著者

宮之原 匡子

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.14, pp.157-178, 1999-12-20

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The wood is said to be a sacred place, where there is something of a solemn and mysterious atmosphere. In this paper I try to consider A Midsummer Night's Dream, focusing on the function of the wood in which young Athenian lovers undergo utter confusion. The young lovers enter the wood, the world of fairies, escaping from Athens, where severe laws and paternal authority govern. There they fall into great confusion because of Puck's mistake. They lose their reason, identity or judgement, act on instinct, and animal-like passions, which were suppressed in Athens, gush out. With the help of fairies they can restore themselves, recovering their identity and reason. By being released from restraints, and acting on instinct in the wood, they widen their mental vision. Shakespeare seems to regard their blind animal passions as necessary energies in the society. In the play these passions, necessary but sometimes very destructive, are put under rational control in the form of marriage, a symbol of order. After great confusion the two couples can end up as well-matched pairs with Duke's blessings, with a promise of new vitality and prosperity in Athens. Shakespeare makes this wood a blissful place by making fairies kind to human beings. In A Midsummer Night's Dream the young lovers come to be blessed after the night of folly, irrationality, madness in the wood, and a vision of concordia discorse is achieved. Though the wood becomes the place of madness or delusion for a period of time, Shakespeare makes it "the place where love finds fruition, where lovers are united or reunited, enemies are reconciled, where a happy conclusion of the story of the plays is worked out," to quote Peter G. Phialas.