Introduction:

A play is a dramatic work designed to be presented on a stage and performed by actors and actresses. The plays have been popular among people since time immemorial. There are different types of plays but the most common plays are comedies and tragedies. Comedy is opposed to tragedy it is intended to provoke laughter, not tears and to present an amusing, not a grave view of life. There are various kinds of comedy i.e. the comedy of manners, comedy of ideas, comedy of intrigue, comedy of morals, romantic comedy, farce, burlesque, sentimental comedy, divine comedy and the tragic-comedy. In addition, all those plays that are classified under the heading of Theatre of the Absurd are included in the types of comedy. Before Shakespeare tried his hand on comedy there were the indigenous comedies, and the comedies of Lyly and Greene. The other major writers of antiquity were the Romans Plautus and Terence. Important comedies before Shakespeare were Gammer Guttons Needle, and Ralph Roister Doister. At the Renaissance the very different view of comedy prevailed as one can soon discover from a brief examination of the English critics. They held the view that the object of comedy was corrective, if not actually punitive. In his Apologiefor Poetrie (1595) Sidney says; Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of life, which he representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort. As for the theory of comedy thus far, there is not much to record. In Poetics, Aristotle distinguishes it from tragedy by saying that it deals in an amusing way with ordinary characters in rather everyday situations. Aristotles well-known definition of comedy runs as follows; Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of lower type, - not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a

subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. From the 4th c. AD we have a few generalizations by the Grammrians i.e. Evanthius, Diomedes and Donatus. Evanthius says that in comedy the men are of middle fortune, the dangers they run into are neither serious nor pressing and their actions conclude happily. He goes on to say that whereas in tragedy life is to be fled from, in comedy it is to be grasped. Diomedes observes that the characters in comedy are humbled and private people. He adds that two of the main themes of comedy are love affairs and the abduction of maidens. The two major writers of comedy between c. 1590 and the 1630 in England were Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Ben Johnson (1573-1637). In their conception and treatment of comedy they were very different. Shakespeare wrote almost every kind except satirical comedy; Johnson hardly wrote any that was not satirical. Shakespeare seems to have a deep understanding of human nature and psychology. The characters of his plays are of all kinds i.e. kings, pickpockets, girls, hired, killers, shepherds, philosophers, all mingled in his comedies and tragedies. . Shakespeare has wide variety of subjects including music, law, the bible, military sign, the stage art, politics, the sea, history, hunting, sports and psychology. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has happy ending, usually married for all unmarried characters and a tone and style that is more lighthearted than Shakespeares other plays. Shakespeares early comedies are The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Loves Labours Lost. These he followed with A Midsummer Nights Dream, The merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night etc. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of his early comedies. Unlike the vast majority of his works (including all of his comedies), in concocting this story Shakespeare did not rely directly upon existing plays, narrative poetry, historical chronicles or any other primary source materials, making it a truly original piece. Most critics agree that if a youthful Shakespeare was not at his best in this play, he certainly enjoyed himself in writing it. The popularity of

this play can be drawn from the distinctive characters that represent three unique worlds: those of the rarified world of nobility, ordinary workmen, and a fairy kingdom caught in a web of action.

Literature review:
Robert Ornstein in his book Shakespeare's comedies: from Roman farce to romantic mystery sheds light on some of the characteristics of Shakespeares comedies. He states; Shakespeares comedies dont achieve their denouements by sacrificing their seriousness of theme or integrity of characterization. They do not ask us to believe in sudden repentances or sentimental transformations of personality. Indeed, they trouble us at times because they are unsentimental and uncompromising in their presentation of human behaviour. They will not let us believe that beneath every hard exterior beats a compassionate hear, nor do they try to persuade us that the turmoil of a comic plot leads to remarkable transformations of character and acquisitions of wisdom. A Midsummer Nights Dream is one of his early comedies. Dorothea Kehler in his book, A midsummer night's dream: critical essays (2009) comment upon this comedy; A remarkable fantasy, A Midsummer Nights Dream is one of the best love Shakespearean comedies. Probably written sometime between 1594 and 1596, that is, between Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice, Dream belongs to the playwrights early-middle period when Shakespeare reveled in lyricism. His poetic achieved in Dream may be equaled in the later works but is never surpassed. Dorothea Kehler describes that here he creates atmosphere, in turn, charming, lush, and darkly erotic, through iterative imagery; distinguishes between character groups through elegantly patterned discourse; and employs phonic and rhythmic sound variations to make music out of language. Dorothea Kehler further enunciates; By punishing those who make unlawful comparisons between themselves and others, a mid summer night dream seeks to preserve a rigidly hierarchical social order against the threats of encroaching bourgeois individualism.

