The Green World
Lysander and Hermia are about to enter the woods, the "Green
World" in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Northrop Frye has identified some of Shakespeare's comedies as "Green
World" comedies, and A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of those comedies. As
Frye says, "the action of the [Green World] comedy begins in a world
represented as a normal world, moves into the Green World, goes into a
metamorphosis there. . . and returns to the normal world" (85). The
principal characters converge in this Green World, typically a forest, and all
of their conflicts are worked through and resolved. This convergence in a forest
is what we have observed in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
This Green World is also maternal; that is, there is something about this world that engenders new life, and often there is a character, usually female, who dies and is revived, either physically or spiritually. Thus death is a part of comedy because comedy embraces all of life's experiences, but death in comedy is not tragic because even if the dead character is not revived, the character's spirit lives on in one or more of the other characters. Therefore, death allows the other characters to re-assess their lives and live them more fully.
The Green World is a place of magic, transformation, and
discovery. It is also a place of incongruities, where things and people seem to
be out of their element. For example, in some of Shakespeare's English forests,
we find palm trees and lions. It is a place where time seems to stop because the
demands of the real world have been left behind. And because the constraints of
the real world have been left behind, the characters are free to explore new
ways of seeing and of being in the world. Often characters are placed in these
new situations involuntarily, but the adversity and challenge of the new
experiences facilities their personal growth and makes commitment to life,
marriage, and society possible.
Obviously, the Green World in A Midsummer Night's Dream is the "greenest" of all of Shakespeare's Green Worlds, for it is indeed the forest of fairy magic, and this fairy magic is directly related to the phenomena of love. Love, Shakespeare seems to be saying, is a magical transformation that can be explained only by the saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." All of the falling in and out of love that takes place in the Green World is facilitated by Oberon's love potion that blinds the characters to the outward appearances of their beloveds. How else could one explain the incongruity of the beautiful fairy queen's infatuation with Bottom who, of course, has been transformed into an ass? Or Lysander's sudden love for Helena?
Titania represents the maternal aspect of the Green World; she is the quintessential "earth mother" who nurtures all living things--including mortals. Her association with the harmony of the natural world is best evidenced in Act 2, Scene 1:81-117. Her feud with Oberon, the dissonance that they have created, is manifested in the form of fogs, floods, and failed crops --all of which threaten the well being of the mortals. Thus the earth is withering, rotting, and stagnating, and unless it is revived, its inhabitants will suffer as well. The prospect of death and destruction once more rears its ugly head.
However, harmony, as Oberon knows, can be regained through love. Without love, everything is in disarray. Although jealousy motivates his cruel hoax on Titania, his intention to unite Helena with Demetrius is honorable: love does conquer all. Unfortunately, Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, thus causing more mayhem to threaten the harmony Oberon and Titania know is necessary.
The young couples, lost and bewildered in the forest, far from the sheltered and predictable court life they left behind, are forced, however, to re-evaluate the nature of their friendships as well as the nature of their love. In the alien forest environment, they are transported into a world where the rules and laws of society are no longer relevant; as such, the Green World makes it possible for them to live out their fantasies. For example, they all exhibit behaviors that they would never exhibit in their normal worlds: Demetrius plans to kill Lysander, Helena shamelessly chases Demetrius, Lysander becomes too amorous with Hermia, and Hermia vehemently attacks her childhood friend Helena.
Of course, all of these misunderstandings are intensified by Oberon's love potion. But because of these misunderstandings, the young couples discover things about themselves they never knew before and are able to move beyond the petty and trivial. Once these discoveries are made, as if awakening from a long, strange dream, their thoughts turn toward home and responsibility. Unsure of how long they have been gone and what they will find when they return, they return together as friends and lovers to face the consequences. Emerging from the enchanted woods into the light of day are four newly-matured young people who are ready to make their commitment to life, to marriage, to society
Adapted from the University of West Florida at
http://www.uwf.edu/krasmuss/studentprojects/green1.htm