Plato and Shakespeare: the Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on a Midsummer

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Plato and Shakespeare: The Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on A Midsummer

Night’s Dream

Tahmina Begum Urmi

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of

Masters of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL

December 2017

Acknowledgments

This thesis has been a possibility due to the support and guidance of many individuals in my life. I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to these specific individuals, without whom I would not have been able to achieve this major milestone in my life.

I wish to express sincerest gratitude to my committee members for all the support they have shown me throughout the process of writing my thesis. I am especially indebted to Dr. Stockard, who has guided me through my thesis writing process every step of the way and shown an unbelievable amount of patience and understanding; Dr.

Leeds, who has encouraged me to continue with my academics and has provided support in various other ways; and Dr. McGuirk, who has kindly agreed to be in my committee.

I am also grateful to my family members who have supported me all my life, particularly, in this stage of my life. I would like to thank my family, whose love, guidance, and many forms of support, play a crucial role in everything I pursue. I want to say a special thank you to my father Mahabub Elahee for raising me to be an independent woman and showing me I can achieve anything I set my mind to regardless of the boundaries set on genders; my mother Taslima Begum for teaching me patience and resilience; and to my sister Mustari Akhi for always rooting for me and providing mental support. I could not have come this far without them and few others.

iv Abstract

Author: Tahmina Begum Urmi

Title: Plato and Shakespeare: The Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Emily Stockard

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 2017

Many scholars who study Plato and Shakespeare together focus only on erotic love between lovers or nonsexual love between others. A closer study of A Midsummer

Night’s Dream shows that Shakespeare uses Plato’s concepts of the soul in addition to the

Forms, the guide, as well as staging the varieties of love that can exist between two individuals and the dangers of loving the physical more than the mind. Shakespeare takes these ideas embedded in Symposium and Phaedrus and not only crafts his play accordingly, but also creates his own versions through his unique interpretations. These alterations appear reflected in the play’s sequence of events, the characters’ actions, and the merging of the faerie and human realms.

v Plato and Shakespeare: The Influence of Phaedrus and Symposium on A Midsummer

Night’s Dream

Introduction ...... 1

I. Two Realms: Heaven and Earth, Faerie and Mortal ...... 10

II. Tug-of-Horse: Desire and Rationality ...... 23

Love Juice as Symbol of Desire and Excess ...... 35

Overcoming the Love Juice: The Results ...... 45

III. Varieties of Love ...... 51

The Stages of Love ...... 52

The Guides: Egeus and Oberon ...... 55

Familial Love: Egeus ...... 63

Two Bodies, One Heart: Concept of Soulmates ...... 66

Pausanias on Love: Helena’s Dedication to Demetrius ...... 72

Eryximachus and Nature: Faerie Love and its Effect on Earth ...... 74

IV. Demetrius: The Amalgamation of Platonic Ideas of The Lover ...... 82

Works Cited ...... 91

vi Introduction

The most popular approach to the analysis of love in Shakespeare’s plays has been primarily through the field of study that analyzes the love between two or more lovers. As Arthur Kirsch suggests in the introduction of Shakespeare and the Experience of Love, the common approach to Shakespeare’s treatment of love tend to focus on emotions in relation to the lovers as the "means of understanding the profound experiences of love... and the sources of their tragic, comic, or tragicomic energy and design" (ix). Those who study love with this approach typically focus on famous romances or tragic plays like Romeo and Juliet or Anthony and Cleopatra, plays which center primarily on the romantic or erotic love between the characters. These studies focus on the love as it exists on the surface (the obvious proclamation and act of love between characters or the series of actions the protagonists take to expresses their love for his or her beloved) or on the suppressed love that characters are motivated by but do not act upon directly. Those who study Shakespeare’s portrayal of love typically focus on the Petrarchan concept of love. For example, according to Maurice Charney in

Shakespeare on Love and Lust, Shakespeare seems to have written his plays by following the “conventions of falling in love that derive from Petrarch’s love poems” and that

Shakespeare is “both a follower and a satirist of them.” Charney then goes on to list the conventions, which he claims start from “love at first sight” (or in other words, love that is heavily involved with the physical aspect of the lover). This, Charney explains, causes a type of love to be “spontaneous, irresistible, and absolute” (9). Eventually he states,

1 “love begins by looking—though the eyes—and that is always sexual” (13). This is the typical scope through which Shakespeare’s plays are examined.

On the other hand, the other popular topic for scholarship on love in

Shakespeare’s plays, which does not involve Petrarch, is the one which studies the

Platonic relationships in Shakespeare’s works. However, those researchers primarily discuss nonsexual relationships that exist between the characters or focus mostly on the concept of love and beauty as laid out by Plato. There are of course many who believe that Shakespeare most likely could not have been directly influenced by Plato in the first place since he did not have the means or education for it. This is, as Amanda Mabillard explains, because, as many scholars have come to accept, “Shakespeare was removed from school around age thirteen because of his father's financial and social difficulties”; however, she continues on to say, “there is no reason whatsoever to believe that he had not acquired a firm grasp of both English and Latin and that he had continued his studies elsewhere” (“Shakespeare's Education and Childhood”). A. B. Taylor points out in

“Plato’s Symposium and Titania’s Speech on the Universal Effect of Her Quarrel with

Oberon” that it is highly plausible that Shakespeare had indirect access to Platonic concepts even though he was not taught Plato formally in a school setting. Taylor states that “[a]lthough there is no evidence… suggesting Shakespeare read Plato in Greek, he could read Latin and comparatively easy Latin translations of all the dialogues by Ficino or Serranus… were available. Shakespeare may have first become aware of the

Symposium in his school days from compendia” (278). Because of this possibility, many scholars have recognized the influences of Plato’s writing in Shakespeare’s plays. Those researchers who do give recognition to the Platonic influences in Shakespeare focus on

2 Platonic love in Shakespeare’s plays and discusses the Platonic love they have found between friends, lovers, as well as rulers and parents, not just sexual emotions. This theme is particularly pronounced in the comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. As Taylor suggests for Dream, “the influences of Phaedrus and Ion have been noted, but to date the

Symposium has received attention only indirectly” (276). Even Harold F. Brooks, the editor of the Arden edition of the play, does not mention Plato or Plato’s concept of love as one of the sources of influences for this play. Brooks’ claims “that there are any comprehensive sources for Dream is altogether unlikely” because the play seems to have been crafted “in the first place for a private occasion,” although he does go on to list

Ovid, Chaucer, and John Lyly as authors from whom Shakespeare draws inspiration

(lviii). In fact, Brooks asserts “in respect of the source-materials of Dream, the subject of love fulfilled in marital union acted (one can presume) as the assembling and organizing agent” (lviii). The justification for not including Plato in that list could very well be because, as mentioned earlier, some scholars believe there was little chance Shakespeare was exposed to Plato.

That is not to say that there has not been any research done on Platonic love and

Shakespeare’s Dream; scholars have studied the parallels between Platonic love and

Dream. However, those few studies that have looked at Platonic concepts and this play primarily focus on the Platonic treatment of the realm of imagination; such scholarship particularly focuses on how Plato’s concept of reality explains how the characters

Shakespeare creates find themselves thrust into the world of faeries and magic. The argument is that there is Platonic influence on Shakespeare’s portrayal of the realm of the imagination, which allow the characters Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius to

3 find themselves and their true partners. One scholar who does focus on the Platonic relationship that can be found within Dream is Bernard Quincy. In his article, “Plato and

Shakespeare on Love,” Quincy finds resonance of Platonic influences in Dream in the love that exists between the couples and the location that is used to facilitate this love.

He explains, "As with A Midsummer Night's Dream, Plato employs erotic tension in the

Phaedrus to contrast sober reason with impassioned madness" (105). Although Quincy finds Platonic influence in the play, here too the focus once more falls on the erotic or sexual love of the play. This, with Platonic concepts considered, is a bit problematic since much of Plato’s definition of love in its highest form focuses on something beyond the sexual experience. Therefore, examining the play through the frame of reference of erotic tension between lovers is contradictory to what Plato teaches through Socrates in his speeches. For example, in Phaedrus Socrates claims that achieving the highest

“level” of love is only possible for those who are able to tame their sexual desires.

Socrates claims that those who are influenced by and act in accordance with love when it is at its most basic level, which is to love for sexual gratification, have failed to regain control over their baser needs, and so, become subject to their irrational reasoning that is typical for more common individuals. As a result, those lovers relinquish their logic by allowing themselves to remain ruled by their base desires and passions, which continue to take control of their actions and lead them to lead an ignoble life. If for Plato, erotic love is at the basest level, it goes without saying that if Shakespeare were to introduce Platonic concepts of love and passion, Shakespeare would not simply stop at the erotic, but rather continue on to incorporate and manipulate these concepts to suit the play’s needs for development.

4 I will demonstrate that Shakespeare did indeed draw from and incorporate

Platonic philosophies in Dream by showing the parallels that exist between the play and two of Plato’s famous works. This will be done by locating the resonances of the philosophy of both nonsexual and sexual love expressed in Plato’s Phaedrus and

Symposium within Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and identifying love as it exists in its various types. A closer look at Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium will show, as Daryl Kaytor explains in “Shakespeare’s Political Philosophy: A Debt to Plato in

Timon of Athens,” that Shakespeare “was not only reading Plato” but works composed by

Plato. Kaytor states, works like Timon of Athens show “Shakespeare’s uncanny ability to transform Platonic wisdom into a dramatic narrative” (137). Kaytor supports this by claiming there are “uncanny similarities between Falstaff’s and Socrates’s death,” which provides evidence that “Shakespeare had been reading Phaedo” at the very least (137).

Such is also true of Shakespeare’s Dream and the way love is approached in this play.

By examining the definition of love that exists in Plato’s speeches, the requirements of love, the phases of love, and the higher and lower realms that Plato discusses in the two speeches, I will demonstrate how saturated the play is with Platonic concepts of love as well as the philosophy of the soul and soulmates, in addition to various other versions of the love found within Plato’s work. The philosophy behind Plato’s views of the soul and the concept of soulmates found in Plato’s Phaedrus will help demonstrate the reason why the couples in Dream are paired the way they are. According to John Vyvyn in

Shakespeare and Platonic Beauty, “Nearly all Renaissance theorizing on love and beauty stems from two great speeches of Socrates.” But even though that is the case, he goes on to say that “a great deal has been fathered on to [Plato] that he never said, and possibly

5 have disapproved of” (15). I claim that if we take the principle points found within these two speeches, as well as the other variations that Plato’s speakers brings up within the

Symposium and Phaedrus and compare them to how Shakespeare treats the act of falling in love, the motivation behind falling out of love, the lovers themselves, those who are involved in the blocking/encouragement of their love, and how the play concludes, we will see that Shakespeare stayed true to the core Platonic philosophies and placed these at the heart of his play. Not only that, but as Vyvyan suggests, Shakespeare, like many during the Renaissance, also built upon those Platonic philosophies to take on a slightly varied approach to the treatment of love as it was common during that time. J. Hart, author of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, explains that “Romance did not have the authority of Plato or Aristotle to legitimize it in the Renaissance” (62). This claim is sound since in Platonic teachings and speeches, Socrates expresses that the sexual love between lovers is part of the process that one must go through in order to achieve the highest level of love. However, as Hart continues on to say, even though neither Plato nor Aristotle gave importance to erotic or sexual love in their teachings, “[t]hat did not keep the Renaissance poets from trying to justify their practices by appealing to Aristotle or by denying his authority” (62). I argue that in the Dream, Shakespeare takes these

Platonic approaches towards love and creates his own version of them. Therefore, although Plato might have disproved of much of what many Renaissance writers and playwrights wrote and theorized about love, Shakespeare nevertheless uses the main components for the structure of his play.

When examining the various kinds of love that appear in Dream, there is evidence that many of those concepts of different types of lovers are inspired by the Symposium.

6 The Symposium, composed around the same period as many of Plato’s other works, is one of the most famous and influential examinations of love in Western thought.

Composed in the span of the years 385-370 BCE, it recounts the events that take place in what is presumably a fictional gathering in the house of Athenian tragic poet Agathon.

This symposium, which was a party for the Greek aristocrats, was held to celebrate

Agathon’s first victory in 416 BCE during “the great dramatic festivals of the city”

(Hunter 3-4). As with some of Plato’s other writings, the Symposium is written in the form of dialogues between characters. It begins with the narrator Apollodorus relating the story, which he has heard from Aristodemus, of the symposium that Socrates has attended. At this symposium, all the attendees agree to make a speech in praise of love, whether it is Love/Eros the god or love in general. Each person take turns creating a eulogy of love drawn from their experiences that is respective of their professional field.

Therefore, by the end of Symposium, we are presented with a total of five different encomia (excluding Socrates’ and Diotima’s). After each person has his turn, Socrates, in his usual manner, dismantles their arguments and it ends with Socrates sharing what he has learned from Diotima on the subject.

One thing to note here is that when love is being discussed in the Symposium, as well in certain parts of Phaedrus, it is referring to homosexual love, which was common in Greek societies. As Richard Hunter explains in his critical analysis of the Symposium in his book Plato’s Symposium, “All of the speeches of the Symposium are predominantly concerned with the erôs felt by an adult man, the erastês (lover), for a younger man, the erômenos (he who is loved, the beloved); the erômenos in such relationships was usually adolescent or someone older. The Greek term for these social practices is boy-love

7 (paiderastia)” (19). Paiderastia does not appear in Dream and is one of the areas in which Shakespeare takes liberties with what he carries over to his own work. When

Shakespeare uses these Platonic concepts and love philosophies in his play, he applies them to heterosexual love. Another thing to note is that in the Symposium there are many different theories on love that conflict with the one that Plato acknowledges as the most legitimate. The theories presented by the different attendees of the symposium are also contradictory to each other as well as to what Socrates presents to his audience. Yet

Shakespeare uses various elements of what he finds, not just the views Plato seems to imply are correct and should be followed.

Shakespeare also applies this liberty to his use of the Phaedrus. Plato composed

Phaedrus around the same time as the Symposium and it is also written in dialogue form.

However, unlike the Symposium, in this there are only two characters, Phaedrus and

Socrates. It begins with Socrates coming across Phaedrus in Athens and then proceeding to accompany him to the countryside. Phaedrus informs Socrates that he spent the morning listening to Lysias’s speech. In his speech, Lysias attempted to convince the audience about who is more deserving of love—the one who is in love with the eròmenos or one who is disinterested. Phaedrus informs Socrates that Lysias makes a compelling argument for the eròmenos to favor the latter more so than the former, claiming “If the speech has one merit above all others, it is that no single aspect of the subject worth mentioning has been omitted; no one could improve on it either in fullness or quality”

(12). The reason behind this, according to Phaedrus, is that Lysias constructs a convincing case for the eròmenos to favor the one who is not under the influence of love- madness because it is both temporary and detrimental to the growth of the young lover.

8 After hearing this, Socrates disagrees with Phaedrus’s claim, stating Lysias emphasizes style rather than content or argument.

