A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act 2, Scene 2 – Analysis
Scene Profile – At a Glance
- Location: Another part of the wood – Titania’s bank of wild thyme, later the same night.
- What Happens: Titania’s fairies sing her to sleep and Oberon squeezes the flower on her eyes. Lysander and Hermia lie down apart; Puck, mistaking Lysander for Demetrius, anoints him. Helena wakes Lysander, who falls in love with her, and Hermia wakes alone from a nightmare.
- Key Characters: Titania and her fairies; Oberon; Lysander and Hermia; Puck; Demetrius and Helena.
- Dramatic Function: The flower is used for the first time, twice: once as Oberon intended, on Titania, and once by mistake, on the wrong Athenian. Puck’s error is the engine of everything that follows.
- Famous Quote:
"The will of man is by his reason swayed;
And reason says you are the worthier maid."
(Lysander, Act 2, Scene 2) - Why It Matters: The play’s central joke is set up here: a man whose love has been switched by magic explains, with perfect confidence, that reason has led him to his new choice.
Scene Summary
Titania calls her fairies to dance and sing her to sleep, then sends them about their tasks: killing the grubs in the rosebuds, fighting bats for their wings, keeping the owl away. The fairies sing a lullaby warning snakes, hedgehogs, newts, spiders and beetles to keep off, and post a sentinel. When they have gone, Oberon squeezes the juice of the flower onto Titania’s eyelids and speaks a charm: whatever she sees when she wakes, be it cat, bear, leopard or boar, she will take for her true love.
Lysander and Hermia arrive, lost and exhausted. Lysander admits he has forgotten the way and proposes they rest until daylight. Hermia agrees but asks him to sleep further off; Lysander argues, in riddling couplets, that two hearts knit by one oath may share one bed, and Hermia, praising his prettiness of speech, insists on the separation proper to an unmarried man and maid. They exchange good-night wishes and sleep apart.
Puck arrives, having searched the whole forest without finding an Athenian, and sees a sleeping man in Athenian clothes with a girl lying some way off on the dank ground. Taking him for the disdainful youth Oberon described, and the distance between them as proof of his unkindness, Puck squeezes the flower on Lysander’s eyes and leaves to report to Oberon.
Demetrius runs through with Helena still pursuing him, orders her to stop following him, and runs off alone. Helena, out of breath, laments that she is as ugly as a bear and that Demetrius flees her like a monster. Then she sees Lysander on the ground, fears he is dead, and wakes him. He looks at her and declares that he will run through fire for her sake, that she is transparent, that Demetrius should die on his sword, and that reason has taught him to prefer her to Hermia. Helena, certain that she is being mocked, tells him she thought him a better gentleman, and leaves. Lysander turns on the sleeping Hermia, calling her a surfeit and a heresy he now hates, and follows Helena. Hermia wakes from a dream in which a serpent was eating her heart while Lysander sat smiling, calls for him, and, getting no answer, goes to find either him or death.
The Lullaby and the Charm
The scene opens with the fairy world at its most domestic. Titania’s orders to her elves are a housekeeper’s – kill the grubs, fetch bat-wings for coats, keep the owl quiet – and the lullaby they sing is a spell of protection against everything small and creeping in an English hedge.
Original
You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,
Come not near our fairy queen.
(First Fairy, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You spotted snakes with forking tongues,
Thorny hedgehogs, don’t be seen;
Newts and blind-worms, do no wrongs,
And don’t come near our fairy queen.
Snakes, hedgehogs, newts, blind-worms, spiders, beetles, worms and snails are all warned off, and the refrain promises that nor spell nor charm shall come near the lovely lady. The song is barely over when a spell does. Oberon’s charm is written in the same short rhymed line as the lullaby, and it is a lullaby inverted: where the fairies asked for nothing to harm her, he asks that she wake when some vile thing is near. The audience watches the protection fail as soon as the protectors leave. It is the play’s first act of magic and illusion performed on stage, and it is done by a husband to a sleeping wife, in her own bed, after her servants have sung her to rest.
One Turf, Two Beds
The lovers arrive lost, and the play gives them a small comedy of manners before the magic reaches them. Lysander would like to share Hermia’s bank; Hermia would not.
Original
Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,
Lie further off yet, do not lie so near.
(Hermia, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
No, dear Lysander, for my sake, my dear,
Lie further off and do not lie so near.
Lysander’s argument is a set of puns on lying – one heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth, and lying so he does not lie – and Hermia’s answer is that he riddles very prettily and must still sleep further off, as becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid. It is easy to play as prudishness and it is not. Hermia has just defied a duke and fled her father for this man; what she keeps is the one form of control and rebellion still hers, and she keeps it with wit rather than alarm. The distance she insists on is also the plot: if Lysander were lying beside her, Puck would not mistake him for a man who had scorned his lady. Her modesty is what makes the mistake possible, and the play does not blame her for it.
