What explains the special quality of A Midsummer Night's Dream?
Samuel Johnson called the play "wild and fantastical", noting how
"all the parts in their various modes are well written and give the
kind of pleasure which the author designed". The 19th-century
critic William Hazlitt wrote, in the play's own imagery, of his
"wandering in a grove by moonlight" through "a sweetness like
odours thrown from beds of flowers". For these critics, the variety
of language, character and incident on offer in the Dream was
particularly pleasant and happy, and suited what they saw as the
overall bent of the play towards happiness. G. K. Chesterton
responded to "a spirit that unites mankind" in "the mysticism of
happiness" and of the play's "pure poetry and intoxication of
words", "the amazing artistic and moral beauty" of its design. As
Tom Bishop says in this thoughtful guide to the play, one can
acknowledge all this, and yet also note how the brightness of that
design is full of shadow. Indeed, "shadow" is an important word in
the play; the very actors who present it are finally called
"shadows". If the play celebrates happiness, it also knows
something sadder, not only that unhappiness is possible but that
happiness itself may be maintained only by a fragile resolution,
perhaps by mere good fortune. Happiness is a kind of gift, perhaps
even a kind of grace. In this play, the gift is not withheld, but
the play remains very much aware of how it might be, of what slight
turn would produce a very different outcome, one not less true to
its picture of human life, if less lucky.
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