This results in Phaedrus asking Socrates to create a better argument, which after some encouragement, Socrates does. Socrates’s first speech is a counterpart to Lysias’s, and after making this speech Socrates explains that he does not want to get carried away by the inspiration he got from the Nymphs to create this speech and proceeds to head back to Athens. However, he stops and claims that divine signs have prevented him from leaving without giving the subject of the speech its due and adequate justice. Socrates then presents his second speech in which he discusses the types of madness, eros, the immortality of the soul, the allegory of the charioteer and his horses, the Forms, and what one must do to elevate one’s soul to a higher status. As he concludes this speech,

Socrates also discusses rhetoric and writing, criticizing writing because it lacks everything that makes speech effective—the presence and understanding of the audience as well as the inability to engage in direct debate. For the sake of my argument, I claim that Shakespeare was mostly influenced by the concepts presented in Plato’s work that relate to love, which is when Socrates discusses the soul, the Forms, and love, as well as

Lysias’s speech, which discusses the benefits of favoring one lover over another. Here too there is a clear distinction between the topics and views for which Plato shows his preference. However, as Shakespeare did with the Symposium, he takes liberties with what he includes in his play and uses inspiration from all parts of the Phaedrus as he sees fit for his purposes in Dream.

9 I. Two Realms: Heaven and Earth, Faerie and Mortal

In the Phaedrus, Plato sits with his companion and explains that everything that we see, feel, or experience is an imitation of something that exists beyond our realm (the lower realm) where the pure version of it exists (higher realm). Plato refers to this as the

Form, which exists in a place far removed from the lower realms (or the tainted Earth, the realm of physical existence). While explaining the concept of the soul to Phaedrus,

Socrates explains that before the human soul is housed within its fleshly body, its original manifestation was winged and this form temporarily existed among the gods in heaven; this is where the concept of senior and junior horse comes from. Socrates claims that before the souls fall to Earth, they are part of the procession led by gods who are on their way to “celebration of their high feast day,” which is located in the “summit of the arch which supports the outer heaven” (31). It is here among the gods in the higher realm that

Socrates claims all the Forms of things exists. “The region above, where the god dwell”

Socrates tells Phaedrus, “has the greatest affinity with the divine, which is endowed with beauty, wisdom, goodness, and every other excellence. These qualities are the prime source” that feeds our soul (30). He continues on to describe such a place where the gods reside and where these pure Form of things exists:

This region beyond the skies no mortal poet has sung or will ever sing in

such strains as it deserves. Nevertheless, the fact is this… the region of

which I speak is the abode of the reality with which its true knowledge is

concerned, a reality without color or shape, intangible but utterly real,

10 apprehensible only by intellect which is the pilot of the soul. So, the mind

[that recalls it] … is satisfied at last with the vision of reality, and is

nourished and made happy by the contemplation of the truth. (31)

In claiming “no mortal poet has sung or will ever sing in such strain as it deserves”

Socrates is describing to his audience a reality that is so far removed from what we know and understand that we cannot conjure up something close to it even in our imagination.

This is Plato’s concept of the Form. Socrates then continues to explain that in this region.

[there exists] absolute justice and discipline and knowledge, not the

knowledge which is attached to things which come into being, nor the

knowledge which varies with the object we now call real, but with

absolute knowledge which corresponds to what is absolutely real in the

fullest sense…. Now the earthly likeness of justice and self-discipline and

all other forms which are precious to the soul keep no lustre, and there are

few who by the use of their feeble faculties and with great difficulties can

recognize the counterfeits the family likeness of the original…. Whole

were we who celebrated the festival… and whole and unspotted and

changeless and serene were the objects revealed to us in the light of that

mystic vision. (32-35)

The emphasis on what is “absolutely real in the fullest sense” is important to Plato’s concept of the Form. To him, humans come to understand the world around them, or the representation of the Form as it exists on Earth, once we are able to recall memories of that object’s or concept’s original form as it existed in this region in which the gods exist.

These Forms of abstract entities exist as separate from, and independent of, the visible

11 world that humans see: "In Plato's view, the best that can be created in the world of time

[Earth] will never be more than material copies of the spiritual ideas" (Vyvyn 20). To

Plato, these entities are eternal and unchanging, unlike what exists on Earth. Vyvyn continues on to state, "these original [Forms] are not subject to making and unmaking, and therefore, the only possible activity with regard to them is not to shape but to unveil.

This can be done because as Plato believes, the soul belongs to the spiritual world by its nature, and so to unveil is ultimately to remember" (20). In the Platonic school of thought, humans have a certain understanding of these eternal unchanging Forms, because at one point in our soul’s existence, it was able to become acquainted with them.

However, our understanding and recreation of these Forms on earth are flawed and corrupted, or severely limited at best. But before we come to the point in which we can create these flawed versions of the Form, we must, as Vyvyn points out, come to recollect these old memories housed in our soul. For both Plato and Shakespeare, this recollection comes in the shape of coming across beauty, particularly for the lovers. For Shakespeare, this recollection happens once the characters are introduced to the love juice in the realm of the faeries.

Shakespeare uses the same division as does Plato between two realms to exhibit where the majority of the important events takes place. By adding the two faerie royals,

Oberon and Titania, within the “higher realm,” Shakespeare goes beyond Plato’s realms and the Form. Plato makes it clear that there is a distinction between the region in the heavens and what exists on earth. He also specifically informs his audience that this higher realm is not accessible to humans and the only time mortals ever get to experience it is when their souls get a brief glimpse of it before it descends to the lower realms and

12 resides temporarily in mortal body. Shakespeare replicates Plato’s idea of the two realms directly into his play. He creates an entire realm of faeries and magical beings that is both separated from and invisible to the lower realm. By keeping the faeries undetectable

(until the faeries deem it necessary for the mortals to see them) Shakespeare is able to reproduce the heavenly realm Socrates speaks of in the Phaedrus. Just as there is a hierarchy in Plato’s higher realm, there too exists a hierarchy in the faerie realm. Oberon and Titania are the king and queen, respectively, who reign over the faerie kingdom. As with the gods in the higher realm influencing various aspects of the lower realm and dictating the fates of the mortals, Shakespeare’s faerie king and queen interact with mortals. Shakespeare invokes this Platonic scheme of the two realms by choosing to make the main events of Dream occur in the woods. By doing so, the main conflicts are able to occur in a setting removed from Athens, what the lovers know as their “reality.”

As a result, several life-changing sequences of events take place where the “absolute knowledge” exists. It is only when the lovers enter into the “other region” that they are able to sort out their difficulties and be paired in the way that was originally intended.

In the woods, the audience is introduced to the two faerie royals who play the biggest role in shaping the meaning of love within the play. When the characters enter this other “reality,” they can enter into the realm of the faeries, which, in accordance to

Shakespeare’s understanding and influence of Plato’s work, can be thought to be the realm where the gods reside on the “plane of truth.” Shakespeare places the higher realm within the woods, not in the city of Athens. This distinction is important because the

Platonic belief asserts that the true, uncorrupt concept of love (or anything else for that matter) can only exist in the higher realm where the gods (or in Shakespeare’s play, the

13 fairies) reside. This version of love that exists in the heavens is free from the perversion and imperfection on earth. However, unlike Socrates, who claims these two realms are separate and that the higher realm is unreachable by humans, in Shakespeare the realms are not only accessible but in the same space as mankind; as such, instead of the faeries being far removed from and elusive for humans, the faeries exist alongside them. This allows for the faeries to directly interact with the humans, whereas in Plato’s version, gods have intermediaries. The faeries themselves make various statements explaining how their interaction with the lower realm directly affects the humans. This includes those of higher status, including the king and queen, as well as faerie denizens, such as

Puck, whose involvement results in annoyance and anger. Brooks explains, “As Robin

Goodfellow, known to the villagery, Puck is the closest of the links between fairyland” and the people because “his second sphere of influence, where he plays pranks on the villagery, or sometimes does them service, brings the fairy supernatural into the realm of familiar life” (cxxvii). And, as will be explained in the “Various Types of Love” chapter, when something goes wrong in the higher realm, it also affects the lower realms, which

Shakespeare depicts by introducing a corrupt version of “love” in the higher realm analogous to the corrupt version of love existing in the lower realm: “The world of fairies…is extended. All nature suffers when their rulers are at enmity” (Brooks cxxvii).

This concept of higher realm affecting the lower realm is also depicted by how the earthly weather changes in accordance with the faerie royals’ love status.

The inclusion and the intermingling of the two realms in Dream is crucial for the play’s main objective: to restore order among the lovers in both realms and the families.

Socrates says to Phaedrus that the realm is invisible to human eyes, and in the same way,

14 Shakespeare keeps the faeries invisible and separate from the human lovers for the majority of the play, while still giving them the ability to influence the lower realms.

When the lovers are about to stumble across them, Oberon claims, “I am invisible.” His invisibility allows him to “overhear their conference” to see what kind of discord exists amongst the humans. This invisibility, but ability nevertheless to interact with the human realm, is how Shakespeare is able to keep the two realms separate in a sense but still to show how one realm influences the other. The interaction of the two realms is

Shakespeare’s way of having the humans actively remembering and coming across the heavenly Forms. Similarly, in Plato, the recollection of the Forms is easiest for philosophers: “it is right that the soul of the philosopher should regain its wings; for it is always dwelling in memory as best it may upon those things” (34). There are no philosophers in Dream, but Shakespeare incorporates the gods directly into the play so that the humans come across the Forms. Oberon also refers to himself as a shadow several times throughout the play. In one scene, Oberon proclaims “we are spirits of another sort” (III.ii. 388), while Puck calls Oberon “king of shadows” (III.ii.347).

Shakespeare directly addresses this issue of the other “region,” or realm of “shadows,” when the play concludes as well. As Puck states at the end of the play, they, the dramatis personae, are “shadows.” He tells the audience that everything that has happened before them is a dream:

If we shadows have offended

Think but this and all is mended,

That you have but slumb’red here

While these visions did appear.

15 And this weak and idle theme

No more yielding but a dream. (V.i.409-414)

These lines can be understood in two ways. One is that Shakespeare incorporates them at the end of the play and creates these lines for a magical creature instead of a mortal because he has already shown us what happens when humans attempt to recreate things as they are in their true Form. As I will demonstrate later, Shakespeare demonstrates how feeble our pursuit is through the Mechanicals and their comical rendition of the play they put on. Another explanation for these lines is that it is analogous to what Socrates tells Phaedrus: “To describe it [the higher realm and Forms] as it is would require a long exposition of which only a god is capable; but it is within the power of man to say in shorter compass what it resembles” (29). Since Socrates understands that he himself cannot fully comprehend, truthfully convey, or accurately depict the Forms, he claims that he is at the very least able to relay the message of what it does resemble based on the what little he is able to recall from his soul’s short journey in the heavens.

Shakespeare, in the same spirit, does something similar by telling his audience that “visions did appear” before them as they watched the play and what they experienced is “but a dream.” This implies that by means of this dream, both the audience, and the lovers in the shadows, were able to experience the higher realms and the Forms. It is a

“dream” because the concepts and the gods are something that is beyond human understanding. Shakespeare also leaves the audience with a sense that just as the adventure in the woods appeared as a dream to the young couples, the whole play is also like a dream to his audience. The play and all that it entailed is, as Theseus describes,

“but shadows” and what unfolded in front of them is “no worse, if imagination amend

16 them,” because no matter how skilled a writer is, nothing can come close to the real thing. When the four young lovers finally wake up from a night of magic and pursuit, they are at a loss for words. Once Theseus rules in favor of the newly paired couple and orders them to prepare for his wedding celebrations, Demetrius is the first to voice his wonderment. In a state of discomfiture, he proclaims to his companions: “These things seem small and undistinguishable, / Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.” To this

Hermia responds, “Methinks I see these things with parted eye” (IV.i. 186-188). Both

Demetrius and Helena remember what occurred the night before but the events seem astonishing to them that they are unable to construe what transpired. Since they were all within the faerie realm and came in contact with the higher beings, they are unable to grasp the reality of what they experienced. As a result, by failing to put it into words even to those who experienced it with him, Demetrius describes his temporary adventure in the faerie realm as “undistinguishable” because it is like “far-off mountains,” which makes everything contained within it conceptually ambiguous. As with Plato, the characters understand the faerie realm as a dream that they saw “with parted eye.” Demetrius continues on to say, “Are you sure / That we are awake? It seems to me / That yet we sleep, we dream” (IV.i. 191-193). Again, Shakespeare shows that his characters are unable to process what happened the night before and because of this, their adventure in the woods can only be processed as a “dream.” When Bottom wakes up from his magic- induced slumber, he too wonders what transpired the night before:

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to

say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expounding

this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I

17 was—and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer

to say what me thought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of

man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive,

nor his heart to report, what my dream was. (IV.i. 203-212)

Just as Socrates explained to Phaedrus, to truthfully illustrate what the heavens are like is

“past the wit of man.” It is just as Socrates stated: even our best attempts falls short in describing the Forms and anyone who thinks otherwise is “but a patched fool.” Bottom too refers to the night’s events as a “dream” that he is incapable of understanding or processing accurately, just as Hermia and Demetrius have said earlier. The characters refer to the faerie realm as a dream because Shakespeare is drawing parallels between

Socrates’ descriptions of the soul’s remembrance of the heavens before the soul (the charioteer and his horses) falls to the lower realms. Socrates states that the soul witnesses the heavenly procession before it loses its wings and while this soul is on the lower realm, it actively tries to recall this memory through various means. In this instance, the young lovers and Bottom are actively trying to recall the memories of being amongst the faerie royals in the higher realm; but not only are they unable to conjure up those astounding details but they are so otherworldly that they are at a loss for words.

Bottom’s senses are so overwhelmed that each sensory receptor attempts to process the wrong stimulation; the eye attempts to hear, the ear is employed to see, the hand tries to taste. This specific part of this scene, with the lovers and Bottom expressing their confusion, echoes Socrates’s exact claim that mankind is unable to fully understand or recall the true Forms we once witnessed. No matter the social status or economic standing, humans are incapable of recounting what they have experienced in the higher

18 realm, even though in both Shakespeare’s case and Plato’s charioteer’s case the humans have encountered the higher realms for a brief moment.

There is a difference between treatment of the faeries by Shakespeare and the gods by Plato. For Plato, the gods and the other objects in heaven are the Form of how various things exist. This is what souls (and in turn, humans) aspire to see and understand, and once they do, replicate on earth. For Shakespeare, although he erects the faerie gods to be analogous to the god that Plato refers to, by having Puck say these lines,

Shakespeare demonstrates that these gods too are an imitation of what they should be, hence the “vision.” In line with Plato’s theories, Shakespeare has Puck say these lines since Plato repeatedly claims that humans do not have a firm grasp of the Forms because these exists elsewhere and our minds are too limited to understand or have a concrete concept of these truths. Shakespeare is also able to imply that the play itself is his own replication of the Forms. The woods, or the faerie realm, is not the only place in which there is evidence in Dream of Plato’s idea of the Form and its distorted, imperfect reflection on earth. Another incident similar to the human attempt to imitate the Forms is demonstrated by the Mechanicals, who meet in the middle of the forest to work on the play that they will put on for Theseus. In the realm of the fairies, which is a representation of the Forms, the Mechanicals have access to real moonlight, a real lion, a lion’s roar, real death, and other components they use in their play for Theseus.

