Order vs Chaos
Theme Profile – At a Glance
- Focus: The play’s shape: a lawful, daylit Athens; a wood at night where law, weather and identity come apart; and a return to Athens with the couples sorted, the seasons mended and a house blessed. Order is where the play begins and ends, and chaos is where it lives.
- Key Characters: Theseus, Oberon, Titania, Puck, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, Helena.
- The Core Tension: Athens has a law for everything and the wood has none. The play sends its lovers from one to the other and back, and asks whether the order they return to is the same one they left.
- Key Manifestations: The law of Athens and the four-day deadline (A1S1); the fairy quarrel and the ruined seasons (A2S1); the lovers lost, swapped and fighting in the dark (A2S2, A3S2); Puck’s fog and false voices, and the four sleepers laid out in pairs (A3S2); the hunt at dawn and the triple wedding (A4S1); the workmen’s tragical mirth and the fairies’ blessing (A5S1).
- Famous Quote:
"Jack shall have Jill;
Nought shall go ill;
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well."
(Act 3, Scene 2) - The Outcome: Three weddings, the fairy king and queen reconciled, the seasons presumably restored, and Oberon’s blessing on every bedroom. The order is complete and the audience has watched how it was made.
The Sharp Athenian Law
The play opens in a city that has a rule for a disobedient daughter. Egeus invokes it, and Theseus explains it to Hermia with perfect courtesy: she will marry the man her father has chosen, or die, or spend her life in a convent.
Original
Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.
(Theseus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
You either will be killed or be deprived
Of ever being with a man again.
Theseus dislikes the law and says so; he also says it cannot be extenuated, and gives Hermia until his own wedding day to decide. Athens in Act 1 is order without mercy. Its duke is reasonable, its law is absolute, and the only escape from it is geographical: Lysander knows a place seven leagues away where the sharp Athenian law cannot follow.
The lovers never get there. They get as far as the wood, and the wood is where the play happens. The structure is the oldest one in comedy, out of the town and into the green world and back, and the theme of control and rebellion in Athens is its starting point: a father’s will backed by a duke’s law, and a daughter who says no.
The Mazed World
Before a single lover has set foot in the wood, the play shows what disorder looks like at full scale. Titania tells Oberon that because the two of them have not met to dance since early summer, the winds have raised fogs, the rivers have flooded, the corn has rotted, and the seasons have exchanged their clothes.
Original
the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which...
(Titania, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The spring, the summer,
The fruitful autumn, angry winter, change
How they appear, and the befuddled world
Cannot discern one season from another.
Frost on the rose, summer buds on winter’s head: the images are of a world dressed wrongly, and the "mazed world" that cannot tell the seasons apart is the play’s first maze, before the wood has trapped anyone. Titania ends by naming the cause: the quarrel between the fairy king and queen. Their marriage is a public matter, and while it is broken the land is barren.
The passage has a likely topical edge, since the English summers of 1594 to 1596 were disastrously wet, but its function in the play is to set the scale. The disorder in the wood is not a private muddle among four young people. It reaches from the palace of Theseus to the weather, and the fairy marriage at the centre of it is the play’s picture of what order rests on.
Up and Down, Up and Down
The middle of the play is a night in which everything is reversed. Two men who loved one woman love another; two friends become enemies; a queen loves an ass; and Puck, told to keep the rivals from killing each other, leads them in circles through the fog with borrowed voices.
Original
Up and down, up and down,
I will lead them up and down:
I am feared in field and town:
Goblin, lead them up and down.
(Puck, Act 3, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Over here, over there,
I will lead them everywhere:
In field and town, I can scare:
Goblin, lead them everywhere.
The chant is the sound of the wood’s disorder: short lines, heavy rhymes, and a direction that goes nowhere. Lysander and Demetrius follow it until they drop; Helena and Hermia stumble in after them; and Puck counts them, "Two of both kinds make up four", and lays them out in their pairs like a man setting a table. The chaos is being managed. It has a manager, and the manager is enjoying it.
That is the play’s distinctive idea about disorder. The wood is not lawless; it has a king and a servant and a plan, and the confusion the mortals suffer is a fairy’s idea of sport. The theme of magic and illusion is the mechanism, and Oberon, invisible, is the nearest thing the night has to a duke.
The Concord of This Discord
Order returns at dawn, with a hunt. Theseus brings Hippolyta to the wood to hear his hounds, and the two of them talk about the music of a pack in full cry: a discord, she says, that is musical; a confusion, he says, of hounds and echo. Then they find four young people asleep on the ground.