Puck’s Mistake
Puck has been through the whole forest and found no Athenian. Then he finds one, and the evidence adds up.
Original
Weeds of Athens he doth wear:
This is he, my master said,
Despised the Athenian maid;
And here the maiden, sleeping sound,
On the dank and dirty ground.
Pretty soul! She durst not lie
Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.
(Puck, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Clothes from Athens he does wear.
Here’s the man my master said
Who hated the Athenian maid;
And here’s the damsel, sleeping sound
On the damp and dirty ground.
Pretty soul! She dares not lie
Near this heartless, loveless guy.
Athenian clothes: check. A maiden sleeping on the dank and dirty ground: check. The two lying apart, which must mean he would not let her near him: check. Puck reasons like a detective from the only description he has been given, and every clue points the wrong way. The comedy of the moment is that his sympathy is real – pretty soul, he says of Hermia, and churl of Lysander – and that his sympathy is what does the damage. The play’s confusions are not caused by malice. Oberon meant well by Helena, Puck follows his instructions to the letter, and the result is that the wrong man wakes to the wrong woman. Puck’s exit line, that he must now to Oberon, leaves the trap set and unwatched, and the order and chaos that the fairy king intended to impose on the lovers’ story begins to come apart before it has started.
Reason and the Serpent
Helena, breathless and self-loathing, wakes Lysander, and the flower does what Oberon said it would. What it does not do is stop Lysander thinking.
Original
Content with Hermia! No; I do repent
The tedious minutes I with her have spent.
Not Hermia but Helena I love:
Who will not change a raven for a dove?
(Lysander, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Be glad with Hermia! You must be mad!
With her, so many dull times I have had.
Not Hermia but Helena I love:
Who wouldn’t change a raven for a dove?
Within a dozen lines he has repented the tedious minutes spent with Hermia, compared her to a raven and Helena to a dove, and explained that he was unripe until now and that reason, newly matured, has marshalled his will to Helena’s eyes. The audience has just watched the juice go on, so every word is a joke, but Lysander is not lying. The flower has changed what he loves and left his intelligence intact, and the intelligence goes straight to work justifying the change. It is the play’s sharpest observation about love and folly: the lover under a spell is the one most sure that he is being reasonable. Helena, who has been told for two scenes that nobody could love her, hears it as mockery and leaves in tears; Lysander curses the sleeping Hermia as a surfeit and a heresy and follows. Hermia’s waking is the scene’s last turn. She has dreamed that a serpent ate her heart while Lysander sat smiling, and the dream is exact: at that moment he is a few yards away telling another woman that he loves her. It is the only real dream in the play, and it tells the truth.
Language and Technique
- Lullaby and charm: The fairies’ song and Oberon’s spell share the same short, rhymed, four-stress line. The music of protection and the music of harm are identical, which is the scene’s point.
- Catalogue of small creatures: Snakes, hedgehogs, newts, blind-worms, spiders, beetles, snails: the lullaby’s list is an English hedgerow, and it makes the fairy queen’s bed a real place with real dangers.
- Puns on lying: Lysander’s plea to share the bank turns on lie (to rest) and lie (to deceive): “lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.” Hermia catches the pun and turns it back.
- Couplets for the lovers: Lysander and Hermia speak in rhyming couplets throughout, as they did in Act 1; the rhyme makes their good-night wishes sound like a duet, and Lysander’s declarations to Helena like a parody of one.
- The language of reason: “Reason becomes the marshal to my will”: Lysander justifies a magical change with the vocabulary of Renaissance moral philosophy, in which reason should govern the will. The irony is that the will has just been governed by a flower.
- Raven and dove: Lysander’s comparison of Hermia and Helena to a raven and a dove is the first of the play’s dark/fair contrasts, which will become the quarrel over height and colouring in Act 3.
- The serpent: Hermia’s dream picks up the snake of the lullaby and the snake’s shed skin on Titania’s bank: the wood’s one recurring image of danger is a serpent, and Hermia is the only character who sees it.
Key Quotes from Act 2, Scene 2
Quote 1
What thou seest when thou dost wake,
Do it for thy true-love take,
Love and languish for his sake:
Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,
Pard, or boar with bristled hair,
In thy eye that shall appear
When thou wakest, it is thy dear:
Wake when some vile thing is near.
(Oberon, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
What you see when you awake,
As your true love you will take,
Have yearning love for his sake
Be it a lynx, a cat, or bear,
Leopard, boar with bristling hair,
In your eyes it will appear
When you wake, you’ll hold it dear,
So wake when something horrid’s here.
Quote Analysis: Oberon’s charm over his sleeping wife. Ounce, cat, bear, pard, boar: the list is of the ugliest things he can think of, and the last line is a curse. The modern verse keeps the chant. It is worth setting beside the lullaby that precedes it, which asked for exactly the opposite.