However, for the play, taking place within the city (lower realms), to be successful, they need these things that can be found out in the forest or in nature. Since it is impossible for them to bring these necessary elements of the play into the Duke’s dining hall, they come up with a solution: they decide to recreate the objects of nature by using substitutes

19 that represent them. Moonlight is recreated with a lantern held by Starveling, the lion is imitated with a mask, the wall is a person rather than a prop, and real death is recreated using speech, acting, and silence. When it comes to the lion’s roar, the Mechanicals are so far removed from the original Form that Bottom enthusiastically states, “Let me play the lion too. I will roar, that will do any man’s heart good to hear me” (I.ii.66). Although

Bottom here is being over confident in his performance skills and takes on the impossible task of playing every part in the play, he does so because he believes he would be able to put on a better and more impressive show without the others reducing the quality. Even though this is ludicrous, his intentions are not too far misplaced. A real lion’s roar should startle any man who hears it and most definitely bring fear. However, the Mechanicals in this case are reluctant to deal with something that could even remotely come close to the real thing; their leader, Quince, tells Bottom “And you should do it too terribly, you would fright the duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek” (I.ii. 59-60). This reinstates Socrates’ assertion that mortals are simply incapable to take upon themselves any attempt to recreate the vision that they have seen in the heavens down on earth. The humans are unable to succeed in creating a close resemblance.

Consequently, the Mechanicals’ attempt to imitate the natural things within their play results in their show being ridiculed; it creates a comedic situation. None of their play’s components live up to its Form because of what they used to substitute for it. Not only that, but the play, which is originally meant to be a tragedy similar Romeo and

Juliet, becomes a comedy because the elements the Mechanicals use to imitate the essential parts in each scene of the play subvert the tragic elements. As Socrates has told

Phaedrus, “of this region beyond the skies no mortal poet has sung or will ever sing in

20 such strains as it deserves” (31). Here we see the Mechanicals’ unsuccessful attempt at conjuring the true version of the objects and concepts they are attempting. Shakespeare goes so far as to show, as Plato believes, that even our best attempts can only result in a perverted version of the Form. Before the play even starts, Philostrate tells Theseus:

…For in all the play

There is not one word apt, one player fitted.

And tragical, my noble lord it is,

For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.

Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,

Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears

The passion of loud laughter never shed. (V.i.64-70)

Just as Plato claims that no earthly thing is equal to the Form, Philostrate says that “not one word apt, one player fitted” even though the Mechanicals attempt with all their skills put together. As the play is in progress, Hippolyta states, “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard,” since every major concept of the play is either taken too literally or misrepresented to a point where it becomes comical (V.i.207). Theseus responds: “The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them” (V.ii.204-205). Shakespeare here implies, as Plato did, that even our best attempts are “but shadows” and the worst fall into the same category. However, in either case, we are able to either appreciate mankind’s attempts, or laugh at failure, by the use of our mind to detect flaws in our representations of such concepts. Additionally, the

Mechanicals fail to understand imaginative power and can only think of things in literal terms. This causes them to be unable to grasp the “absolute knowledge” required to

21 understand the concepts necessary for their play. They cannot comprehend that it is not imperative to have the Lion, Wall, and Moon speak to the audience for them to understand how these things function conceptually in the play. Nor is it necessary to announce to the audience it is night by having someone play moonshine. The prologue of the play is spent describing the actors and what they represent instead of allowing the audience to deduce it for themselves. They insert themselves in the play by introducing themselves as the play goes on (“That I, one Snout by name, present a wall” [V.i.154] and “Then know that I, as Snug the joiner, am / A lion” [V.i. 218-219]). Instead of performing the actions the characters on stage should be doing, the Mechanicals narrate it as it happens. This once more shows how easily our representation of the Forms can become nonsensical. Brooks expounds, “They think it a hard thing to bring moonlight into the great chamber: at the private performance of the Dream, the audience would scarcely fail to reflect that Shakespeare, being a poet, was managing the feat without difficultly.” He continues on to state, “The adoption of Quince’s proposal, so that

Starveling appears as moonshine in the performance, makes the moon-motif one of the connections between the comicality of the burlesque and the main romance of the play”

(cxxix). Shakespeare, through the Mechanicals, is parodying human attempts at creating the Forms by dramatizing a group of people who are incapable of understanding abstract concepts; the Mechanicals hilariously lack the sophistication needed to create a rendition of the play appropriate for its genre. In the Mechanicals, Shakespeare exaggerates humankind’s literal mindedness and inability to understand the Forms.

22 II. Tug-of-Horse: Desire and Rationality

In Platonic philosophy, human actions and reactions are dictated by the soul, which directs how humans behave. In Phaedrus, Socrates explains the nature of a man's soul by comparing it to a chariot driver and the two horses: “Let us adopt this method, and compare the soul to a winged charioteer and his team working together…. The ruling power in us men drives a pair of horses... and one of those horses is fine and good and of noble stock, and the other the opposite in every way. So, in our case the task of the charioteer is necessarily a difficult and unpleasant business” (29). For both Shakespeare and Plato, the struggle between the two horses (desire and self-control) plays a crucial role in how the base lover and noble lover behave, which can lead either towards knowledge or towards temporary worldly possessions. To both authors, the governing force, the desire for physical gratification over the desire for control over one’s physical response to the lover, is central to how they define the act of loving and elevation of the soul’s status as it engages in love. Socrates continues on to say, “When it [the soul] is perfect and winged, it moves on high and governs all creation, but the soul that has shed its wings falls until it encounters solid matter” (30). Socrates argues that the human souls once existed in the realm of the gods and tells Phaedrus that souls joined to bodies have never been able to have their chariots reach to the height of the upper realm, where the gods and the Form of things exist. However, before each soul exists on earth and is housed in a fleshly body, the soul is able to get a glimpse of the upper realm before he is pulled down to earth, even though it is unable to reach the full height of where the gods

23 confer. Continuing on with this metaphor, Socrates describes the noble horse as the

"senior horse" who is "upright and clean-limbed... his thirst for honor is tempered by restraint and modesty" (39). For Plato, this is part of the soul (the noble horse) which has had a better glimpse of the heavenly Forms and is therefore calmer, more collected, and mature.

The other horse, the junior of the pair, is described as "crooked, limbering, ill- made" (39). The junior horse of the soul is the one that leads to the fall of the soul to the ground. The junior horse is unable to control himself or his want and makes the journey extremely difficult for his other horse companion and his chariot driver. The impulsive horse eagerly throws himself with full force at the objects of his desires, without proper consideration of the consequences of such actions or contemplation of why he behaves in such a way. Many times, this uncontrolled, unchecked passionate horse overpowers the senior horse and throws both the senior horse and the charioteer off course. The junior horse’s unruliness becomes more and more problematic as he uses more force to be near what inspires such fervent desire to satisfy his needs. This, left unchecked, leads the charioteer and his two horses from a dignified to a decadent status.

Socrates critiques the kind of lover whose soul/ruling principle is "crooked" and

"ill-made," as well as exhibiting "wantonness and boastfulness." He tells Phaedrus that,

“it is not every soul that finds it easy to use its present experience as a means of recollecting the world of reality” (35) and this particular horse is "hardly controllable even with the whip" (41). Socrates is implying that those who give in to the base needs of the physical body continue habits that cannot be controlled even with harsh measures.

This, in turn, positions the charioteer in a dangerous situation when confronted with love.

24 Logically, even a wild horse eventually yields to the whip and is able to conduct itself accordingly so that it is not whipped once more. Despite it being in its best interest to rein in his desires, the junior horse, and those lovers who are ruled by it, defy logic and continues to conduct himself imprudently.

In his play, Shakespeare utilizes this figurative battle between the two horses and the charioteer as an instrument to demonstrate how love between the characters changes according to which horse controls the pace of the chariot. The metaphor of the charioteer and the two horses is not directly referred to in Shakespeare’s play, but he includes this struggle between logic and reason, desire and control, and love based on noble and ignoble origins. The kind of sudden infatuation mentioned previously, the influence of the junior horse, sets off the conflicts between the mortals sets the play into motion. In the lower realm, the problem begins with Demetrius’s seemingly sudden and inexplicable infatuation with Hermia. His infatuation, in Platonic terms, is a reflection of a lover who gives in to the desires of the junior horse, much to the dismay of his company and beloved (previous or current). When Demetrius beholds Hermia’s beauty, he quickly falls out of love with his betrothed because suddenly he finds Hermia more appealing.

The two young women in this case possess different, but equally matched, physical types of beauty. Both have attributes that are incomparable to the other, neither truly “lacking” in any detectable aspect. In the opening scene of the play, Helena bemoans, “Through

Athens I am thought as fair as she [Hermia]. / But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;

/ He will not know what all but he do know” (I.i 227-229). Demetrius’s abrupt end of affection for Helena seems to defy reason. This demonstrates that giving into the desire for physical beauty without restrain corrupts the ability to reason in the same way the

25 untamed horse is unable to associate the whip’s pain to stop unwanted behavior. After

Lysander explains to Theseus that Demetrius’s desire to marry Hermia is illogical and groundless since he, Lysander, had “won her [Hermia’s] soul,” even the Duke agrees that he has heard a similar account of the relationship dynamic Lysander mentions. Theseus claims, “I must confess that I have heard… / And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof” (I.i.111-112). It is safe to assume that Demetrius intentionally keeps that part of his courting history to himself. The situation gets more and more bizarre once further details come out of the dynamics of the relationship Demetrius has with Hermia. Hermia explains to a depressed Helena that no matter what she does, no matter how she dissuades him, no matter what she says, Demetrius refuses to relent. She tells Helena: “I frown upon him; yet he loves me still,” and “I give him curses; yet he gives me love,” and “The more I hate, the more he follows me” (I.i. 193-200). Demetrius allows the junior horse to dictate his behavior. It is not as though Hermia is leading him on a coy chase or is dismissing his affections to increase his desire. Hermia is already spoken for and has both directly and publically made her decision known to all those who are concerned. As a matter of fact, once Hermia and Lysander leave to plan their escape, Helena goes on to lament her bad fortune: “For, ere Demetrius look’d on Hermia’s eyne, / He hail’d down oaths the he was only mine / And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt / So he dissolv’d and show’rs of oaths did melt” (I.i.243-245). As Hermia’s previous explanation demonstrates, she has done nothing to encourage Demetrius’ pursuit of her, yet he perversely follows her.

Demetrius also embodies the irrational kind of love that is created when one is enamored by the physical beauty of the beloved. When Helena is left by Demetrius in

26 the forest to fend for herself, she complains that he once used to dote on her. In those moments of affection, Demetrius’s words are only for her and he dedicated his resources to court her. However, similar to the lover Lysias mentions in his speech, Demetrius changes his mind and becomes fickle. When Phaedrus recites the speech that Lysias delivered earlier in the day, Phaedrus reveals that Lysias presented a speech “designed to win the favor of a handsome boy for someone who is not in love with him” and crafts the argument in such a way “that an admirer who is not in love is to be preferred to one who is” (2). Lysias tells his audience that “with most of your lovers, physical attraction will have preceded any knowledge of your character or acquaintance with your circumstances; it must therefore be uncertain whether they will want to remain your friends when their passion has cooled” (9). By this, Lysias implies that these lovers of physical beauty are first and foremost enamored by physical attributes and, like the junior ignoble horse, give in to desire. As the junior horse is unreasonable and dismissive of logic, so is this type of lover. And because of this same reason, once the desire “cools” or the physical attributes are no longer something with which the lover is infatuated, the lover moves on to the next. This claim Lysias makes is borne out in Demetrius in

Shakespeare’s play. Similar to the lover whom Lysias advises against, once Demetrius has gained his lover’s favor and heart, he tosses Helena’s affections aside to pursue someone else. Just as Lysias has insisted, the lover that dotes too much will eventually betray the beloved and leave. Lysias in his speech also claims that “Lovers themselves admit that they are mad, not sane, and they know that they are not in their right mind but cannot help themselves. How then can one expect that designs formed in such a condition will meet with their approval when they come to their senses?” (7) This

27 condition produces a love that is valueless. The concept of the junior horse forsaking logic for desire is seen here as well. As Lysias continues on to say, “you have all the more reason to be afraid of those who are in love with you; they can hurt in such a variety of ways” (8). Socrates too makes a similar statement in his first speech to Phaedrus, claiming that once a lover’s “passion cools you can place no reliance on him for the future, in spite of all the promises which he mixed with his oaths and entreaties in order to maintain, through expectations of benefits to come, a precarious hold upon an intimacy” (21). Here Shakespeare is working with the concept of the junior horse influencing action as well as an attribute of the lover from Lysias’s speech. As we have seen through Demetrius’s actions, as well as the evidence provided by Hermia, Helena, and Lysander, Demetrius is the epitome of one who becomes illogical and hasty as a result of allowing himself to be ruled by the part of the soul that is constantly overwhelmed by desires and passions. This creates an unnecessary complication for the lovers and others who are affected by Demetrius’s irresponsible behavior.

Regarding the metaphor of the soul as a chariot and two horses, Socrates also tells

Phaedrus, “We must realize that in each of us there are two ruling and impelling principles whose guidance we follow, a desire for pleasure, which is innate, and an acquired conviction, which causes us to aim at excellence.” As he informs Phaedrus,

“The conviction which compels us towards excellence is rational, and the power by which it masters us we call self-control; the desire which drags us towards pleasure is irrational, and when it gets the upper hand in us its dominion is called excess” (16). As evident through Demetrius’s behavior in the opening scene, as well as throughout the play, he is irrational, like his behavior and desires. This failure of reason due to

28 surrendering to one’s lust continues throughout the play, as when Demetrius chases

Hermia even though he knows she only loves Lysander. He even tries to force her to marry him by winning over her father, knowing that Hermia has no interest in him. One can say that his primary goal seems to be acquisition of Hermia rather than winning her heart. Hermia takes it upon herself to directly declare her disinterest and annoyance, telling Theseus that she would much rather admit herself to a nunnery than become

Demetrius’s wife. In fact, she seems to imply that if pressed, she would much rather prefer death than to be forced into such a marriage. Even so, Demetrius tries to coerce her into marrying him: “Relent, sweet Hermia; and Lysander, yield / Thy crazed title to my certain right” (I.i.91-92). He believes he has the right over Hermia simply because he wants her and has gotten her father’s blessing, disregarding her lack of love. He is even willing to ignore the many times Hermia explicitly shows her disdain for him and her anger towards him. Understandably, it is not too farfetched to argue that to Demetrius

Hermia is more than likely another beauty he has become obsessed with and will eventually abandon, as he has treated his former lover Helena. This irrational logic confuses not only the ones affected but also the Duke himself. As Socrates tells

Phaedrus, “The man who is under the sway of desire and a slave to pleasure will inevitably try to derive the greatest pleasure possible from the object of his passion” (17).

As Demetrius’s actions have demonstrated so far, Shakespeare employs Demetrius to present a character who is a slave to his own desire to make a beautiful woman his lover.

Shakespeare provides an example of Lysias’s warning about lovers whose passions cool early in the play. When Demetrius and Helena are in the forest in pursuit of

Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius tells Helena “[t]empt not too much the hatred of my

29 spirit ; / For I am sick when I do look on thee” (II.i.211-212). This is what Lysias warns his audience about in terms of favoring the lover who dotes too much:

Lovers repent the kindness they have shown when their passions abate…

lovers bring into account not only the kindnesses they have shown but also

the losses they have incurred in their own affairs of their passions, and

when they add to this the trouble they have undergone they consider that

the debt they owe to their favourites have been discharged long ago. (7)

In Demetrius’s own words, he has come to a point in which the sight of his previous lover, whose identity many in his city know, sickens him and he has come to hate being in close proximity. In Shakespeare’s play too, Demetrius turns on his beloved once his passion has abated. Once Demetrius’s infatuation with Helena has passed, he “repents the kindness” which he had shown her, telling her “Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit” (II.i.211) or he will “leave [her] to the mercy of wild beasts” (II.i.229). As Lysias says, lovers like Demetrius are the kind who, when they have moved on to another person, become “ready to inflict an injury on the old love if the new love requires it” (7).

