a dream, and says that “man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream”(Shakespeare IV.i.209-210), suggesting that, not only does he not understand that the events of the “dream” really occurred, he can not make sense of them even in the context of his belief in their fictionality. This confusion of dreams and reality, and misunderstanding of the workings and contents of dreams, supports Watson’s assertion that Shakespeare is “parodying the principal criterion Renaissance philosophers used to differentiate humanity proudly from other species,” that criterion being reason(Watson 35). The lovers’ confusion breaks down what we often view as the fundamental distinction between humans and other species: their lack of reason makes them equivalent to any animal, which Shakespeare reminds us through Bottom’s ass head.

Similarly, the tradesmen demonstrate a misunderstanding of the basic principles of reality and fiction through their misguided attempts to stage Pyramus and Thisbe. Concerned that certain elements of the play will frighten the ladies in attendance, the actors decide that they must go to great lengths to emphasize that the play is not real. They write a prologue in which Bottom tells the audience, “Pyramus is not killed indeed, and….I Pyramus am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver”(Shakespeare III.i.19-21). Similarly, Bottom insists that Snug the Joiner, playing the lion, must have “half his face…seen through the lion’s neck”(Shakespeare III.i.36-37), and must state for the women of the audience that he is not a real lion. Shakespeare uses the actors as comic relief; their misunderstanding of how a play should be staged, and how an audience perceives a play, seems intended to evoke derision and laughs from the audience of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The actors do not realize that the typical audience is able to seperate fiction from reality, and therefore understand that the lion and the death of Pyramus are not real, without these things being explicitly stated by the actors. Through this misconception, Shakespeare emphasizes that the actors lack human reason, the type of reason which Watson says we see as insular to human beings, and which defines us as superior creatures(Watson 38). Without this reason, the human species can no longer be logically viewed as unequivocally distinct from and superior to other species. In this way, the manner in which the actors misunderstand the boundaries of fiction and reality supports Watson’s reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a breakdown of our fabricated ecological hierarchy, in which we place ourselves at the top.

While the characters’ confusion over the distinctions between reality, dream life, and fiction certainly supports Watson’s reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a revocation of human reason and superiority, Watson fails to recognize that, by merely having the ability to comprehend the existence of multiple modes of consciousness or reality, the characters are distinguished from “lower” beings.  The idea that a dream involves an altered state of consciousness, or a skewed perception of time, is introduced in the opening scene, when Hippolyta, in response to Theseus’s impatience for the wedding, says that “four nights will quickly dream away the time”(Shakespeare I.i.7-8). In the same scene, Lysander, lamenting the pain of arranged marriage, wishes that his agony was “short as any dream”(Shakespeare I.i.144). In both lines, Shakespeare references the phenomenon of time seeming to move faster in dreams; Furthermore, he suggests that Hippolyta and Lysander understand this phenomenon, and are familiar with the differences between these two modes of reality, waking life and dreams. This understanding that there are multiple types of perception, which function differently, indicates a level of reason or intelligence that puts Hippolyta and Lysander above other “lower” species, such as other animals, which have no concept of waking life, dream, reality, and fiction. However, it is important to note that while Lysander is human, Hippolyta is an Amazon warrior, son of Aries in greek mythology, and therefore only Lysander’s comprehension of the distinctions between dreams and reality could be read as evidence for human reason(McLeish). 

While the previous quote encourages a reading that counters Watson’s, Shakespeare is surely not encouraging an insular view of human reason. He emphasizes the instability of human reason through the actions and beliefs of Lysander and Bottom: while, in the first scene, Lysander seems to understand the distinction between dreams and reality, referring to the way that time passes differently in dreams, he later confuses real events for a dream, and even believes that the four lovers have had a shared dream. Similarly, Bottom at times exhibits a profound misunderstanding of the distinctions between reality and fiction through his efforts to stage Pyramus and Thisbe, indicating lack of human reason, and mistakes true events as a dream. Yet in the same monologue in which Bottom confuses the past events for a dream, he muses, “I will get Peter Quince to write a ballet (ballad) of this dream”(Shakespeare IV.i.217-218). Here, Bottom confuses reality with a dream, yet distinguishes between reality and fiction by contemplating a fictionalized version of his “dream”. 

So, according to this inconsistent evidence, is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream a support of human reason, or a rejection? I would argue that Shakespeare does support the view of humans as superior to other species– not including fictional species such as fairies or Amazons–through his depiction of humans as sometimes understanding the distinctions between multiple modes of perception, such as dreams, reality, and fiction. As humans, to our knowledge, are the only species that is able to comprehend the possibility of multiple modes of consciousness and reality, Shakespeare supports the portrayal of the human as superior: an animal such as a bear or a bird would not be able to understand that time seems to move faster in dreams, as Lysander does in Act I, or contemplate writing a ballad about a dream, as Bottom does in Act IV . Yet these same humans also often confuse reality with dreams and fiction, indicating that this human “superiority” is not consistent or ever-present. While it may be true that only a human can understand the different modes of consciousness, and therefore have reason, it does not logically follow that all humans can understand these modes of consciousness, or that the same human will understand these modes of consciousness all the time. Reason is fickle and unstable in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, not absent as Watson claims, but also not present in a way that supports a view of the human species and insular and defined by impenetrable reason.

Sources

“The Ecology of Self in Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Ecocritical Shakespeare, by Lynne Dickson. Bruckner et al., Surrey, England, 2011.

Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Edited by Wolfgang Clemen, Signet Classic, 1998.

“Hippolyta.” Bloomsbury Dictionary of Myth, Kenneth McLeish, Bloomsbury, 1st edition, 1996. Credo Reference