Through the forest have I gone.
But Athenian found I none,
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower's force in stirring love.
(Puck, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Through these woods I’ve gone around,
No Athenian have I found,
On whose eyes I’ll wipe a coating
With these drops to make him doting.
Quote Analysis: Puck’s entrance, still in the fairies’ short line. He has searched the whole wood and is about to stop searching, because the first Athenian he sees will do. The modern verse keeps the rhyme and the eagerness to test the flower’s power, which is how mistakes get made.
Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?
When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?
Is't not enough, is't not enough, young man,
That I did never, no, nor never can,
Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius' eye,
But you must flout my insufficiency?
(Helena, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Why was I born to be a laughingstock?
Why do you think that I’m OK to mock?
So, it is not sufficient then, young man,
That I have never, no, nor never can
Expect Demetrius to make advances,
So you must mock that I have zero chances?
Quote Analysis: Helena’s response to being loved. Having been refused by one man, she assumes the second is making fun of her, and the assumption will drive the whole quarrel of Act 3. The modern verse keeps her doubled “is’t not enough” and the word insufficiency, which is what she believes herself to be.
Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!
Lysander, look how I do quake with fear:
Methought a serpent eat my heart away,
And you sat smiling at his cruel pray.
(Hermia, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
For pity’s sake! What awful dream was here!
Lysander, see I’m shaking out of fear:
I thought a serpent ate my heart away,
Whilst you were laughing as it ate its prey.
Quote Analysis: Hermia’s nightmare, and the only true dream in the play. The serpent eating her heart while Lysander smiles is exactly what is happening a few yards away. The modern verse keeps the image and the smile. When she calls for him and hears nothing, she sets off to find either him or death.
Key Takeaways
- Protection fails at once: The fairies sing a charm against harm and leave; Oberon walks in and charms their queen. Titania’s own bed is where the play’s first magic is done.
- Hermia’s modesty makes the plot: Because she makes Lysander sleep apart, Puck reads their distance as a scorned lady and a churl, and anoints the wrong man.
- Nobody means harm: Oberon wanted to help Helena and Puck followed orders; the confusion of the next act comes from good intentions and bad evidence.
- The spell leaves reason intact: Lysander wakes changed and immediately explains the change as maturity: the bewitched lover is the one most certain he is thinking clearly.
- Hermia dreams the truth: Her serpent nightmare is the play’s one real dream, and it is accurate: the man smiling while her heart is eaten is Lysander.
Study Questions and Analysis
Why do the fairies sing Titania a lullaby, and what is the irony?
Because she has asked them to. Titania orders a roundel and a song, then sends her elves about their tasks – killing the grubs in the musk-roses, taking the bats’ wings for coats, keeping the owl away – and asks to be sung asleep. The lullaby is a charm of protection: it warns off snakes, hedgehogs, newts, spiders and beetles, and its refrain promises that nor spell nor charm shall come near the lovely lady.
Never harm,
Nor spell nor charm,
Come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night, with lullaby.
(All the Fairies, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Never harm,
No spell nor charm,
Shall come our lovely lady nigh;
So, good night with this lullaby.
The irony is immediate. The fairies post a sentinel and leave, and within four lines Oberon is squeezing the flower on Titania’s eyes and wishing that she wake when some vile thing is near. The protection fails because the danger is her husband, whom no lullaby was written to exclude. Coleridge admired the fairy songs as the height of the play’s lyricism, and the point of this one is that its beauty is powerless. A student can use the sequence to argue that the play’s magic and illusion works from inside the fairy world, not against it: the queen’s own court cannot keep out the king.
Why does Hermia refuse to let Lysander sleep beside her?
Because they are not married. Lysander proposes one turf as a pillow for both, and argues in riddles that two hearts knit by one oath make one bed innocent; Hermia praises the riddling and insists on such separation as becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid. She has eloped with him, but she has not married him yet, and she keeps the distance that an unmarried woman of her rank was expected to keep.
Two things are worth noticing. The first is her tone: she is not frightened or prim, and she wins the exchange with a pun of her own on lying. The second is the plot. If Lysander were lying beside Hermia, Puck could not take him for a man who had scorned his lady, and the whole confusion of Act 3 would not happen. Shakespeare makes a young woman’s modesty the cause of the play’s central mistake, and does it without mocking the modesty. The scene is a small study in control and rebellion: Hermia, who has just lost a father, a city and a legal future, keeps the one thing that is still hers to keep.
Why does Puck anoint the wrong man?