As evident through his speech and action, Demetrius does not hold his tongue when it comes to Helena. In this state of mind, he believes that he needs to “injure” his old love in order to acquire his new love. Based on this, it is not implausible to say that Demetrius is likely to repeat this same behavior, as Lysias claims, with Hermia.

However, for Helena, being on the receiving end of such behavior is not a deterrent. Even after hearing such abrasive language aimed toward her, Helena retorts by telling him, “And I am sick when I look not on you” (II.i.213). For Helena, being around

Demetrius is, as Socrates describes it, like “when the charioteer sees the vision of the

30 loved one, so that a sensation of warmth spreads from him over the whole soul and he beings to feel an itching and the stings” yearning for the lover (41). In this particular scene, it can be argued that Helena knows that Demetrius is the one who belongs with her and so she does not give up on him, regardless of what he says. She is, at times, foolishly devoted, and throughout the play she tries to make him see that she is the one who loves him the most. Helena betrays Hermia in hopes that once Demetrius understands how dedicated Hermia and Lysander are to each other, he will realize his efforts are fruitless.

She, as Socrates suggests, is attempting to compel Demetrius towards “excellence,” because that is what a noble lover does for the beloved.

One can of course question the quality and type of Helena’s love. While they are in the forest trying to prevent Hermia and Lysander from eloping, Demetrius tells Helena

“Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? / Or rather do I not in plainest truth / Tell you I do not nor cannot love you?” (II.i.119-121). Yet, she continues to follow him wherever he goes, even when he tries to abandon her in the middle of the woods at night. She persists even after he tells her in the unkindest way to die in the forest because he will not protect her. Sadly, she sees them as a reversed version of Apollo and Daphne. One can easily argue that she longs for him because Demetrius has made her fall in love with him and that because he has proposed to her, she does not want to lose him. One can also claim that she behaves in a similar fashion to Demetrius in his zealous love for Hermia. She is, in a sense, behaving illogically. As Lysias would say, she is “prepared to say and do what will incur the hostility of others in order to please [her] beloved,” as Helena betrays her childhood friend in order to be considered useful by Demetrius (7). Helena herself

31 confesses that she is aware that her actions are loathsome but she will commit the act regardless for the chance that it might make Demetrius treat her favorably:

I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight :

…and if for this intelligence

If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.

But herein mean I to enrich my pain

To have his sight thither and back again. (I.i.246-249)

Harold Brooks notes that “If she gets so much as a ‘thank you’ from Demetrius he will grudge it as a rare and painful effort…. Wryly ironic about his likely reception of her, she also…reflects, with a touch of self-pity, on how much she will do for so little. To her, his thanks will be precious, though dear-bought at a price rarely paid for mere thanks” (19, n.

249). Through her actions of betrayal and unwavering devotion to Demetrius, Helena too exhibits behaviors of the type of lover mentioned in Lysias’s speech.

When Demetrius tells Helena that he finds her unappealing, she tells him, “I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell / To die upon the hand I love so well” (II.i.143-

144). In all her proclamations of love, whether before, during, or after Demetrius forsakes her, there is no mention of her need for physical contact. As Socrates tells

Phaedrus in his first speech, the lover “never leaves [the beloved’s] side day or night if

[one] can help it; [the lover] is driven by an irresistible itch to the pleasures which are constantly to be found in seeing, hearing and touching… the beloved, in fact, in every sensation which makes [the lover] conscious of” the beloved’s presence (20). So, although it may seem foolish for Helena to pursue Demetrius to the extent she does, for

Shakespeare, her persistence not only makes sense but is in line with what is found in the

32 Phaedrus. Even though the situation she is in is hellish, she is prepared to “make a heaven of hell.”

Helena’s soliloquy explains that she does not love him solely for his outer beauty but that she is able to look beyond the flaws in his character. She is able to continue to love him because her love “looks not with the eyes, but with the mind” (I.i.236). Brooks explains that when Helena refers her not seeing through her eyes, she is claiming that

“eyes which but not for love would report the object as it really is” (xciii). When Helena watches Lysander and Hermia leave after promising to risk everything to elope and be with each other, Helena, envious of Hermia’s luck at finding her partner and resentful of

Hermia’s unintentional hold over Demetrius, thinks the following to herself:

And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,

So I, admiring of his qualities.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. (I.i.230-236)

In the Phaedrus, Socrates explains that the eyes are “the natural channel of communication with the soul” and for Helena, Demetrius is the one who seems to have gained the recognition of both her horses (43). As a result, she “sees” what her soul wants her to see, that her lover in his own way is good. David Schalkwyk in

Shakespeare, Love and Service, explains this kind of perspective as such: “love’s eyes do not reflect the world. Its psychology of the imagination transforms the world into an image of its own projection and evaluation” (68). Although Helena does not approve of

33 what Demetrius is doing under the influence of the ignoble horse, she enables his rash behavior by disclosing the whereabouts and plans that Hermia and Lysander make to escape. Instead of allowing her friends to run away and elope so she can have a better chance with him, she betrays her friends in the hopes of winning his favor; this in turn continues to enable Demetrius’ illogical pursuit of Hermia. Here, we can also see the influence from Lysias’ speech. Lysias claims, “Lovers approve words and actions that are far from excellent, partly because they are afraid of getting themselves disliked and partly because their passions impair their judgement” (9). Although it seems illogical of her to think this way, it is as she herself states, “And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,

/ So I, admiring of his qualities. / Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity” (I.i.230-233). She understands that Demetrius’s current behavior can be viewed as undesirable to everyone else who is a witness. However, since she believes in the transformative power of love, she believes the current Demetrius is not his best or true self, because in her mind she sees the potential in him. As Lysias continues on to say, “One of love’s feats is this:…it compels… [the lovers] to bestow praise on things which do not deserve even the name of pleasant” (9). Socrates also mentions the lover viewing his beloved as something worthier than he is. He tells

Phaedrus that the lover in this illogical state of mind treats “his beloved as if he were himself a god, he fashions and adorns an image, metaphorically speaking, and makes it the object of his honor and worship” (39). This occurs in Shakespeare’s play in Helena’s interaction with Demetrius. By seeing things which are “base and vile” and transposing them to “form and dignity,” Helena exhibits the qualities that Lysias describes. At the

34 same time, she behaves as one who has given control to the more noble horse, as Socrates has described.

Because Helena’s love is not stimulated by desire, she is able to see in Demetrius the better qualities he could potentially possesses because she wishes to make him a better person and help him see the error of his ways. Her love is neither fickle nor ever- changing, like Demetrius’s love for her. She does not weep or cry or direct her love for another when Demetrius abuses her with harsh words and pursues Hermia. Instead, she tells him “my heart is true as steel” (II.i.197) and is willing to endure the abuse because, as Socrates explains it, when she is with Demetrius she finds “relief from the stinging” and “once again for a time enjoys the sweetest of pleasures” (44). She is willing to put up with abuse and mistreatment if it only means that she can gaze upon him and be near him, hoping to have him come back to her. According to Socrates, if lovers allow the noble horse to lead the chariot, then they will “pass their time in happiness and harmony.” This is made possible because it would mean the lovers have been successful in “subduing the parts of the soul that contained the seed of vice and setting free that in which virtue had its birth they will become masters of themselves and their souls will be at peace” (44). This is the state of mind and soul to which Helena is attempting to guide

Demetrius.

Love Juice as Symbol of Desire and Excess

Socrates’ first speech in the Phaedrus defines love based on the speech Lysias gives: “Love is a kind of desire—everyone will admit that” (16) and continues his definition by informing his companion that love has two ruling forces—one is the innate desire for pleasure, and the other is the acquired dedication to excellence. He also

35 informs Phaedrus that “whichever of these [excesses] is most in evidence confers upon its own peculiar name;” in these cases, the name excess or madness ensues from love (16).

Socrates claims that this Love, or eros, is a madness that causes humans to have an inborn desire for that which is beautiful. This overwhelming desire, which gives in to the

“tugs” of the junior horse, can result in the destruction of morality and reason, which can then eventually lead to the destruction of the soul (or the ability to see the Forms). The destruction, as we will see later, takes place if the love-madness is guided by the ignoble horse. Socrates does not claim that love-madness is evil; in the right circumstances, it is actually a gift from the heavens. As he tells Phaedrus, “there is nothing in it to frighten us,” even though at times love can be overtaken by the junior horse. He continues to say that when a person is experiencing the right kind of love-madness, it “is the greatest benefit that heaven can confer on us” (28). This love-madness, when controlled by the senior and mature horse, leads to the revelation of the higher realms as well as the Forms.

However, if the love-madness is powered by the junior horse or if the person is overly excessive in their desire for the physical beauty and mistakes that as love, it then becomes destructive and impure. Socrates claims that this particular kind of madness and desire leads to the soul, or the charioteer, being unable to raise their “gaze” any higher than earth. He says this later in his conversation: “We said that love was a kind of madness, didn’t we?” which Phaedrus acknowledges. Socrates then continues on to say, “there are two types of madness, one arising from human disease, and the other when heaven sets us free from established conventions” (59). When Socrates mentions the madness stemming from “human disease,” he is alluding to what happens when humans give into the more basic variation of love, which makes the lover lustful and greedy.

36 As mentioned earlier, one method Shakespeare uses to demonstrate the undesirable results of desire is through the use of love juice. By using love-juice as a symbol of unchecked desire, or the wrong kind of madness to give in to, Shakespeare is shows the chaos that ensues if one follows the encouragement of the junior horse. One of the earliest examples of this is the behavior of the faerie queen Titania under the influence of the love juice. Shakespeare illustrates the danger of irrational and base love.

Love-juice illustrates what happens when one loves only with the eye, or what Socrates calls the physical aspect of the lover:

When the irrational desire… is directed at the pleasure derived from

beauty, and in the case of physical beauty powerfully reinforced by the

appetites which are akin to it… it emerges victorious, it takes its name

from the very power with which it is endowed and is called eros or

passionate love. (17)

In Dream, Shakespeare utilizes love-juice in two ways: to demonstrate what happens when desire is in excess and to restore balance once the juice is applied to the correct couple. When the love-juice is first introduced, Shakespeare informs his audience that the juice comes from a flower which was directly altered by Cupid, the god of love: “the bolt of Cupid…/ fell upon a western flower / Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound” (II.i.165-167). Oberon explains to Puck, “The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, / Will make or man or woman madly dote / Upon the next live creature that it sees”

(II.i.170-172). This is very much like the junior horse, who without rhyme or reason makes a mad dash when he encounters someone beautiful, even if it means his struggle against the whip and pull of the rein causes the charioteer and the senior horse to suffer

37 with him. Here we also see Shakespeare invoke a similar state of “madness” as Socrates and Lysias in Phaedrus. The effects of the love-juice are similar to what the charioteer and his horses experience when they first see their lover: “when the charioteer sees the visions of the loved one, so that a sensation of warmth spreads from him over the whole soul and he begins to feel an itching and the stings of desire” (41). This “itch” and

“sting” is what Titania feels when she wakes up. This “itch” and “sting” is forced upon her because the love juice damages her reserve, and so, debilitates her noble horse.

Titania, whom Oberon wants to make “full of hateful fantasies” since she will love without reason is the first casualty. After the juice has been applied to her eyes, she sees and immediately falls in love with Bottom. Upon first seeing him, she professes,

“Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note; / So is mine eye enthralled so thy shape”

(III.i.132-134). Even though at this moment Bottom has a head of an ass and sounds like one as well, to her his tone is pleasing, as is his physique. Even though she is a faerie queen, she does not find it strange that she falls in love with a grotesque creature that is half ass, half man. The madness that she is experiencing has no logical reason. Even

Bottom, who is quite simple, is able to understand that what she confesses is illogical.

He tells her, “Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that” (III.i.137).

Titania responds that “mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note ; / So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape ; / And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me / On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee” (III.i.133-136). For Socrates, the eye is “the natural channel of communication with the soul.” In this case, under the influence of the love juice magic, the eyes become distorted. As a result, Titania becomes enchanted by a grotesque creature that should not even exist in nature. It is as Bottom suggests: “to say

38 the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays” (III.i.138-139).

Another way Shakespeare indicates that the visual channel is corrupted is when Oberon explains he will “take this charm off her sight” which will cause her to pursue her new interest “with the soul of love” (II.i.182-183). The charm he refers to is the spell her eyes will be under, which in turn will also corrupt the message her soul sends. He repeats this once again when he applies the love-juice: “When thou dost wake / …Be it ounce, or cat, or bear … / In thy eye that shall appear / When thou wak’st, it is thy dear” (II.ii.26-32).

The emphasis here is when the “vile thing is near” in her eyes the creature she sees “shall appear” to be her “dear” because she will be loving through the eyes, not her mind or soul.

Just as Demetrius tries to make Hermia his wife by any means necessary, Titania tries to keep Bottom with her in her realm by force. When Bottom says he will seek a way to get out of the woods, she replies: “Out of this wood do not desire to go : / Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. / …I do love thee; therefore go with me”

(III.i.145-150). She, like Demetrius, refuses to listen to logic or reason and continues to force her will upon one whom she claims to love. She too exerts the privilege allowed to her because of her social status and having magical abilities. Clearly, under the spell of the love juice, Titania’s junior horse has taken full control of her desires and, although she is “a spirit of no common rate,” falls from a high position (III.i. 147). When the love juice is applied, it can be assumed that the “whip” the charioteer employs to control the ignoble horse is completely removed, and the ignoble horse is given full authority to do as he pleases. As Socrates explains, and as the characters in Shakespeare’s play demonstrate, this kind of love fueled by overwhelming desire is the kind that “prevails

39 over conviction which aims at right.” This is manifested by Demetrius and Lysander under the spell of the love juice as well. Once the magic juice is applied to the two men, both forget their original goal and pursue someone completely different without questioning their sudden change of heart. This is especially evident in Demetrius and how he treats both Hermia and Helena. His madness or excess clouds his judgement and moves him to switch from woman to woman. It is made even clearer when both

Demetrius and Lysander are under the love juice’s spell.

Socrates argues that “Intimacy with one who is not in love, mingled as it is with worldly calculations and dispensing worldly advantages with grudging hand, will breed in your soul the ignoble qualities which the magnitude extols virtues, and condemn you to wonder… around and beneath the earth devoid of wisdom” (45). First and foremost, the love that Socrates describes is the love that is a blessing from heaven. And as such, he construes that to be intimate with one who is not in love, or in love but in the base form of love, is dooming oneself to never reach the higher realms and rejoin the gods in the procession; the rejoining, which Socrates says should be our ultimate goal. In giving in to the baser needs, we stray further away from wisdom, which is needed to regain our wings to rise up to the heavens. Socrates’s warning is as follows:

If the higher elements in their minds prevail, and guide them into a way of

life which is strictly devoted to the pursuit of wisdom, they will pass their

time on earth in happiness and harmony; by subduing the parts of the soul

that contained the seeds of vice and setting free that in which virtue had its

birth they will masters of themselves and their souls will be at peace.

