What is the plot analysis for Midsummer night's dream?

Answer 1

You cannot understand this play unless you take apart the separate strands of the plot:

• Theseus and Hippolyta are to be married at the new moon, which is coming soon.
• Hermia wants to marry Lysander but her father Egeus and Demetrius want her to marry Demetrius.
• Helena wants to marry Demetrius but he has brushed her off.
• Peter Quince, Nick Bottom and other artisans of the town wish to write and perform a play.
• Oberon, King of the Fairies, has a dispute with his wife Titania over who will raise a certain boy.

Theseus is the ruler of the town but Oberon is the ruler of the forest. Egeus appeals to Theseus to enforce his wedding plans for Hermia, whereupon Hermia and Lysander, followed by Demetrius and Helena, leave the town and enter the forest. Likewise Quince et al decide to rehearse their play in the forest. Here the fairies take charge and although their intervention interrupts the rehearsal and makes the love problems even worse by having Lysander fall in love with Helena, eventually three of the plotlines get resolved by the end of Act IV:

• Lysander's love for Hermia is restored and Demetrius no longer loves her, enabling Theseus to approve the marriage of Hermia and Lysander.
• Demetrius now loves Helena instead of Hermia, so they can be married.
• Titania, distracted by her drug-induced love for Bottom, agrees to allow Oberon to raise the boy.

In Act V the last two plotlines are resolved:

• It being the new moon, Theseus and Hippolyta are married.
• Quince et al perform their play at the wedding reception. It is hilariously bad, but Theseus commends their honest effort, and they go home happy.