Original
I know you two are rival enemies:
How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far from jealousy,
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?
(Theseus, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I know you two are bitter enemies:
What’s caused this peace agreement in the world
Whereby your hate and jealousy have left
So you can sleep beside the one you hate?
Theseus asks how enemies come to be sleeping side by side and does not wait for a full answer. Demetrius has changed his mind; the father’s case collapses; the duke overrules Egeus and orders a triple wedding. The law that could not be extenuated in Act 1 is set aside in Act 4 without explanation, and nobody objects.
The play’s order, then, is not the law restored but the will of a ruler who has decided to be generous. That is a quieter conclusion than a comedy usually admits to, and the play quietly admits it. When Theseus asks, of the workmen’s play, how to find "the concord of this discord", he is using the phrase he used for his hounds, and it describes the whole day: discord resolved into harmony by the man in charge. The theme of gender and patriarchy is what the resolution costs, and who pays it.
"Thus the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the green world, goes into a metamorphosis there in which the comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world."
— Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 1957
Key Quotes on Order vs Chaos
Quote 1
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her:
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.
(Egeus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
I ask to use the old custom of Athens,
Since she is mine, that I may choose her fate:
Which is she either weds this gentleman
Or she’ll be killed, as stated in our law,
Immediately if that proves the case.
Quote Analysis: Egeus before the duke, invoking the law. "As she is mine, I may dispose of her" is the order of Athens in a sentence: a daughter is property, and the city’s ancient privilege backs the owner. There was no such law in Elizabethan England or in Shakespeare’s sources; he invented it to give the comedy an edge, and then never used it. The death sentence establishes what Hermia is defying, and once she has defied it the play loses interest. Order in Athens is stated at its most absolute and enforced not at all.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.
(Titania, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And all this bad confusion has arisen
Out of our talking and our arguing;
We caused this; we’re the root cause of this problem.
Quote Analysis: Titania taking her share of the blame for the weather. The fairy quarrel has spoiled the harvest, and she says so plainly: we caused this. Oberon does not dispute it; his answer is that she can fix it by giving him the boy, which accepts the diagnosis and refuses the cure. The lines make the fairy marriage the hinge of the natural order, and the play’s resolution depends on mending it. Whether the seasons are actually restored the play never says; the reconciliation in Act 4 is taken to have done it.
Yet but three? Come one more;
Two of both kinds make up four.
(Puck, Act 3, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Only three? There is one more;
Two girls, two boys make up four.
Quote Analysis: Puck counting the sleepers. Three lovers are down and one is missing; when Hermia arrives he has his set. The arithmetic is the play’s: two of each kind make four, and four make two couples, and the night’s whole disorder resolves into a sum. It is also the moment the audience sees that the chaos was never out of hand. Puck lays the lovers out in the pairs the morning will confirm, and the country proverb he speaks over them, Jack shall have Jill, is the play’s promise that the sum will come out.
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve:
Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
(Theseus, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
The iron clock-hand shows it’s midnight now:
Lovers, to bed; it’s nearly fairy time.
Quote Analysis: Theseus ending the wedding night. The workmen’s play is over, the dance is done, and the duke sends everyone to bed with a joke about the hour. He does not believe in fairies and has said so at length; and within twenty lines Puck is in the room with a broom and the fairies are blessing his bed. The order Theseus thinks he has restored is about to be completed by the creatures he explained away. The play’s last order is not the duke’s. It is Oberon’s, and the duke sleeps through it.
Key Takeaways
- Athens Is Law Without Mercy: The city has a rule for a disobedient daughter, and its duke enforces it courteously until, in Act 4, he simply does not.
- The Disorder Reaches the Sky: Titania's speech makes the fairy quarrel the cause of ruined harvests; the play's chaos is cosmic before it is personal.
- Managed Chaos: The wood has a king, a servant and a plan; the lovers' confusion is fairy sport, counted and sorted by Puck.
- Order by Decree: The law is not repealed but overruled; the play's harmony is a ruler's generosity and a fairy's blessing, not justice.
Study Questions and Analysis
What is the "green world", and how does it shape the play?
The phrase is Northrop Frye’s, from Anatomy of Criticism (1957), for the pattern that runs through Shakespeare’s comedies: the action "begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the green world, goes into a metamorphosis there in which the comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world." In this play the normal world is Athens and the green world is the wood a league outside it, where Lysander once kept May morning with Hermia and Helena:
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.