Finally, when their life is ended, their wings will carry them aloft…. But if

40 they practice less exalted way of life… in the end they emerge from the

body without wings. (44-45)

For Socrates, if one is stuck participating in love in its baser form, then he has given into the ignoble horse and is unable to seek out wisdom that comes from maturing and finding love that transcends the physical nature. In addition to that, by continuing the habit of surrendering to one’s desire, Socrates argues, one will continue to breed “ignoble qualities” and the soul will never acquire the wisdom which will elevate the soul high enough to look upon the true Forms. In Shakespeare’s play, all this occurs in the form of excess that manifests itself in Demetrius’s, Lysander’s, and Titania’s desires. This excess affects all three when they are under the love-juice’s influence (and for Demetrius, even before the love juice). Shakespeare also creates chaos even more so when the love juice is applied, to demonstrate the kind of tragic fate that might await the lovers if the appropriate couples are not paired together.

Even before Demetrius is under the influence of the love-juice, he is in a state of irrationality and excess. When he finally finds Hermia in the woods, he asks her, “O, why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe,” because she continues to ignore his proclamations of love for her (II.ii. 43-44). When she insists

Demetrius not interrupt her search for Lysander and accuses him of being a murderer, he proclaims “So should the murdered look, and so should I, / Pierced through the heart with your stern cruelty” (III.ii.59-60). When Demetrius behaves in this manner, he seems to have forgotten how uncivil he has been to Helena just moments before. Under the love- juice’s influence, he becomes even more lost within the madness that comes from loving only with the “eyes.” As soon as he is awakened from sleep and sees Helena, he falls out

41 of love with Hermia and falls back in love with Helena. However, the very same physical features he previously did not feel an attraction to sudden becomes desirable; this is because the love-juice makes one hyperaware of physical attributes. The first thing he says to Helena is a compliment, “Shall I compare thine eyne? / Crystal is muddy.

O, how ripe in show / Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! / …O, let me kiss /

This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!” (III.ii.141-147) How Demetrius reacts resembles the description Socrates provides for what the junior horse experiences when it first encounters someone who ignites its passion. In this state, even his admiration is comical and exaggerated. Instead of employing the fineness of poetry that is typically used to woo a woman, Demetrius bursts out descriptors that claim snow from mountain tops appear black compared to how fair she is; and instead of using romance-inducing vocabulary like “rose” or “spring” to describe her, he compares her red lips to two cherries growing together, her eyes which makes crystals seem muddy, and invokes winter and cold. This comical outburst from Demetrius is the last straw that makes him unbearable to her. His immediate reaction to Helena is to have her physically, wanting to kiss her to find his bliss. This is much like what Socrates says in Phaedrus—the junior horse “rushes forward prancing, and to the discomfort of his yolk-fellow and the charioteer, drives them to approach… [the lover] and make mention of sweetness of physical love” (43, my emphasis).

Lysander, who at the beginning of the play appears to be rational and consistent, also becomes crazed and pursues someone based on her physical attributes. While he is under the influence of the love juice, Lysander declares that his ability to reason was flawed when he loved Hermia. After he has been “translated” by the love-juice, as soon

42 as he wakes up he proclaims, “…run through fire I will for thy sweet sake. / Transparent

Helena! Nature shows art, / That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart” (II.i. 109-

111). His comments, much like Demetrius’s, are about what he sees and are based on superficial characteristics. And just as Demetrius had done, his proclamations of love and his descriptions of Helena stray from what is typically considered romantic and become almost comical. As Brooks notes, “Ordinarily Nature produces opaque bodies; she [Helena] exhibits art like a magician’s… in creating Helena’s so exquisitely textured as to be transparent, enabling Lysander through her bosom, to see her heart” (48, n. 103).

Later he tells Helena that she “more engilds the night / than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light” (III.ii. 187-188). In this instance, as Brooks expounds, Lysander’s fervent mind fails to woo in the appropriate manner. Lysander, instead of praising her heart as pure, says instead that her body is so transparent he is able to see her heart. Additionally,

Helena’s eyes are likened to stars, which should twinkle at best, but are given the power to light up the night instead of the brighter object in the sky, the moon. Hearing this, a very confused Helena tries to reason with Lysander, remarking that just moments ago he professed to love Hermia, so his current confession does not make sense. Not only that, but they are in the middle of the forest in the middle of the night because his love for

Hermia has encouraged the couple to attempt to elope, even if it means severe punishment for them. To this he retorts,

Who will not change a raven for a dove?

The will of man is by his reason sway’d,

And reason says you are the worthier maid.

Things growing are not ripe until their season :

43 So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason ;

And, touching now the point of human skill,

Reason becomes marshal to my will. (II.ii. 113-119)

In his response to Helena, Lysander focuses on the concept of reason and “will of man.”

He claims his reasoning has been faulty until that very moment he woke up from his slumber, when in reality, it is the love juice that hampers his ability to assess the situation appropriately and act accordingly. Yet, as Socrates argues, when things are done in excess, reason is no longer reliable. Here, Lysander is experiencing an excess of love which clouds his judgment. And, although Lysander is claiming to be exercising his will and reasoning ability, he does not offer any reason for why his beloved Hermia has become a raven and Helena a dove or offer any plausible explanation for his change in behavior. He simply informs Helena he is now wiser and therefore thinks she is a better choice.

It is no surprise that given these reasons, and his sudden confession of love, not only is Helena confused but also upset to a point she demands, “Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?” (II.ii. 122-123).

Lysander in this scene, like Demetrius in the opening of the play, offers no reason for his change of heart or why he is so insistent on marrying Hermia. In the three instances of the key characters under the influence of the love juice, Shakespeare is able to reveal, as

Socrates does, that when the junior horse is in control, it sabotages each character’s sanity and leads them to become the wrong type of “mad.” Excess creates a false and heightened sense of urgency to be near, to be physical with, and to acquire the object of one’s desire, which causes the lover to act rashly and foolishly. “Dotage may not only

44 persist where it can expect no return,” Brooks claims, “but…may light on an object totally unsuitable in itself” (cxxiv). He continues on to say that, “not only is it subject to fascination through the eyes: that is, with appearance; its response to appearance is incalculable” (cxxiv). However, as Brooks has pointed out, “Lysander’s lapse is not… representative of latent inconsistency in his character: we make full allowance for his being under the compulsion. The magic corresponds in human terms to something that is beyond the personal” (cxi). By using Lysander, Shakespeare is able to show the appalling impact of blindly following one’s baser needs and relinquishing control over to the ignoble horse. Lysander’s dramatic change in behavior towards Hermia and Helena highlights this. Brooks concludes by stating, “The magic power of the love-juice mirrors the compulsive nature, in real life, of such seizures of the imagination. The attempts of the victims to rationalize them renders their irrationality even more obvious” (cxxiv).

Overcoming the Love Juice: The Results

Once Shakespeare’s characters are able to progress beyond the lust of the outer appearance, they are able to come to their senses and regain their proper ability to reason.

This happens when the love juice, which is a symbol of infatuation and excess as defined by Plato, is removed from their eyes. However, when the love-juice is administered appropriately by the right magical being and with the right incantation, it can also become an antidote to this state of excess. John Vyvyan explains the impetuosity of the ill-made horse by claiming that the madness is a reaction to the soul remembering, or attempting to remember, the Forms: "[madness] leads to the recollection of its true nature, and that is to say that it leads to heaven, for the soul is instinctively divine but by falling into embodiment on Earth" has lost its memory and position of its heavenly origin

45 (22). Once the soul is on earth, however, the only way to recall the Forms is by pursuing the love of beautiful things in a calm, matured, and controlled manner. Vyvyan explains that "The most vivid and easy to recall of the divine realities is beauty; and beauty, therefore, plays a special part in the re-awakening of the soul to the heavenly things"

(23). The constant struggle of “recollecting” what the soul once got a glimpse of is something that Shakespeare utilizes when creating the different motivations behind his characters’ actions. The characters that are on the lower realms are affected by the love juice because a prominent figure in the ‘higher realm’ is affected as well.

Platonic philosophy emphasizes the importance of regaining one’s metaphorical wings. As Plato contends, "the reason for [the horses'] extreme eagerness to behold the plane of truth is that the meadow there produces fit pasturages for the best part of the soul, and that the wings by which the soul is born aloft are nourished by it" (32). Just as a starved person seeks out food to nourish his body and alleviate hunger pains, the soul too tries to be near such a “meadow” that contains things that “fit the pasturages for the best part of the soul.” Having seen some form of the truth, once man is born on Earth, although his soul is harbored in the material matter of the lower realm, when he sees something that resembles the Form it witnessed before his soul was dragged down from the higher realm, the soul rejoices and seeks to be as near it as possible. Socrates, while speaking in the Phaedrus, makes sure to point this out to his companion. Throughout the discussion, Socrates explains that the one who is able to tame his desires and to work towards honor and pleasing the gods is the only one who is able to regain his wings and recall his memories of the higher realm of true beauty and love. Since earthly matter is far below the heavens, giving in to earthly desires, particularly carnal desires, will only

46 keep one’s memory and mind grounded on earth. Once an individual is able to see things like beauty for more than its physical appearance, the individual’s focus can be move upward. When the individual achieves that level of spirituality, only then can he or she can start to “re-awaken” the soul to recall things it saw before it fell.

Socrates says that “every man during his first incarnation on earth, as long as he remains uncorrupted, spends his time in worshipping and doing his best to imitate the particular devotee he was, and conducts himself accordingly" (39). Vyvyan explains this reaction as the soul's attempt to recreate the vision it saw when it was able to get the brief glimpse of heaven: "the soul is born to do definite work—to reshape the world into the likeness of heaven, that it already possesses the heavenly pattern in its own self-nature, that this—the celestial ray [the existence of the prime origin]—is concealed by the physical form, that that it will only be rediscovered by the sight of true love” (45). By this, Vyvyan is referring to the version of truth that the soul connected to most (i.e. beauty, love, philosophy, poetry, rhetoric). Plato believes when a lover makes visual contact with his beloved's beauty, or anything that can be considered beautiful, the lover is able to get a glimpse or a reminder of beauty in its ideal form in the heavens. The emphasis here is the unrelenting desire of the pursuit of what is beautiful because from that comes the pursuit of knowledge. This pursuit, as Socrates explained to Phaedrus, is what will allow the soul to remember the Forms.

To explain what happens when a couple is wrongly paired, I examined

Demetrius’s attempt at being paired with Hermia and as well as his attempts to regain

Helena’s love under the influence of excess; I also examined Lysander and Titania under the influence of the love-juice and explored what happens in the play when a lover chases

47 after one with whom he is not meant to be in love. As suggested earlier, in both the

Symposium and Phaedrus, Socrates warns his audience of what happens when one allows oneself to be dominated by his or her passion or lust for something or someone. Socrates speaks at length about the dangers that follow with wrongful coupling and allowing the junior horses to take control of the direction in which the chariot will go. This parallel of passion overruling reason leading to trouble, resulting in a lover who is not suitable for love the way it Plato believes it should be, is demonstrated by Shakespeare when

Demetrius and Titania come under the influence of love-juice. For both Demetrius

(before and after the initial application of the love juice) and Titania (under the love juice’s influence), once eros takes control, they lack self-restraint and modesty. Once

Titania is given the love-in-idleness, she engages in debased love. A faerie queen becomes someone to pity and ridicule because under the flower's spell, her uncontrolled desires lead her to become infatuated with a lowly human being. Not only is the one whom she loves under the love juice’s influence a mere human, a member of the artisan class of that time, but this human also has the head of a hideous beast. The audience is made aware that whomever Titania will love under the love juice’s influence will be one, as Oberon describes, who makes her “full of hateful fantasies” only that she will not be aware of it (II.i. 259). Oberon has made it so that Titania will awake from her slumber

“when some vile thing is near,” because he wants her to “love and languish” for one who he knows is beneath her status and would be considered most insulting for a queen. He, who has hinted that he has enough knowledge on how the love-in-idleness works, ensures that the love-juice is potent enough so that she “must dote in extremity” (III.ii. 3). When

Titania is awake and under the spell, she suddenly commands her attendees, who are also

48 creatures of magic and nature, to serve Bottom, who is far below her in the play’s hierarchy. When Puck, as instructed, carries out his mission and reports his observations of the queen to Oberon saying, “My mistress with a monster is in love,” Oberon cheerfully receives the news (III.ii. 6). Even Puck, a royal servant, is delighted that the one who will be the victim of Titania’s affections is someone so lowly. When Puck describes Titania’s lover to be from a group of “rude mechanicals” (III.ii. 9) and as “the shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort” (III.i. 13) Oberon gleefully responds, “This falls out better than I could devise” (III.ii. 35). Even Titania’s handmaidens Peablossom,

Mote, Cobweb, and Mustardseed, faeries who are capable of magic, are much more valuable than Bottom. Therefore, Bottom being so far removed from the faerie’s status and still being the queen’s object of desire, becomes doubly crude and comical. But even so, she commands them to do his bidding and be with him at all times to ensure he has everything he might need. Bottom in this situation is so out of his element that even when he becomes a royal paramour, he does not know how to conduct himself. This scene becomes even more comical when Bottom, unaware of his transformation to an ass, finds nothing amiss when Titania insists on taking him on as a lover.

In contrast to the three who fall victim to their desires, by force or otherwise, the characters Hermia and Helena are more similar to the senior horse because both women practice modesty and restraint. It can be argued that Helena is a better match for

Demetrius than Hermia because she is the one who can make him a better person.

According to Douglas Harper her name means, “light,” and it could very well be that she is the “light” that he will lead him out of the darkness induced by excess and desire to accept the higher forms of love and wisdom (Harper). Socrates in the Phaedrus states

49 that a true lover “seek[s] for one of philosophical and lordly nature.” Socrates describes

Zeus as the “mighty leader” of the heavens because he “orders and watches over all things (30); Socrates believes only the souls of those who follow Zeus are blessed with visions of “beauty,” “brightness,” and “self-discipline,” which give them the ability to

“recognize in the counterfeits the family likeness of the originals” (35). As such, Zeus embodies many of Plato’s Forms and noble objects of love. Accordingly, “those who were followers of Zeus desire a Zeus-like disposition in the person they are to love… when they find it they fall in love and do everything in their power to encourage its natural tendency” (39). Helena and Hermia both have proven they maintain self- discipline when faced with a situation in which their desires are tested. Helena, in particular, stays true to Demetrius up until the very end when she is physically exhausted from the night’s events and emotionally drained from verbal abuse as well as (in her view) being the a target of a cruel prank. Throughout many trying situations she consistently seems to see the better side of Demetrius. Earlier in the play she acknowledges that her perception of him “transposes” things that are unworthy of praise.

As we will see, it is her love for Demetrius that inspires Oberon to transform him to the kind of lover Demetrius is meant to be.

50 III. Varieties of Love

Unlike Plato, who looks at love as an emotion or energy but not a Form,

Shakespeare seems to suggest that love exists in the higher realm as a Form on its own.

