Theme of Control in A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay Example

In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakesphere, 4 lovers with conflicts in their love lives go to a nearby forest to try to fix them. Meanwhile, a fairy king and queen also have their own problems, the fairy king decides to solve his own conflict and the lovers conflict by making the right people fall in love with each other. He ends up getting the lover to love the right people, fixing their conflict and making the fairy queen fall in love with a horrible actor who got pranked while rehearsing a play for a wedding. Throughout the play, the characters try to control other characters for their own personal gain or benefit. Throughout the play, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare makes the case that it is not possible to control another person’s actions because of what happened with the characters Hermia and Oberon.

Hermia is one of the 4 lovers that goes into the forest. She wants to marry Lysander, another one of the lovers that goes into the forest, but Athenian law says that she has to marry the man her dad chooses, die or become a nun. So, she tries to control her future by running away with Lysander to his aunt's house where they will not be subjected to athenian law. The text says, “...For in the temple by and by, with us, These couples shall eternally be knit.”This shows the readers that in the end, Herimia, one of the four lovers, was able to control her future in the end but, even though Hermia was able to marry Lysander, it was only because the fairies were able to use magic to  make Demetrius fall in love with Helena so that he does not want to marry Hermia. If magic wasn’t used, Demetrius  would have found Lysander and Hermia and Hermia would have to marry him, become a nun or die. Without magic Hermia would not have had a happy ending and in real life magic does not exist. This is how Shakespeare makes the case that you can’t control people unless you have magic, which does not exist in real life.

Shakespeare also makes his case using another character, the fairy king. The fairy king is trying to control the fairy queen because he wants the Indian boy that the fairy queen is refusing to give him. He is planning to do this by putting a magic plant in her eyes to distract her while he steals the boy from her. The text states, “I then did ask of her her changeling child, Which straight she gave me…”(Shakespeare 4.1.60-61) This tells the readers that Oberon did succeed in his plan but he used his magic to do so. He was not able to convince Titania to give him up, which shows that you can’t control other people unless you have a source that does not exist in real life, magic. 

Others might argue that control is possible because in the play, the fairy queen is able to control the actor who was in the forest without using magic. While it is true that Titania got what she wanted without using magic but it didn’t last, after Oberon broke the magic spell Bottom went back to Athens and Titania did not want Bottom to stay any longer.

In conclusion, Through the play, Midsummer night's dream, Shakespeare shows that control is not possible using characters like Hermia and Oberon. Control often compromises others' individuality.