the significance of the moon

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare’s extensive use of Greek, Roman and traditional Celtic mythology is particularly interesting. For instance he uses characters such as Puck or Robin Goodfellow that would be clearly recognisable to his less educated audience as a traditional mythological character that appeared in many folk tales. His upper class audience would have been more familiar however with his more classical mythologies. He could have had numerous reasons for including all of these characters and traditions together, the most obvious that he wanted to appeal to a wide range of audience. Although, he could have included them all as a way to represent an idea of ‘reality versus dreams’ in the play. Adding all of these mythological ideas together would allow his audience to grasp the idea that the whole play should be regarded as a dream, which is what Puck suggests in his ending speech.

It does become very easy when reading or performing a Shakespeare play to dismiss or overlook some of his more subtle details. For example to way in which Shakespeare represents the moon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Throughout the play he refers to the moon an estim

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Shakespeare deliberately has the mechanicals have long winded sentences which overall makes them seem more human where as with the faeries he deliberately has their monologues structures as poems in order to dehumanise them and create a strange paranormal feel to them.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is filled with little references towards the moon, and in Puck’s epilogue we are reminded one final time. The moon is present in Oberon’s opening speech,

‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania’

Oberon’s greeting invokes the moon as a symbol of disharmony. This disharmony is centred on his wife Titania’s refusal to present her changeling boy to her husband. Elizabethan beliefs are incredibly important throughout the play as a whole; therefore what the moon meant symbolically to them must be recognised. Night time is a time for dreaming, which proves his point that Lysander is an ‘unrealistic’ suitor for Hermia.

Not only does Shakespeare choose to include numerous pieces of Mythology in his work but he also includes the Mythology behind the moon for a more practical rather than symbolic reason, It emphasises the short passing of time in which the whole play is set in. It is the time in which they hold the most power and also a time for dreaming and illusions, hence the title. Demetrius goes hunting for Hermia, Helena follows him and hunts for him, and then Lysander leaves Hermia to hunt for Helena so Hermia goes hunting for Lysander etc.

‘Another moon – but O, methinks, how slow

This old moon wanes!’

Here we see how Shakespeare has chosen to use a dash and repeat to moon ideas to create a sense of desperation in Theseus’ language. In many productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander and Demetrius are made to look very similar in clothing and looks; this is done to enhance this feeling of madness and mayhem in the audience’s minds. This may have been away to emphasis this confusion even more so.

Titania holds many strong qualities of Diana Goddess of the moon in characterisation (as a powerful woodland spirit) and in name.

As this is a play within a play, Quince would what to include the moon in very much the same way as Shakespeare had in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Approximate Word count = 1751
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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