Because he was given a description, not a name. Oberon told him to find a disdainful youth in Athenian garments who had scorned a sweet Athenian lady, and to anoint him so that he would wake to love her. Puck searches the whole forest, finds no Athenian, and then finds Lysander asleep in Athenian clothes, with Hermia lying some distance away on the dank ground. To Puck the distance is evidence: only a churl, a lack-love, would make a pretty soul sleep so far from him. He squeezes the flower on Lysander and goes.
Churl, upon thy eyes I throw
All the power this charm doth owe.
(Puck, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Upon your eyes, and with this motion,
Goes the power of this potion.
The mistake is honest, and the play is careful to make it so. Puck’s reasoning is sound from the facts he has, his sympathy is with the girl, and he follows his instructions exactly; the error is Oberon’s, for describing a man by his clothes in a wood where two Athenian men are wandering. When Oberon discovers the mistake in Act 3, Scene 2, Puck says as much: he took the man by his garments, as he was bid. The play’s disorder is produced by obedience rather than mischief, and that matters for how we read Puck. He enjoys the confusion once it has happened, but he did not make it on purpose, and the theme of order and chaos in the play turns on how easily good instructions go wrong in the dark.
Why does Lysander say that reason has made him love Helena?
Because the flower has changed his love and not his mind, and his mind has to explain the change. Waking to Helena, Lysander announces that he repents every minute spent with Hermia, that nobody would keep a raven when he could have a dove, and that reason, which governs a man’s will, has told him Helena is the worthier maid. He was young and unripe until now; now he has reached the point of human skill and reason is leading him to her eyes.
Things growing are not ripe until their season
So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;
And touching now the point of human skill,
Reason becomes the marshal to my will...
(Lysander, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Fruits ripen as they grow to harvest season;
Till now, I wasn’t ripe, so couldn’t reason.
And now I’ve reached a man’s maturity,
My reasoning shows who I need to be...
The speech is the play’s clearest demonstration of what the flower does. Lysander is not lying and not raving; he is a sane man supplying reasons for a feeling that has no reason at all, and the audience, who saw the juice go on, watches the reasons being manufactured. Catherine Belsey (1993) drew the general conclusion: the four lovers are virtually indistinguishable, and romantic love in the play is oddly impersonal – Lysander’s reasons would serve for either woman and have just been transferred from one to the other. R. W. Dent (1964) read the play as a study of imagination controlled and uncontrolled, and Lysander’s speech is imagination pretending to be reason. Theseus will say the same of all lovers in Act 5, from a great height; Lysander has already proved it from inside.
Why does Helena think Lysander is mocking her?
Because nothing else fits what she knows. She has just been rejected by Demetrius for the second time in a night and has told herself she is as ugly as a bear; she finds Lysander, whom she knows to be in love with Hermia, asleep on the ground; she wakes him; and he tells her he would run through fire for her and that Demetrius should die on his sword. To Helena the only possible explanation is cruelty: a lady refused by one man is being abused by another.
The misreading is the seed of the whole quarrel of Act 3, Scene 2, where Helena will conclude that both men and Hermia have conspired to make fun of her. It is also a consequence of what she said about love in Act 1. Helena believes that love looks with the mind and not the eyes, and she has decided that her own face is not worth looking at; when a man says otherwise, she cannot believe her eyes and trusts her mind instead. The play’s theme of love and folly includes the lover who cannot accept being loved, and Helena’s insufficiency, her own word for herself, is a wound the flower cannot reach.
What does Hermia’s dream of the serpent mean?
It is the truth, dreamed. Hermia wakes crying for Lysander to pull a crawling serpent from her breast, and then describes the dream: a serpent was eating her heart away while Lysander sat smiling at its cruel prey. At that moment Lysander is a few yards off, telling Helena that he loves her and cursing the sleeping Hermia as a heresy he hates. The dream knows what Hermia does not.
Lysander! What, removed? Lysander! Lord!
What, out of hearing? Gone? No sound, no word?
Alack, where are you? Speak, an if you hear;
Speak, of all loves! I swoon almost with fear.
No? Then I well perceive you all not nigh
Either death or you I'll find immediately.
(Hermia, Act 2, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Lysander! Have you left? Lysander! Lord!
What, can’t you hear me? Left without a word?
Oh no, where are you? Speak up if you hear;
Speak up! I’m almost fainting out of fear.
No word? It seems to me that you’re not nigh:
I’ll either find you soon, or else I’ll die.
Peter Holland, in his Oxford edition (1994), built a reading of the play on this moment: for all that the play is like a dream, he argued, it contains only one description of something that may unequivocally be taken to be a dream, and it is this one. Everything else the characters call a dream – Titania’s night with Bottom, the lovers’ confusion, Bottom’s vision – actually happened. Hermia’s serpent connects to the snakes of the fairies’ lullaby and to the snake that sheds its skin on Titania’s bank; the wood has one image of danger, and the sleeping girl is the only one who sees it. The theme of dreams and reality in the play begins here, with a nightmare that is a report.