Another critic, Jay L. Halio comments about A midsummer night's dream, The relation of illusion to reality is, of course, is essentially what a mid summer nights dream is about. The play has been understood as implying, platonically, that life is a dream, or, skeptically, that romantic love is a dream. Dorothea Kehler this fact in the following way; The faculty of imagination, both celebrated and mocked in Dream, is integral to the audience as well as to the playwright; the one takes appearancea dream of sortsfor reality, the other creates a reality from appearance. One of the most important of eighteen-centurey Shakespeans, Edward Malone (1778), offers the most revealing criticism. He says, Through the whole piece, the more exalted characters are subservient to the interests of those beneath them. Aristocrats, especially Theseus, are insufficiently distinguished from their inferiors, and any suggestion of a Saturnalian structure unnerves Malone, who concludes that this must be an early play. The English Romantic poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1811-12), whose Shakespeare criticism is still influential, made two points about the play. The first, that Shakespeare thought of it as a dream throughout led to further discussion later in the century; the second, that Helena is guilty of ungrateful treachery to Hermia. Paul Newell Campbell in his book Form and the art of theatre lays on some of the points about the characters in the play. He says; There are traces of a kind of madness in the lovers sane love; they themselves do not sharply separate their rational and irrational episodes, and after their dream, they do not describe it as completedly dreamlike; and the very thinness of these characters reduces their human status, making them more like the fairies, and allows them to move easily into the spirit world. Harold Bloom and Janyce Marson tell in their book A Midsummer Night's Dream (2008)

thatRuth Nevos essay Fancys Images celebrates Shakespeares originality in devising an intricate plot in order to reach a benign resolution to the conflict between folly and wisdom. According to Nevo, the core problem is that the various contenders in the love rivalries fail to understand what they actually want. Nevo argues that the resolution to the multilayered twists and turns of the plot, which produce a surfeit of misunderstandings and other foolish errors, is to set imagination straight. In the same book this statement of The Canadian Northrop Frye, one of the great critics of the twentieth century, is found which elaborates that Harold Bloom once called a magisterial overview of the play, one that shows us the affinities of the wood-world with that part of the mind below the reasons encounter with objective reality, and yet connected with the hidden creative powers of the mind. The sentiment of such a play, so far as it can be summed up at all, can be summed up in one sentence by Harold Bloom, It is the mysticism of happiness. That is to say it is the conception that as man lives upon a borderland he may find himself in the spiritual or supernatural atmosphere, not only through being profoundly sad or meditative, but by being extravagantly happy. Harold bloom also puts in that the soul might be rapt out of the body in an agony of sorrow, or a trance of ecstasy; but it might also be rapt out of the body in a paroxysm of laughter. Sorrow we know can go beyond itself; so, according to Shakespeare, can pleasure go beyond itself and become something dangerous and unknown.

Analysis:
Its very essence is irregularity, so that it cannot be fairly brought to the test of rules, the play forms properly a class by itself; literature has nothing else really like it; nothing therefore with which it may be compared, and its merits adjusted. The main plot of Midsummer is a complex contraption that involves two sets of couples Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius whose romantic cross-purposes are complicated still further by their entrance into the play's fairyland woods where the King and Queen of the Fairies Oberon and Titania preside and the impish folk character of Puck or Robin good fellow plies his trade. Characters: There are several characters in the play. A brief introduction of the major characters is given below: Theuseus: Theuseus is Duke of Athens. He is powerful and is persistent in his rules and decisions. He does not allow Hermia to marry the man of her choice and gives priority to his rules over the emotions of the characters. Hippylata: Hippolyta is engaged to Theuseus and was upcoming queen of Athens. She loves Duke, obeys his decrees and symbolizes order. Egeus: Egeus is Hermias father. He is obstinate and stubborn. He has hot temper and inflexible demeanor. His persistence to get his daughter killed if she doesnt obey him reflects the how malicious and egoistic he is. Hermia: Hermia is Egeuss daughter and is a ardent lover. Rain or shine, She is determined to materialize her dreams. She has adventurous and decisive nature and she is bold enough to take any risk to marry Lysander. Lysander: Lysander is Hermias lover. He was an energetic youth of Athens and a passionate lover. He is only able to get his beloved by going through intensely difficult circumstances. Demetrius:

Demetrius is a desperate man who enters as the lover of Hermia. He is dismayed and is extremely distressed and Helena: Helena is Hermias playmate. She is in love with Demetrius who ignores her inasmuch as he loves Hermia. She is also very pretty but loses all her self-confidence and sprightliness due to the failure in love. Oberon: Oberon is the god of the fairies. He displays some of the qualities of human beings by employing the tactic of using the magical love potion and maneuvering to make his wife Titania give him the Indian boy to be his page. Puck: Puck the mischievous, quick-witted sprite is generally considered to be the most important character in the play. He is graceful but not so saccharine as the other fairies; as Oberons jester but he is given to certain coarseness as well. He sets many of the plays events in motion, by means of both deliberate pranks and the unfortunate mistakes on the human characters. Plot Summary: So far as the plot of the play is concerned, the play opens in the house of the Duke of Athens, Theseus who is about to marry Hippolyta ,the queen of Amazons, whom Theseus has rcently conquered. A royal man Egeus comes to the Dukes home in order to take his assistance in order to force his daughter Hermia marry the man of his choice. Hermia defends her love against her father but only in vain. The duke decides that she should accept her fathers order or she is left with only two options i.e. either to die or abjure forever the society of men. Consequently, Hermia and Lysander decide to elope at night to the house of his aunts house in another region where the law of Athens doesnt affect. Hermia gets the wind of their decision and discloses this secret to Demetrius in order to win his grace. In the forest a controversy between Oberon the God of fairies and Titania his wife emerges over an Indian boy. In this hullabaloo they charge each other with dishonesty in love. Puck is introduced as a mischievous sprite. while Oberon talks with the Puck about teaching her a lesson for keeping the boy he recalls a special flower that contains a magical juice when placed on sleeping eyelids on waking whatever he or she sees falls in love with

