A Midsummer Night's Dream - California Shakespeare Theater

STEP THREE: Add the magic
“Lord what fools these mortals be!”
—Puck, Act 3, scene 2
Sometimes we can’t do it all alone—every goal needs a little magic to make
things turn out right. Shakespeare uses the idea of fairies in the play to help
the mortals along. We all could use a little supernatural intervention from time
to time!
Shakespeare’s fairies emerged out of a rich tradition of supernatural creatures. Many
Elizabethans still believed that there were spirits in the world to be feared. The names of these
creatures, including “Puck” and “Robin Goodfellow,” were also names for the devil. Their stories
were folk tales of humans being led astray into humiliation or death. They acted as cautionary
tales to warn of the dangers of carelessness. As most looked human, a collection of rituals and
traditions had evolved to identify fairies and protect oneself from these malevolent beings.
With his plays Shakespeare changed the way the world viewed fairies. His fairies owe as much
to courtly Italian romances as to the traditional spirits. Unlike the solitary fiends of lore who lived
from moment to moment, his fairies are structured in a court system with a king and queen.
Plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the tempest show fairies that invest in mortals
and take sides in non-spirit world politics. Like the mortals, their actions are based in a sense
of justice and their own emotions and desires. Fairies are still tricksters, but no longer intend
harm to humans. Instead they are celebratory and deeply tied to nature through song and dance.
They also demonstrate good will towards humans: Titania cares for the Indian boy out of love
for her priestess, and Oberon orders Puck to resolve the Athenians’ love situation without any
kind of reward. Both rulers even bless the bridal beds at the end of the play. This beneficence
is a far cry from the fear-inspiring fairies to which Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audiences were
accustomed. Shakespeare even changed their physical appearance—in his works fairies are
tiny and incredibly swift. Without Shakespeare’s influence, many of the fairies we know of today
probably wouldn’t exist. We can see his legacy in the kindness of Cinderella’s fairy godmother,
the size of Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell, or the help of the tooth fairy.
Do You Know About Changelings?
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Oberon and Titania are at odds over a changeling boy Titania
has taken. Tradition said that fairies sometimes kidnapped human babies and exchanged them
with fairy babies. These were called changelings. The fairy babies would grow up in the mortal
world and be revealed by abnormalities. This was sometimes used to explain developmental
differences in children.
LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE
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