Where Plato concludes his discussion through the explanation that the Forms exist in the higher realm, inaccessible to humans, Shakespeare continues the dialogue. He shows that love does not simply exist in the binaries, pure love powered by the senior horse and the burning love powered by the junior horse. Love itself has a supernatural form that humans can attempt to model after in the lower realms. Where Plato suggests that the best kind of love leads to discovery of the Forms, I argue that Shakespeare uses Titania and Oberon to present love itself as a Form. In addition to that, Oberon acts as a guide for the lovers. By having the faeries in Dream, Shakespeare is able to establish how the higher realm is reflective of what we experience in the lower realm. He demonstrates what the types of love should be like and what may be the consequences when mankind on the lower realm does not abide by this balance and harmony found in the higher realms. With both the faerie royals and Egeus, Shakespeare introduces the concept of a guide in love when seeking out lovers to bond with as well as what balanced loved should be like. Shakespeare also echoes many parts of the Symposium to give a contrast between the different types of love that are found in the play, from familial love to romantic love, and to show how it is reflected in the lower realm.

Another liberty that Shakespeare takes is how he treats the realm of faeries and the humans. In Symposium and Phaedrus, the gods are removed from the earthly realm.

51 In the play, however, we see that there is discord within the higher realm and there is a conflict between the king and queen. This of course does not align with Plato’s vision of the heavens, which is immaculate. We can then conclude that neither the faerie king and queen nor the faerie realm can serve as a model for mere mortals. However, what I claim is that for Shakespeare the faerie realm is a mere imitation of what things are meant to be like. It is a reflection of earthly concepts of the Forms, staying true to Plato’s claims, while at the same time the faerie realm serves as a mechanism for the play to take on other concepts found within Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus. If we are to believe that

Oberon in a sense is the bearer of love or the one who is the most god-like, then

Shakespeare has created Oberon and his companions as “spirits” in the same way

Diotima describes them in Symposium. She claims Love is not a god like the rest of the gods but rather a spirit. These spirits function as “intermediate” between gods and mortals and as a result, “they fill the gap between them, and enable the universe to form an interconnected whole” (39). For Shakespeare, the faeries are the imitations of the higher realm and the spirits that act as intermediary between mortal and god.

The Stages of Love

In the Symposium, the men decide to omit drinking (to avoid hangovers and to avoid the alcohol impeding their reasoning) and instead examine the subject of love in a sequence of speeches. Each man takes turns delivering an encomium about love. The company consists of various men, including Eryximachus and Aristophanes, whose encomia are influenced by their profession or personal experiences. When it is finally his turn, instead of an encomium, Socrates examines Agathon’s speech. Soon enough,

Agathon retracts the arguments he has made because Socrates has dismantled major

52 aspects of Agathon’s speech. Agathon’s argument is shown to be untrue using the very same reasons he provided earlier but this time in relation to Socrates’s questions.

Socrates then goes on to tell his audience where he acquired his knowledge on love. He informs them that what he is about to share with them he “once heard from a woman from Mantinea called Diotima” (37). Socrates proceeds to explain that according to

Diotima, Love is “a great spirit… Everything classed as spirit falls between god and human” (38), because “by nature he is neither immortal nor mortal” (40). Love has the power of “[i]nterpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above”

(39). Diotima then goes into great detail about the different stages through which a lover is able to reach the Form of beauty:

When someone goes up by these stages… and begins to catch sight of that

beauty, he has come close to reaching the goal. That is the right method

of approaching the ways of love or being led by someone else: beginning

from these beautiful things always go up with the aim of reaching that

beauty. Like someone using a staircase, he should go from one to two and

two to all beautiful bodies, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful practices

to beautiful forms of learning. From forms of learning, he should end up

at that form of learning which is nothing other than that beauty itself so

that he can complete the process of learning what beauty really is. (49)

As a reflection of this concept, Shakespeare’s king and queen of the fairies go through the same phases that Diotima describes. They do go through the necessary steps to become ideal lovers. The humans in the lower realm also undergo the same

53 progression to enlightenment. Although this may seem problematic at first, especially since Plato claims the gods and their version of things are the purest and most perfect versions, for Shakespeare this conflict amongst the gods is necessary. The corruption of the Form of love through the conflict between Titania and Oberon shows the difference between what love can become if we allow the desires of the lower realms to corrupt or influence the love that we should experience.

Although Diotima accepts physical beauty as one of the stages of finding Love, she does not accept it as the exemplar for the heavenly sort of love. To her, the love of the physical is one of the first of stepping stones to the higher love—the love of the mind.

She believes that “wisdom and other kinds of virtues” are what is most suitable for one who loves in the way that honors the lover himself and Love the spirit/semi-god (46).

Diotima tells Socrates that those who are mature of mind and soul are able to seek out a worthy companion and their wisdom leads them to “educate” the beloved; this results in enlightenment for their lover. It is the love of the mind, according to her, that gives mankind the means to achieve the only kind of immortality humans can have—by leaving behind “children.” Those who love the physical only produce offspring, which may or may not bring immortality. However, for those who love the mind, the “children” they produce take the form of works of art, literature, cities, and innovations; these

“children” are things that “provide them with immortal fame and remembrance” (47).

Such fame and remembrance have “never happened as a result of human child” because the majority live quite an ordinary life and therefore leave nothing behind as a legacy.

And it is because this legacy can only be achieved through the love of wisdom that it is

54 essential for the lovers to go through the stages to become a more mature and perfect lover so they not only help themselves but their beloved as well.

The Guides: Egeus and Oberon

The explanation behind what motivates Egeus in the scenes in which he is attempting to force his daughter to marry someone she does not love can be explained by the concept of a guide constructed by Diotima. One of the questions of interpretations that many scholars pose about Diotima’s speech in the Symposium is, as Christopher Gill points out, how to interpret the role of the guide in all that Socrates mentions in this particular work. Gill explains that the guide would typically have passed through all the stages Diotima describes. Yet, perhaps like Socrates and Diotima herself, the guides themselves are not involved in any sexual relationship with the one they are providing wisdom to or with any other, and only desire to pass on their wisdom and the knowledge of the “truth” they have discovered (xxxiv). According to Diotima, the guides play a crucial role for lovers. In this sense, we can consider Hermia’s father to be a guide in the play. As a result of his age and the experiences that come with being married and being a father, Egeus has already gone through the stages and has ascended to the “conclusion.”

Diotima passes her knowledge of what to expect and what to aim for, Egeus attempts to do the same for his daughter Hermia. As David Cressy writes in Birth, Marriage, and

Death. Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, during this time,

It was a father's duty to assist his children to the most suitable and

advantageous marriage…. The courtship narratives show parents acting as

facilitators and prompters, helping to make or improve a match and

55 sometimes to bring it to a halt. Their main role was at the beginning of the

process, to screen suitable suitors.” (256-257)

Staying true to his fatherly duties, Egeus attempts to guide his daughter away from what he believes is an infatuation between Hermia and Lysander. And in quest to protect his daughter, and through the process of screening for suitors, Egeus finds Lysander an unsuitable match. It can be argued that at the beginning of the play, through Egeus’s perspective, Hermia is going through the stage in which she the lover, as Gill writes, “is led first to respond to physical beauty” (xxxii). Egeus seems to believe that Lysander, having understood this about Hermia, is attempting to take advantage of her and use her vulnerability to his attain his goal through trickery. When Theseus asks what has caused

Egeus and his company to come to him, Egeus informs the Duke that he has come with a complaint. Egeus claims that Lysander “bewitch’d the bosom of my child” (I.i. 26) and

“With cunning [he] hast… filch’d my daughter’s heart” (I.i. 36). Egeus believes

Lysander has been able to achieve this by giving Hermia “rhymes / and interchag’d love- tokens,” (I.i. 28), by singing “with faining voice verses of feigning love” (I.i. 31), and as a result of such trickery “stol’n the impression of her fantasy” (I.i. 32). Egeus is dismissive of Lysander’s methods even though conventionally, “courtship required the giving and acceptance of presents and tokens. Coins, rings, ribbons, gloves, girdles, and similar knick-knacks did the trick” (Cressy 263). The rationale behind this could be that

“courtship gifts… [were] frequently mentioned in the course of disputes over frustrated, questionable, or clandestine marriage,” and Egeus finds Lysander’s methods suspect

(Cressy 263).

56 Of the lover, Diotima claims, “[a]t first, if his guide leads him correctly, he should love just one body and in that relationship produce beautiful discourse” (48). In the opening act, Egeus seems to consider that Lysander has steered Hermia to a path of falsehood and disobedience; he laments to Theseus that Hermia’s affections for Lysander

“turn’d her obedience, (which is due to me) / To stubborn harshness” (I.i. 37-38). This disobedience is evidence of Lysander’s foul play. Even though his daughter is clearly upset over his insistence that she marry Demetrius, whom she does not love, Egeus nonetheless believes he is guiding his daughter to a union that would be most beneficial.

Cressy explains that this sort of argument between parent and child is not uncommon during the Renaissance. He states that “The tension between patriarchal authority and individual choice produced many domestic dramas,” which we see happening in the opening scene (235). In fact, Cressy tells of a couple in 1634 who agreed to be married but could not due to family conflict: “The parties were agreeable to each other, but could not proceed towards marriage without parental approval” (241). Parental approval was important, particularly for those of higher social status.

In the scene in which Egeus is putting forth a formal complaint against Lysander and his daughter, and until the end of the conflict, Egeus is attempting to protect his daughter from what he believes is an error in her judgment; this role is suitable for him since the name “Egeus” (another spelling for “Aegeus”) means “protector or shield,” which is what he believes is his role with his daughter (“Name Egeus”). In a sense,

Egeus is attempting to pair his daughter with one who does not seem to show signs of infatuation, which Egeus believes will result in temporary love. Of course Demetrius’s actions, as described in previous sections, prove otherwise. As a consequence, Egeus,

57 who is an imperfect guide, lacking the omnipotence Oberon has, is too confident in his position of authority. As with all those who are in power, Egeus believes he knows what is best for his own daughter. However, since he is human, he is bound to make errors in judgment, unlike a godlike figure. In either case, because Egeus believes so strongly in

Demetrius’s character, Egeus is attempting to push his daughter into the second stage, in which she will realize, as Diotima explains, “it’s foolish not to regard the beauty of all bodies as one and the same,” so that once she acknowledges this, she can settle and compose herself and cool her “intense passion for just one body” (48). Egeus’s hope is that she will focus her love and attention on someone Egeus believes to be more suitable.

It appears that to him that since Hermia seems to be infatuated with Lysander’s courtship, she should be able to have the same feelings for Demetrius, since both men are equal. As

Gill says, “[t]he mysteries suggest that philosophically based knowledge of the Forms provides the best possible route to human happiness and thus the highest form of ‘love’…

One way [to reach the goal] … is that an educational-erotic partnership is deepened and transformed through mediation of a philosophically experienced guide” (xxxv). Egeus believes that Demetrius is the one who can provide experienced guidance to Hermia.

This is as Diotima has instructed: “the guide must lead [the lover] towards forms of knowledge” (48). Ultimately, Egeus wants to assist his daughter in loving with her mind or soul rather than her eyes. This is reminiscent of Phaedrus, in which the main goal for each person is to love beyond the flesh and to help each other rise to the heavens after death by leading a virtuous life. In Diotima’s terms, arriving at the last stage is imperative “to reach the final vision of the mysteries” of things beyond earthly matters, because otherwise the lovers will not be their best version of themselves (47). In this

58 instance, however, Egeus breaks conventions of marriage in the Elizabethan era. Cressy writes that “many young people took note of their elders' opinions. But they were not strictly beholden to their parents for matrimonial consent. No man or woman could lawfully be forced to a wedding, nor could they be prevented from marrying” (256).

Being human as he is, Egeus not only errs, as Socrates says mankind often does, but also oversteps in demanding that Hermia marry Demetrius against her will. Although the play itself takes place in Athens, in ancient times, Shakespeare’s audience would have seen

Egeus as overstepping.

Demetrius’s ability to find his way back to Helena, whom he originally loved is made possible by a proper “guide,” the faerie king Oberon. According to Brooks,

“Oberon is the lover’s mentor: his sorting is essential before Theseus can bring their troubles to an end. What he does is benevolent from the first intention, and eventually, in result” (cvi). Even though Oberon is not able to be a guide directly in the beginning, he attempts to lead Demetrius to the right path by using the love juice on him. As Brooks explains, “Oberon, traditional fairy ruler, has been given attributes of the May King, patron of new and renewed fertility…. That power he employs … to further happy and prospectively fruitful marriages of the young lovers” (lxix-lxx). By using the magical properties of the love juice, Oberon is able to steer the lovers back to the original partners. When Demetrius and Helena enter the woods, Oberon states, “I am invisible /

And I will overhear their conference” (II.i. 186-187). Oberon sees how Helena is mistreated even though she professes to love Demetrius and claims, “Fare thee well, nymph. Ere he do leave his grove / Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love” (II.i.

245-246). He wants to reverse the roles so Demetrius can understand what it is like for

59 Helena. This is done so that the proper order of wooing and pursuit can be restored and love that is out of balance can be reestablished. Additionally, since it is a mentor’s responsibility to teach his student the correct method in love, the right treatment of the lover is also restored. He applies the love juice on Titania to “make her full of hateful fantasies” and then instructs Puck to apply some on Demetrius so that he can “see”

Helena is the right person. To Puck Oberon says, “A sweet Athenian lady is in love /

With a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes, / But do it when the next thing he espies / May be the lady.” Oberon is referring to Helena, the only human woman he is aware of in the woods at that moment (II.i. 259 -263). Oberon is indirectly assisting both Helena and

Demetrius using Puck as an intermediary, like the gods and their intermediary that

Socrates mentions in Symposium. Oberon realizes that giving ambiguous instructions is erroneous on his part because it leads to more disharmony. Furthermore, this disharmony develops since he, the proper guide, does not provide guidance to the lovers directly.

Instead, he had instructed Puck to “[e]ffect it with some care, that he may prove / More fond on her than she upon her love” instead of seeing to this task himself (II.ii. 265-266).

Puck mistakenly finds Lysander instead, however, and his incantation for the spell is

“upon thy eyes I throw / All the power this charm doth owe” (II.ii 84-85). Puck applies the love juice incorrectly, and instead of the juice guiding the lover to “love just one body,” the lover ends up loving the wrong body. Puck might be a resident of the higher realm and have magical power, but is not the proper guide for these lovers.

Once Oberon is aware of Puck’s blunder he admonishes Puck, “What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite / And laid the love juice on some true love’s sight. / Of thy misprision must perforce ensue / Some true love turned / and not a false turned true

60 (III.ii 88 – 91, my emphasis). Oberon realizes his mistake has caused a mismatch with the couples in the woods and asks Puck to correct his mistake as soon as possible so that the right pairs are brought together. When Puck leaves to find Helena, Oberon applies the love juice to Demetrius himself so that there is no mistake. As he does so, he says,

“When his love he doth espy, / Let her shine as gloriously / …When thou wak’st, if she by / Beg of her for remedy” (III.ii. 105-109, my emphasis). With this incantation, and by ensuring the couples are stationed where they need to be, Oberon is guaranteeing the couples will be appropriately matched once they awaken. As mentioned earlier, the potion is applied to the eye because, as Socrates explained, the eye is the channel through which the soul speaks. Oberon also casts the spell in such a way that Demetrius falls in love with the one he is meant for. It is as Eryximachus claims in the Symposium, the guide (or the practitioner in his terms) “who is most of all a doctor can distinguish… between right and wrong love” (19). Oberon being the god-like figure and “doctor” is able to quickly diagnose Demetrius’s illness and prescribe the relevant remedy.