the first thing it sees. So, he bids Puck to bring it for him so that he might teach Titania the lesson. In their chase of Lysander and Hermia both the Demetrius and Helena come to the dense forest. Helena tries to convince Demetrius that he should leave the pursuit of Hermia but he wouldnt hear. Oberon observes them and asks Puck to apply that juice for the sake of the sweet Athenian maid on the eyes of the Athenian youth for whose love the maid craves. When he applies the juice on the eyelids of Titania she sees Bottom an ass-headed monster. When it comes to applying the jouce on Demetriuss eyelids he mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and applies juice mistakingly on his eyes of Lysander who sees Helena when he gets up and falls in love with her. Hermia despises Helena and blames her for dishonesty. Oberon scolds Puck and Puck again sets out make Demetrius fall in love with Helena. When it happens Helena gets confused because both Demetrius and Lysander claim to love her. Puck keeps both the lovers from fighting in order to make for his mistake and when all the lovers sleep after getting fatigued he applies the love-potion on the eyes of lysander who sees Hermia and again falls in love with Hermia. In the subplot there is a group of fairies which came from India to stage a drama i.e. based on Pyramus and Thisby for the marriage ceremony of the Duke prepares for the drama side by side the main plot. In the end of the main plot all the lovers meet each other and merriment follows them after a series of errors. Themes A Midsummer Night's Dream contains many wonderfully lyrical expressions of lighter Shakespearean themes, most notably those of love, dreams, and the stuff of both, the creative imagination itself. Other dominant themes in the play are mentioned below: The theme of Love: Love in A Midsummer Nights Dream doesnt mean any one particular thing. The characters that were separated represent the difference between the frolicsome spring love of youth and thee wiser and tempered summer love of older age. The theme of foolishness and folly: This play is a comedy, so its going to have its fair share of slapstick humor. So foolishness of the characters esp. Puck and Bottoms foolishness is one of the themes of the play. The theme of Duty:

Duty is more absent than present in A Midsummer Nights Dream. The play is full of relationships that require duty: father to daughter, friend to friend, lover to lover. Hermia eschews duty by escaping her father, and feuding with her best friend, Helena. There are infinite examples of betraying duty ot honour and cherish ones true love. Loves Difficulty: The course of true love never did run smooth, comments Lysander, articulating one of A Midsummer Nights Dreams most important themesthat of the difficulty of love (I.i.134). Magic: The fairies magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play, is another element central to the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Nights Dream. Dreams: As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Nights Dream; they are linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Hippolytas first words in the play evidence the prevalence of dreams (Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the time), and various characters mention dreams throughout (I.i.78). The theme of dreaming recurs predominantly when characters attempt to explain bizarre events in which these characters are involved Transformation: Transformation is important in the play in a literal and metaphoric sense. Sometimes transformation is out of necessity: Hermia must transform her will and marry a man she doesnt love or become a nun. Transformation is the result of enchantment, such as falling in love based on a love potion. These magical transformations are often more easily explained than the strange changes experienced by the people who are under the spell of love.
Because A Midsummer Nights Dream is a romantic comedy, it obeys certain conventions. But since it was written by Shakespeare it undercuts the conventions even while seeming to observe them. A romantic comedy usually centers on a pair of lovers in a difficult situation who overcome the obstacles that separate them, and end up getting married and living happily ever after. In

Shakespeares play we find multiple lovers, including a reluctant bride taken captive in war, a married couple fighting over custody of a child, and two conventional young couples who keep falling in love with each others partners. Although the couples get appropriately sorted out, and they all get married at the end of the play, their cruel treatment of each other in the midnight

forest makes us wonder how long the happy ending will last.

Conclusion:
To sum up, it can be said that Shakespeare must always had an aim in his mind whether he wrote comedy or a tragedy or a history. His most obvious purpose of writing is unfolded by one of his intelligent and honest characters i.e. Prince Hamlet says, mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Midsummer Night's Dream can be said to convey another message, it is that the creative imagination is in tune with the supernatural world and is best used to confer the blessings of Nature upon mankind and marriage.

References:

Ornstein. R. (1994), Shakespeare's comedies: from Roman farce to romantic mystery Kehler. D. (2009), A midsummer night's dream: critical essays Campbell . P. (1989), Form and the art of theatre A midsummer night's dream By Jay L. Halio 2003 Jurksaitis. D. (2009), Midsummer Night's Dream A Midsummer Night's Dream By Harold and Janyce Marson 2008 A Taste of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream The Eugenia Foundation and Bullfrog Films