(Lysander, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And in the wood, three miles out of town,
Where I once met with you and Helena
To watch the sunrise on a May-day morning,
There I will wait for you.
Frye called the wood in this play "the embryonic form of the fairy world" and traced the same rhythm through the Forest of Arden, Windsor Forest and the Bohemia of The Winter’s Tale. The green world, he wrote, "charges the comedies with the symbolism of the victory of summer over winter", and Titania’s speech about the ruined seasons is where that victory is in doubt.
C. L. Barber, in Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (1959), reached the same structure from English holiday custom rather than myth: the play’s action follows the May game, out of the town into the grove and back, with the night’s "release" leading to the morning’s "clarification". The two accounts agree that the wood is not an escape from Athens but the process by which Athens is put right. Nobody who goes into it comes out unchanged, and nobody who comes out remembers how.
Why is the Athenian law so harsh, and why is it never enforced?
The harshness is the point and the non-enforcement is the joke. The law gives a father power of life and death over a daughter who will not marry his choice, and Theseus explains it without softening it:
Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.
(Theseus, Act 1, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Except you have to heed what he observes.
Shakespeare invented the law, or borrowed it from the world of romance where fathers routinely threaten daughters with death, in order to give the lovers something real to run from. Once they have run, the play drops it. In Act 4 Theseus overrules Egeus in a line, with no repeal, no argument and no apology.
Louis Adrian Montrose, in "Shaping Fantasies" (1983), read the law as a dramatisation of the power of fathers and husbands, enforced exactly as long as it serves the men who invoke it: when Demetrius withdraws his claim, the father’s absolute right evaporates and the duke discovers a flexibility he denied in Act 1. Northrop Frye (1957) was blunter, describing the dream world of the play colliding with "the stumbling and blinded follies of the world of experience, of Theseus’ Athens with its idiotic marriage law". The gentler reading is Barber’s: the law belongs to the old order, the holiday has done its work, and the old order gives way. All three agree on the mechanism. The order that ends the play is not the law of Athens vindicated but the law of Athens quietly forgotten.
How does the fairy quarrel disorder the natural world?
Completely, if Titania is to be believed, and Oberon does not contradict her. Because the king and queen have not met to dance since early summer, she says, the winds have punished the land with fog and flood, the ox has ploughed in vain, the corn has rotted, the sheepfolds stand empty and the crows are fat on dead flocks:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound...
(Titania, Act 2, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And hence the moon, who governs tides and floods,
Is pale with anger, dampening the air,
And filling it with rheumatic diseases.
The fairies’ dance is a fertility rite, and while it is broken the country is sick. The speech is the play’s largest statement about order: the harvest depends on a marriage, and the marriage is broken.
The passage has usually been read topically. The summers of 1594, 1595 and 1596 were among the wettest and coldest in living memory in England, with ruined harvests and high prices, and most editors since the eighteenth century have heard them in Titania’s lines. Samuel Johnson (1765) preferred to see an imitation of Ovid’s grieving Ceres, and the two readings can both be true. What matters for the play is that the fairy reconciliation in Act 4, achieved by drugging the queen and taking the boy, is also, by Titania’s own account, the restoration of the seasons. The theme of control and rebellion and the theme of order are the same theme here: the world is put right when the queen gives way.
Is the chaos in the wood really chaos?
Not from the fairies’ point of view. To the lovers the night is total confusion: partners swapped, friends turned enemies, voices calling from nowhere, a wood that will not let them find each other. To Oberon and Puck it is a plan with one mistake in it, and the mistake is corrected before dawn. Oberon’s instructions for the correction are precise:
And lead these testy rivals so astray
As one come not within another's way.
(Oberon, Act 3, Scene 2)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
And lead these feisty rivals so astray
That neither comes within the other’s way.
Puck raises the fog, mimics each man to the other, walks them in circles until they drop, and squeezes the herb on Lysander’s eyes. The disorder has an author, and the author is invisible, which is why the mortals experience it as the world going mad.
Jan Kott, in Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1964), refused the comfort of this: the night, for him, is a genuine nightmare in which the lovers learn how brutal and interchangeable their desires are, and the fact that a fairy arranged it does not make what they learn untrue. David P. Young, in Something of Great Constancy (1966), described a play in which "the familiar categories by which we judge experience waver, alter, merge, and separate again before our eyes", and that is the audience’s experience as much as the lovers’. The play holds both views. The chaos is managed, and it is still chaos to the people inside it; the audience, who can see the manager, laughs, and the laugh is not entirely comfortable.