As for Lysander, Oberon instructs Puck to “crush this herb into Lysander’s eye, /

Whose liquor hath this virtuous property, / To take from thence all the error with this might, / And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight” (III.366-369, my emphasis). The emphasis here is on “virtuous,” “error,” and “wonted.” With the application of the corrective liquid, Oberon is able to contract the injurious effects of the love juice, which causes Lysander to feel the earthly love-madness and gives Lysander his original sense of reason and self-discipline; this allows Lysander to give back the reins to the metaphorical charioteer to regain control over the ignoble horse. Puck is trusted with putting the love juice to Lysander, who was matched with the correct partner to begin with. To Lysander,

61 Puck says he is to apply a remedy: “When thou wak’st, / Thou tak’st / True delight / Of thy former lady’s eye” (III.453-57, my emphasis). Unlike with Demetrius, Lysander’s incantation does not require him to seek remedy but simply for him to go back to how he was with Hermia; Lysander will go back to experiencing “true delight” instead of temporary love-madness as well the true joy that comes from being in love with the right person. There are no love spells cast or potions applied to either woman because from the beginning they had loved the partners for whom they are destined. As Brooks explains, “In the girls, that [consistency] is something that never changes direction. They are not subjected to the love-juice and, unlike the men, do not need to be malleable” in order to be paired with their rightful partners (cxi). The women consistently have had the ignoble horse contained all throughout the play regardless of what was happening with the men. By applying the love juice to the right person and having the lovers guided to their deserving partner, Oberon provides the opportunity for order in the human realm to be restored: “When they next wake, all this derision / Shall seem like a dream and fruitless vision ; / And back to Athens shall the lovers wend, / With leagues whose date till death shall never end” (III.ii 370-373). Oberon guides the couple to a long-lasting union and with this “all things shall be peace” (III.ii.377). So, even though Oberon’s initial effort is not successful, he is able to guide the erroneous Demetrius to the one he should be with and thus he blesses the couples on the wedding night: “So shall all the couples three / Ever true in love be” (V.i. 383 – 384, my emphasis). Oberon, even though he is a magical being, “is no less capable of making a mistake than Theseus of reaching an impasse. His magic does not tell him Lysander is in the wood, and so he fails to brief

62 Puck against the error in which he falls” (Brooks cvi). Both Shakespeare and Socrates have shown that humans cannot recreate a perfect version of a concept.

Familial Love: Egeus

In accordance with Diotima’s definition of love, Egeus has already loved in the proper process because, “the object of love is not beauty… [but] reproduction and birth in beauty” (44). This objective has been completed by Egeus because he and his wife have produced Hermia, who is known for her beauty. Egeus, in turn, is concerned about the future of his daughter. As Diotima explains to Socrates in the Symposium, “mortal nature does all it can to live forever and be immortal. It can only do this by reproduction: it always leaves behind another, new generation to replace the old” (45). Diotima explains that reproduction is the objective of love “because reproduction is the closest mortals can come to being permanently alive and immortal” (44). Her description of love can be called familial love since it is focused on leaving a legacy: “This is the way that every mortal thing maintained its existence, not by being completely the same, as divine things are, but because everything that grows old and goes away leaves behind another new thing of the same type” (45). For Egeus, the “new thing of the same type” is his daughter, because she is a product of his and his wife’s union. Diotima says that when mortals are affected by this kind of non-sexual love, they are willing to risk everything, even their own lives, to ensure that their offspring will be able to continue their name.

She explains to Socrates that “in order to maintain their young,” even the “weakest of animals are ready to fight with the strongest and die for the sake of their young; they are prepared to be racked with hunger themselves in order to provide food for their young, and do anything else for them” (44). This is why Egeus is so determined to have Hermia

63 marry Demetrius; he believes that Lysander has won over his daughter’s love by the use of trickery and flattery. When Theseus explains to Hermia that although both Lysander and Demetrius are equal in merit, “wanting your father’s voice / The other must be held the worthier,” Hermia retorts that “I would my father look but with my eyes” (I.i.54-56).

This, to Egeus, is even more evidence that his daughter is not thinking rationally and for the long term. If she is indeed being overruled by passion, as he believes she is, this jeopardizes his legacy. She proclaims that she is ready to take on a life of celibacy or even death as punishment for not marrying Demetrius as her father would have her if it means she must marry one whom she does not love. This threatens the continuation of his name, for it could very well be that Lysander only wants Hermia for the wrong reasons and will leave her once his desires have been quenched. Egeus feels this way so strongly that he is willing to have Hermia die. If that were to happen, it would put an end to Egeus’s legacy and it is out of that fear that he tries to force Hermia to marry someone he believes would be best suited to her. Cressy reports this to be true in Tudor times. He writes, “bringing suitable people together sometimes required human effort and ingenuity. Diaries and autobiographies reveal that prospective couples were often prompted or assisted by parents or friends who acted as brokers or matchmakers” (252).

That is precisely what Egeus is attempting; as Hermia’s father, he wants her to wed someone who he considers “suitable” and in an effort to do this, he presents Demetrius to her. Although Egeus’s reasoning is flawed and his request drastic, his actions are understandable since, as Diotima explains, “this is the way…that mortal things have a share in immortality, physically and in all other ways; but immortal things do things in a different way” (45).

64 Shakespeare expresses this importance of familial love and the desire to leave an offspring behind by having Theseus tell Hermia, “your father should be as a god / one that composed your beauties; yea and one / To whom you are but as a form in wax / by him imprinted” (I.i.47-50). Egeus, having lived his life and being wiser from the different experiences he has gained through life, fears that his daughter does not “desire for permanent possession of the good” because he believes that she is simply infatuated with Lysander (45). Cressy explains that people during in this period knew that “a choice based on worldly advantage might miscarry, whereas happiness would more likely follow from a choice based on character…. Passionate emotion, however, was a dangerous foundation” and those of marriageable age were cautioned against it (255). Both

Theseus’s and Egeus’s words echo Plato’s rejection of love for the physical. Through their fears, we see that both of the authority figures are also concerned about the type of love they believe exists between Lysander and Hermia. It can also be said that to

Hermia, Theseus and Egeus are “like god:” their authority and reasoning can be said to be closer to the Form, since both of these men are farther along Diotima’s stages than the young couples. Theseus’s and Egeus’s concerns reflect the Platonic rejection of physical beauty as the decision point because they too believe that love that is rooted in physical beauty is fickle, impulsive, and not permanent. Additionally, since Egeus is a father, he is willing to “risk everything,” even if it means losing his daughter through death or to the nunnery. When Theseus and his procession comes across the young lovers and

Lysander starts to explain how they came to be in the middle of the woods, Egeus immediate becomes angry and exclaims, “I beg the law, the law upon his head” (IV.i.

154). He feels wronged by the fact that his daughter has resolved to run away from

65 Athens and that he has been robbed of his “consent that she should be” Demetrius’s wife.

Once Theseus hears Demetrius’s explanation and confession that he has done wrong in pursuing Hermia when he already truly loved Helena, however, Theseus overrides

Egeus’s demand for justice. He tells Egeus, “Of this discourse we more will hear anon /

Egeus, I will overbear your will” and commands the party to prepare for nuptials (IV.i.

173-174). Theseus is able to do so because although Egeus has authority over Hermia,

Theseus is Egeus’s social superior, a greater authority. This is because “Parental approval was advisable and negotiable, but individual consent was the sine qua non”

(Cressy 256). Similarly, Oberon is able to override the events of the heavenly (as well as earthly) realm because he is of a higher rank, and Theseus is a high-ranking member of the social hierarchy, where his rule is law. Eventually, even though he is still not fond of

Lysander, Egeus allows Hermia to marry Lysander once everything is sorted out, and he comes to the realization that the natural pairing for Demetrius is Helena, whom

Demetrius originally pursued. Egeus at the end relents and goes along with their decision because he wants the best for his daughter and because Demetrius relinquishes his desire for Hermia.

Two Bodies, One Heart: Concept of Soulmates

Having Lysander and Hermia come together throughout the play is an example of the same concept that Aristophanes, mentions in his encomium in the Symposium, which attempts to explain the concept of soulmates, or why certain couples seem to belong together. He explains that that when a lover “meets that very person who is his other half, he is overwhelmed, to an amazing extent, with affection, concern, and love” (25).

Aristophanes’ comic depiction of soulmates is as follows: “Since their [conjoined bodies

66 and souls] had been cut in two, each longed for its own other half and stayed with it”

(24). He continues on to describe each lover’s pursuit to find the other: “That’s how, long ago, the innate desire of human beings for each other started. It draws the two halves of our original nature back together and tries to make one out of two and to heal the wound in human nature. Each of us is a matching half of a human being, because we’ve been cut in half like flatfish” (24). Just as Aristophanes explains, the souls which were once whole seek out the other half to complete each other. In this sense, it would seem Hermia and Lysander have found their halves in each other. Since it is never mentioned how or why the two fell in love in the first place, it is not implausible to think that the reason could be that both found the other to be the missing half that Aristophanes talks about. Hermia is not only going against her ruler to be with her other half, but also defying the man who has complete “ownership” over her, Egeus her father. She tells

Theseus “I do entreat your Grace to pardon me / I know not by what power I am may bold / Nor how it many concern my modesty / In such a presence here to plead my thoughts” (I.i. 58-61).

In the same scene, when Egeus brings the lovers to Theseus, this concept of soulmates is once again invoked. Even though Theseus tells her to take her passions (or desires) into consideration before making such permanent decision, Hermia still refuses to wed Demetrius. Theseus asks her if she is certain she can "abjure forever the society of men" because to him, foregoing sex and pleasure is absurd and hard to understand, particularly since, as Diotima mentions, sex begets children who will continue on her legacy. Because of this he tells Hermia to "question your desire / Know of your youth, examine well your blood / Whether, if you yield not to your father's blood/ You can

67 endure the livery of a nun" (I.i. 67- 70). For Theseus, it defies logic for one to not take the youthful impulses into consideration, but in the same logic, he is requesting her to consider how her impulses might be driving her towards such a rash decision. This, in a way, invokes Diotima’s speech, in which she explains that the goal for mortal beings is to find someone who is pleasing and reproduce. So, for Hermia, who is said to be beautiful in her own right, to relinquish the chance to become “immortal” in this way by choosing a life of celibacy, is preposterous. Even as Theseus is saying this, Theseus knows that controlling one's desire is a much better choice: "thrice blessed they that master so their blood;” this is similar to Socrates praising those who are able to control their urges.

However, Theseus follows this assertion with "but earthlier happy is the rose distilled"

(I.i.78). Theseus claims that the mastery of one's desire is the same as a rose, which untouched, grows, lives, and dies. Here we can find Platonic resonance as well. Just as

Plato would say earthly matters are imperfect versions, or "distilled" versions, of the

Form of the thing, Shakespeare too indicates that giving in to carnal desires is not the best or the most blessed option.

Aristophanes in his encomium, explains that that when a lover “happens on his own particular half, the two of them are wondrously thrilled with affection and intimacy and love” (26). Shakespeare invokes this concept with Lysander and Hermia. As a response to Theseus’s earlier comment encouraging her to wed Demetrius, Hermia tells him that she would rather die like an untouched rose than surrender her "virgin patent up

/ Unto his Lordship, whose unwished yoke / My soul consent not to give sovereignty" (I.i.

80-83, my emphasis). Here again is the question of the soul agreeing with another’s to find completeness. In her quest to be with the man she has come to love, Hermia

68 explains to Theseus that her soul does not answer to Demetrius’s. Shakespeare’s choice of word for Hermia’s refusal is important to note here because Shakespeare does not write “my heart consent not to” nor does he write “my body consent not to.” Rather,

Shakespeare goes deeper and demonstrates with those words that Hermia rejects

Demetrius on a much deeper level. This feeling of the lover and the beloved being half of a whole can be seen in both Lysander and Hermia. Lysander, who believes that he and

Hermia are indeed two halves of a whole and transcend in a higher state of love in which they have become one through their love. The feeling of the lover and the beloved being half of a whole can be seen directly voiced by Lysander in the play. When they are in the forest, Lysander wants to lie down next to Hermia not because of sexual reasons, but because he believes that they are since they are a half of a whole, they should be joined on the same piece of ground. When Hermia objects, he replies:

O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence…

I mean that my heart unto yours is knit,

So that but one heart we can make of it

Two bosoms interchained with an oath—

So then two bosoms and a single troth. (II.ii.45-50)

This “one heart…two bosoms” and the desire to be together brings to mind the story

Aristophanes tells of the lovers and Hephaestus. Aristophanes explains that if, after the lovers were split in two, they were approached by “Hephaestus with his tools” and he asked the lovers “‘What is it, humans, that you want from each other?... Is it that you desire, to be together so completely that you’re never apart from each other night and day? If this is what you desire, I’m prepared to fuse and weld you together, so that the

69 two of you become one.’” Aristophanes claims that “no one who heard this offer would turn it down and it would become apparent that no one wanted anything else.”

Aristophanes justifies this choice made by the lovers by stating, “[t]he reason is that this is our natural state and we used to be whole creatures: ‘“love’ is the name for the desire and pursuit of wholeness” (26). Shakespeare employs this concept various times in the play. In the scene described above, Lysander, like the lovers Aristophanes describes, craves to be together with Hermia because that is their natural state of being.

Another example of soulmates is the friendship between Hermia and Helena, which fits into Aristophanes’ concept of love. The emotions that lovers feel, the way lovers describe each other, and the perception that one is the half of the other, as it were described by Aristophanes, is also felt by both of these girls, described beautifully by

Helena in the forest:

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods

Have with our needles created both one flower,

Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,

So we grew together

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition—

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;

So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;

Two of the first, like coats in heraldry

Due but to one, and crowned with one crest. (III.ii. 203-214)

70 The speech above shows many characteristics of love described in Plato and Shakespeare takes advantages of such characteristics to display the depth of the friendship between the two. The feeling of being half of a whole and sharing the same body or soul, which is

Aristophanes’ concept of love (“two seeming bodies, but one heart”), can also be seen echoed in Helena’s speech. Helena’s proclamation that she and Hermia “grew together /

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, / … Two lovely berries moulded on one stem,” fits in the criteria Aristophanes prescribes for soulmates separated in their original form.

This is similar to how Aristophanes describes the splitting of mankind’s original form:

“Zeus cut humans into two, as people cut sorb-apples in half” (23). As Aristophanes describes it, the love these women have had for each other is one which they are in

“pursuit of wholeness” (26). Shakespeare also makes use of the fruit analogy in Helena’s description.

Helena also draws on the essence of harmony found in music, which Eryximachus speaks of, to show how close she and Hermia are. Her description of her relationship with Hermia parallels another speech in the Symposium. Eryximachus, in speaking of the harmony in music, states, “Just as medicine creates agreement in one area, music creates it in another, by implanting love and concord between the elements involved; music, in its turn, is knowledge of the forms of love in connection with harmony and rhythm” (20).

