In Shakespeare's comedies, the characters are led through a series of obstacles to marriage. The marriage rite allows a denial of death and, through the producing

of children, an illusion of immortality. The obstacles consist mainly of identity confusions and transformations of a dreamlike, sometimes night-marish quality. In the course of A Midsummer-Night's Dream, the characters work through the ambiguities of sexual identity, integrate their animality into more adult identity, accept reality, and proceed to the marriage rite.