What does the hunt in Act 4 have to do with order?
It is how order re-enters the play. Theseus and Hippolyta arrive in the wood at dawn to hear the hounds, and their conversation about the pack is a conversation about harmony made out of noise:
My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
So flewed, so sanded, and their heads are hung
With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
Crook-kneed, and dew-lapped like Thessalian bulls;
Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,
Each under each.
(Theseus, Act 4, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
My dogs are thoroughbreds of Spartan hounds,
So fleshy-jawed, sand-coloured, and their heads
Have ears that brush the dew off morning grass;
They’ve bended knees, and neck-flaps like a bull;
Although slow in the chase, their bark is bell-like,
Each in a different pitch.
Hounds matched in mouth like bells, each under each: it is a picture of a well-ordered pack, and Hippolyta has just called the same sound "so musical a discord, such sweet thunder". Then the duke sees the four lovers asleep, and the day’s business begins.
William Hazlitt, in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817), thought the hunting dialogue the freshest thing in the play: "Even Titian never made a hunting-piece of a gusto so fresh and lusty, and so near the first ages of the world as this." What the scene does structurally is bring daylight, horns and the duke into the green world at the moment the fairies leave it, so that the two orders, Oberon’s and Theseus’s, pass each other without meeting. The lovers wake to a world with a ruler in it, and the ruler, without knowing why, does what the fairies have arranged. James L. Calderwood, in his 1992 study, read the whole night as something like the duke’s own dream before his wedding, with Oberon as his sleeping self; on that reading the hunt is Theseus waking up.
How does Pyramus and Thisbe fit the theme of order and chaos?
It is the play’s last disorder, and the safest. Theseus chooses it from Philostrate’s list because its description is a contradiction, merry and tragical, tedious and brief, and he wants to see the contradiction resolved:
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
(Theseus, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
Happy and sad! It’s boring and it’s brief!
That’s like saying hot ice or weird snow.
How can we make sense of such contradictions?
The workmen then deliver a play in which every rule of theatre is broken: the prologue is mispunctuated, the wall speaks, the lion apologises, the moon argues with the audience, and the dead lover gets up to offer an epilogue. The court laughs, and the laughter is the sound of an order confident enough to enjoy its own parody.
David P. Young (1966) read the workmen’s play as a distorted mirror of the main plot, in which the court can watch its own night, lovers defying parents and mistaking a bloody cloak for a death, without recognising it. C. L. Barber (1959) placed it as the last of the festive pageants the play gathers up, and the Bergomask that follows as the true end of the holiday. Both notice that the play within the play is chaos with a frame round it, performed by the one group in the play who never disturbed anyone. The mechanicals’ disorder is harmless because it is theatre, and the theme of art and theatre is where the play finally puts its chaos, where it can be watched.
Is the order restored at the end the same order the play began with?
No, and the play is careful about the difference. Athens in Act 1 was a law that could kill a girl; Athens in Act 5 is a wedding party. Nothing in between has changed the law. What has changed is the ruler’s mind, and the mind of one suitor, and both were changed in the wood by people Theseus does not believe in. The final order is the fairies’:
Now, until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray.
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessed be...
(Oberon, Act 5, Scene 1)
Shakespeare Retold (Modern Verse)
From now until the break of day,
Each fairy through this house will stray.
Then unto the lovers’ bed,
We’ll place blessings on their head...
Oberon leads the fairies through the palace consecrating the bride-beds, and the last voice in the play is Puck’s, offering the whole thing to the audience as a dream.
Louis Adrian Montrose (1983) read the ending as a process by which "the female pride and power" of the play’s women, its warriors, mothers, wives and daughters, "are brought under the control of lords and husbands", and on his account the new order is the old one, more firmly seated. Catherine Belsey, in her 1993 essay for the Folger edition, noticed a different displacement: "By handing over the conclusion to the fairies, the play displaces the apparent closure, the celebration of restored identity." The mortals think the play ended with the wedding, and it did not; the fairies come after, and then the audience is asked to doubt them too. Between Montrose and Belsey the answer is that the order restored is real, achieved by means nobody in Athens knows, and offered to the audience as something they may or may not choose to believe. The theme of dreams and reality is where the play keeps that choice.
