Tragedy vs Comedy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

While A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy itself, it also encompasses the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe.  These elements of comedy versus tragedy are an important part in A Misummer Night’s Dream.  The first scene of the first act of the play could really set it up to be either a comedy or a tragedy.  In fact, the way love is defined in the beginning is a tragic view. 

Hermia’s father, Egeus, come to Theseus demanding that he make her marry Demtrius, and not Lysander, or else:  “As she is mine, I may dispose of her.  Which shall be either to this gentleman, or to her death.” This threat does not sound in any way comedic.  Another example of how love is portrayed tragically is when Lysander gives his speech about love, “the course of true love never did run smooth,” he says.  He talks about all the things that stand in the way of people falling in love—or staying in love—Lysander continues, “[Love is] momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as a dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night.” His meaning is tragic, but his words are flowery, eventually rhyme enters in, and the feeling of the play remains merry.  This is a comedy, and as much as the tragedy tries to come through, the comedy smothers it and comes up victorious, making this play comedic. 

The attempts at tragedy are just that: failed attempts.  The way this play is written, the way it is meant to be, is comedic, and the characters and situations do not allow for tragedy to take over or even really take shape in the plot.  The biggest attempt at giving this play a tragic undertone is in the production and rehearsals of Pyramus and Thisbe.  The content of this inner play is totally tragic, but the characters playing the actors are just too foolish and incompetent to make it tragic.  Everything they do strips the tragedy away and makes their rehearsals and production funny.  The entire production is hilarious because the actors just don’t have a tragic bone in their bodies.

The way they are cast is especially funny.  At first Bottom wants to play every role himself, and then they start adding extra roles for inanimate objects.  They decide they will have somebody play the moon, up onstage, holding a lantern.  Then they decide that the wall will be played by a person holding his fingers out for them to talk through.  Snug, who plays the lion, doesn’t want to scare the ladies, so they show his face through the neck of his costume.  And then, just in case anyone in the audience might feel sad about how Pyramus and Thisbe both end up dead, they’ve written a prologue:

“If we offend, it is with our good will.

That you should think, we come not to offend,

But with good will. To show our simple skill,

That is the true beginning of our end.

Consider then we come but in despite.

We do not come as minding to contest you,

Our true intent is. All for your delight

We are not here. That you should here repent you,

The actors are at hand and by their show

You shall know all that you are like to know.”

This prologue is long and unnecessary to the Pyramus and Thisbe play, but it does provide some importance to the lager play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The prologue seems to prove that this production will be in no way sad, as it was written, the actors, whether consciously or not, have seen to that.  Just from this prologue, before the play even really begins, the audience at the wedding knows what to expect. Theseus’ comment on the prologue is actually true of the entire production when he says, “His speech was like a tangled chain—nothing impaired, but all disordered.”  Meaning that there is nothing wrong with the play, it serves its purpose, which is to entertain, but it accomplishes this through foolish disorder.  The tragic words of the script or Pyramus and Thisbe are buried under the foolish and silly actors.

Tragedy continuously comes out the loser in this play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Fools and love and fools in love take over and encompass the inner tragedies in comedy and merriment.  This is how the play was intended to be, simply a comedy, and it fulfills that role very well by turning what could have been sad things into hilarious situations.