Theseus and Hippolyta on the Couch

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.

You need not be a Shakespearian scholar nor a card-carrying psychoanalyst in order to be thoroughly fascinated by the interlacing psychological worlds in A Midsummer Night's Dream and by the variegated, powerful mythological as well as historical ancient Greek themes which give shape and substance to these worlds. The mere esthetic experience of the lively and rich phantasmagoria of this fairy-tale-play proves to be intellectually and emotionally most rewarding. In addition, the story reveals profound insights into the complex, stratified, often paradoxical, existential features of human relations. It reminds us that in our interactions with friends, enemies, lovers, acquaintances, and patients we must learn to become ever more sensitively tuned to what happens in our own, in the other's, and in the shared world.

Let us first refresh briefly our recollections of the tale's main events. The play begins by aiming towards its manifest goal, namely, the forthcoming celebration of the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Yet at once an obstacle presents itself when Egeus, an influential man of great moral power, will not consent to the ceremony, before his daughter Hermia, who loves Lysander, consents to marry Demetrius, who is in love with her and whom her father has chosen as her husband. Theseus feels compelled to comply, and satisfies Egeus by declaring that Hermia must either be put to death or renounce marriage forever, unless she agrees to satisfy her father's wish. Needless to say, the two lovers, Hermia and Lysander, are mightily unhappy because of this, and we cannot blame them for deciding to flee from Athens. There is, however, another young lady whom Demetrius cared for before falling in love with Hermia and who is desperate at the prospect of losing him to her closest friend. To ease her pain, and to reassure her, Hermia reveals to her the secret of the planned flight with Lysander. Yet Helena,