Reverberations of this concept found in Plato’s Symposium are also found in Helena’s speech: “Both warbling of one song, both in one key / As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds / Had been incorporate” (III.ii. 205 – 208). Charney describes this feeling by explaining that “the image of the lovers” (in this case, loving one’s friends) “being

‘incorporate’ has spiritual as well as physical connotation. In the Latin sense, the word

71 [incorporate] means ‘made into one body’” (66): the love shared between the girls is also one that is spiritual. As for the dispute the two are having in this scene, which seems to go against the concept of two halves wanting to be whole, Eryximachus does note that

“when it’s a question of using rhythm and harmony to produce an effect on people… difficulties arise and a good practitioner is needed” (20). The disharmony between the women takes shape in the form of Demetrius and his wrongful pursuit of Hermia. And as

Eryximachus states, a practitioner is needed to restore a harmonious tune; this

“practitioner” comes in the form of Oberon who, like a “musical expertise [who] creates harmony by replacing a previous divergence… with agreement,” creates harmony by replacing the misplaced affection back to whom it belongs (20).

Pausanias on Love: Helena’s Dedication to Demetrius

Although Helena’s actions may appear to be motivated by the ignoble horse in the minds of the reader (and perhaps even in the mind of Shakespeare’s audience) that is not the case for Pausanias, the legal expert in the group in the Symposium. In Pausanias’s argument, he asks his audience to think of the way lovers behave when they are first aware that they are in love with someone. Pausanias describes the begging and entreating involved in asking the beloved to return the love and affection as typical behavior. He claims that “the lover’s willingness to undergoes every kind of slavery isn’t humiliating or reprehensible” because “there’s only one…type of voluntary slavery that isn’t reprehensible: the type which aims to produce virtue” (16). In a way, Helena is, as

Phaedrus explains before Pausanias’s speech, “more god-like…because [s]he is divinely inspired” (12). Additionally, Helena seems to firmly believe that by doing this kind of slavish work she does for Demetrius, and the type of mistreatment she tolerates, she will

72 be able to elevate her lover’s soul by redirecting his love to a more noble type. This, in

Pausanias’s view, is because Helena’s “love derives from the Heavenly goddess” whose love is the kind that inspires “affection for what is naturally more vigorous and intelligent” (13). And as a result, Helena does not love in such a way that is fickle and temporary; she does not leave “with a laugh, running off to someone else” as Demetrius does to her (13).

Pausanias goes on to explain that, “gods as well as humans allow lovers every kind of indulgence” (referring to the lover getting down on one’s “knees as a suppliant, begging for what he want[s]”) and that “convention allows him to win praise for doing extraordinary things” (15). Convention permits lovers to do such pitiful things because it is for the lover, not for politics, money, or the like, which would cause enemies and friends alike to dislike a character with such qualities (15). Aristophanes would also approve of Helena’s dedication to Demetrius because he believes that “when a lover… or any other type of person, meets that very person who is his other half, he is overwhelmed, to an amazing extent, with affection, concern and love” (25). For Helena, Demetrius is everything to her as she tells him in the woods, “I think I am not in the night; / Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, / For you, in my respect, are all the world. / Then how can it be said I am alone / When all the world is here to look on me?” (II.i. 222-226). It comes natural to Helena to do what she thinks will win Demetrius’s love even if her closest friend Hermia, and perhaps others who know how Demetrius treats Helena, might believe that Demetrius is not the least bit worthy of Helena’s love. And for this

Pausanias would not fault Helena for behaving so. Pausanias claims that if a lover commits to loving someone thinking he is “a good man and gratifies him in the hope of

73 becoming better through the lover’s friendship,” then even if the lover does not turn out to be someone of virtue “there is no disgrace in being deceived in this way” because it only reflects on Helena’s character as someone that is “keen to do anything for anybody to gain virtue and become better” (17). By attempting to regain Demetrius’s love again, she in a sense is improving her character by being consistent in her love and never losing hope for him. Although she does betray her childhood friend, that betrayal is excusable for Pausanias because it was done in the hopes of making Demetrius understand the error of his ways. Pausanias concedes, “the lover is justified in any service he performs for the

[beloved] who gratified [the lover]” (17). Demetrius at one point does gratify Helena by giving her affection that she so seeks and going as far as to promise a future together. As

Eryximachus will continue on to say after Pausanias, “all types of sacrifice…are wholly directed at maintaining one kind of love and curing the other” (21).

Eryximachus and Nature: Faerie Love and its Effect on Earth

In the Symposium Eryximachus draws a parallel between love and nature. A physician by profession, Eryximachus believes in the balance of the good and the bad in our physical bodies is. Eryximachus begins his encomium by stating that the previous speaker (Pausanias), although he has made a great speech, has not given a proper conclusion and as a result, Eryximachus “realized how great and wonderful a god Love is, and how his power extends to all aspects of human and divine life.” He begins by insisting “love is not only expressed in the emotional response of human beings to beautiful people, but also many other kinds of responses as well: in the bodily response of every kind of animal, in plants growing in the earth, in virtually everything that exists”

(18). Eryximachus claims that Eros is found in harmony between things, which only

74 happens once there is a consonance, “a kind of agreement.” This, he argues, is because

“[i]t is quite absurd to say that a harmony diverges itself or that it exists while its components are still divergent (19). This disturbance of “agreement” appears in the play in the form of the argument between the two faerie royalties. And as we have seen, as long as the “components” (the lovers) are “divergent” (in pursuit of those who they should not or love in excess), the conflicts continue to exist until the harmony is restored.

For Shakespeare, Titania and Oberon serve as the allegory of nature, with their relationship operating along the lines set out by Eryximachus. Both of these characters are directly involved with nature and the weather; even their servants/subjects are invoke the natural world. Oberon’s helper, Puck, is known in mythology as a mischievous nature sprite or often is the name of a personified land spirit. As for Titania, the helpers she calls for throughout the play bear the names of things that are found in nature and either occupy the land in some form (Peaseblossom and Mustardseed) or occupy the air

(Moth). These two faerie royalties, also directly affect nature, as well as the love that is found in the lower realm.

In the beginning of the Act 2 of Dream, we find the turbulent relation between

Oberon and Titania to be consistent with nature itself. As Eryximachus explains to the attendees of the symposium, Shakespeare too explains that the disturbance in love between the faeries has a ripple effect on the earthly realm. The discord between Titania and Oberon creates a divide within the monarchy that causes things to fall out of natural order. Even Titania says at the end of her speech that “this same progeny of evils comes /

From our debate, from our dissension” (II.i. 100-101). Brooks too makes a note of this:

“Oberon and Titania being elementals, with the hiatus in their marriage this cosmic love

75 fails too, and there figures in the description of consequences” (cxxxi). Eryximachus argues that, “The characters of the seasons [are] … determined by [the god] love” (20).

He makes this claim after he explains how importance balance and harmony is in every field of study, whether medicine, music, agriculture, or love. He tells his listeners that

“surely there can be no harmony between high and low while they are still divergent.

Harmony is concord, and concord is a kind of agreement; but agreement cannot be created from divergent things while they are still divergent, and harmony cannot be created unless divergent things agree” (19). As evident from what Titania describes, because there is a discord between her and Oberon, the seasons, as Eryximachus claims, are also at a discord. And since Oberon later claims after Titania leaves, “Thou [Titania] shalt not from this grove / Till I torment thee for this injury” (II.i.146), it is understood that the erratic seasons and weather patterns will continue until the couple has made amends because the current state of love that exists between the faerie king and queen is that of mutually aggressive competition. It can be assumed that prior to this dispute between the faerie king and queen, the weather stayed true to how nature intended because as Eryximachus suggests, “[w]hen those elements I mentioned before (hot and cold, dry and wet) are influenced by the well-ordered Love, they are in harmony with each other and achieve a temperate mixture. Their arrival brings good harvest and…causes no damage” (20). Titania herself admits that the tumultuous weather the lower realm has been experiencing is the after-effect of the higher realm’s rulers being discontent with each other.

In the beginning of the play, there is a sense of trouble when the lovers in the higher realms are unable to cooperate with each other. The imbalance in the higher

76 realms begins when they are seen arguing over each other’s adultery (love of the physical beauty) and over who has the rights to the Indian changeling boy. Titania wishes to keep the boy and to raise him in honor of the devoted follower of her who has passed away after giving birth to him. Oberon on the other hand wants to raise the boy to be his page.

Titania refuses because she believes the boy belongs to her since his mother was a devotee of Titania and not Oberon and therefore she has sole rights over the child. For that reason, their discord starts affecting the lower realm in a way that Eryximachus predicts it would—through nature. When Titania and Oberon meet for the first time in the play, Shakespeare informs his audience that since the two fairy royalties have been avoiding each other and depriving each other (in the sexual sense of their word) since the beginning of midsummer, their “distemperature,” has caused “the seasons [to] alter”

(II.i.106). Exasperated with the state of her marriage and the stalemate that they are in with their disagreement, Titania states:

And never, since the middle summer’s spring,

Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

By pavéd fountain or by rushy brook,

Or in the beachéd margent of the sea,

To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. (II.i. 82-87)

When things are in its natural order, chaos and dispute are a distant memory. Ever since their dispute started, they have not partaken in any sort of merrymaking or relations with each and as a result it has created a tension in the faerie realm. And because the faerie realm’s state of being is reflected on to the earthly realm, when the royal lovers come to a

77 disagreement, the humans are directly affected. Eryximachus continues to warn that when things fall out of harmony, especially if it takes form as disturbance in the higher realms, it causes problems for those who dwell on earth. Eryximachus explains, “when the lawless and violent Love dominates the seasons, they cause great destruction and damage. These conditions tend to produce epidemics and other abnormal diseases for beasts and plants. Frost, hail and blight are the result of the mutually aggressive competition and disorder” (20-21). His explanation has its analogue in Titania’s description of the weather’s abnormal behavior:

And through this distemperature we see

The seasons alter: hoary headed frosts

Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

And on to Hiems thin and icy crown

An ordorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery set. The spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries, and the mazéd world

By their increase now knows not which is which. (II.i. 104-114)

Corresponding to what Eryximachus confirmed, the arguments between the faerie couple

“affect the movements of the stars and the seasons of the year” and subsequently the seasons of the lower realm has been fallen out of order (21). In response to this, things in nature have also reacted accordingly. The sea, “as in revenge” has released a heavy fog which is pernicious to humans; it has also caused floods and heavy rain which has led to many dead sheep since they cannot graze anymore. The moon “the governess of floods”

78 has also becomes angry and has caused disease to run rampant amongst the mortals, endangering their lives. This throws off the natural order of things since now the crows, who typically scavenge for food, are presented with consistent feast from the flesh of the dead sheep. Humans’ lives have been turned dour since their village square is muddy which allows no playtime, and since their winter has not come, there is no singing or caroling.

As Eryximachus has claimed, when heavenly love, which nature responds to by the “plants growing in the earth, in virtually everything” (18) is out of harmony, the seasons themselves “knows not which is which.” Titania continues on blame herself and

Oberon for this drastic change in nature:

And this same progeny of evils comes

From our debate, from our dissension.

We are their parents and original. (II.i. 106-117)

In the way Eryximachus has detailed, “in the structure of harmony and rhythm, considered in itself, it’s not difficult to recognize the workings of love” (20). It is not necessary for Shakespeare to include this description of how the weather and harvest has been affected because of the faeries being in the middle of their love-quarrel; I claim he has does so because both Oberon and Titania function as the heavenly love Eryximachus speaks of. This explanation of the distress the lower realm is experiencing also provides

Titania with a way of dismissing Oberon’s accusations of her being too proud and refusing to abide by her lord’s commands to meet with him. Titania tells her fairies that she has “forsworn his bed and company” as a result of the argument that is going on between them; this refusal comes from Titania denying Oberon something which he

79 believes he has the right to but she believes he is overexerting his power (II.i. 63). She also accuses Oberon of “stealing away from Fairyland” and being unfaithful to her. We soon find out the argument stems from who is to have charge over the changeling boy that is currently in Titania’s possession. After Titania’s speech, Oberon continues on to say, “Do you amend it then. It lies in you. / Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a changeling boy / To be my henchman” (II.i. 119-121). However, for Titania it is not as simple as handing over a mortal being. The boy is important for her because he is the legacy that her devotee has left behind, the only way Titania can make the devotee

“immortal” in her realm. This fury of nature’s forces and disturbance in harmony in the lower realm is mended once the fairies finally reconcile with each other. It is only then that the weather clears up and balance is restored. Nature is once again harmonious and beautiful. The lovers of the lower realm are correctly paired and are happy, Egeus (the father in the center of the lower realm’s problem) is reluctantly placated, and Theseus, with his newly wedded wife, is able to continue to enjoy the festivities of his marriage.

This is exactly as Eryximachus explains how things should be. He claims, “Love, as a whole, has great and mighty — or rather total — power, when you put all this together”

(21). Once balance of good and bad is restored in equal proportions, all the parts come together in a harmonious unity.

The harmony restored between Oberon and Titania falls in line with Plato’s preferred type of love, which he claims stems from Zeus and the higher realm. Titania, grossly enamored with a mortal with the head of an ass, is liberated from such a humiliation once the physical desire is removed from her after Oberon is able to obtain the Indian boy from her by beguiling her with the love juice. As Plato suggests, the right

80 kind of love brings light and liberation to the lover’s soul. That is the importance behind the pairing that Shakespeare leaves the audience with at the end of Dream. Eryximachus would acknowledge this as follows: “just as medicine creates agreement in one area, music creates in another, by implanting love and concord in elements involved; in its turn is… connect[ed] with harmony” and it is harmony that Shakespeare creates once

“agreement” between the mortal lovers and the faerie royals are established.

81 IV. Demetrius: The Amalgamation of Platonic Ideas of The Lover

Compared to the kinds of love discussed previously, it would seem that Demetrius is the most un-Platonic character as his love is that which the speakers have denigrated in the Symposium and Phaedrus. He seems to be ruled by all the wrong kinds of impulses and desires. He does not display any of the characteristics of the lovers who demonstrate the qualities and actions revered by Socrates in the Symposium and Phaedrus. Demetrius is the reason the tension exists in the lower realm in the first place; additionally, he does not seem like the type of lover that Plato would ever approve of because during majority of the play Demetrius gives too much power to his junior horse and practices little restraint when it comes to love-madness. It would appear that Demetrius is the kind of lover that Plato warns against. Even though Lysias and Plato disagree about which lover is preferable, even Lysias would in a way disapprove of the type of lover Demetrius is throughout the play. Demetrius, as Lysias argues, is the love who dotes too much and moves on when his passions cool. And as Plato puts it, “Desire, on the other hand, is irrational. When it seizes power in us, and drags us towards pleasure, the name we give this power is excess” (16). It is this excess that makes Demetrius have such a sudden and irrational change of heart. He loves the body rather than the heart and is moved to action on impulsive reasoning. Helena explains, “For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia’s eyne /

He hailed down oaths that he was only mine; / And when this hail some heat from

Hermia felt / So he dissolved, and show’rs of oaths did melt” (I.i 224-227). It is as

Pausanias explains in his speech on Eros. Pausanias informs his audience that it is

82 “wrong to gratify [a lover] in a bad way,” which Demetrius is asking of Hermia by forcing his love on her and demanding to know why she rejects his wooing. Demetrius consistently tries to “gratify” his love for her by speaking ill of Lysander and putting her in a position in which she is the subject of jealousy of her childhood friend. Hermia is also put in a difficult situation because Demetrius tries to exert his male privilege over her by attempting to override her requests and refusals and she has to construct a way to rid herself of this unwanted affection in a way that makes Helena a more preferable choice. Pausanias might have even labeled Demetrius as one who belongs in the group of

“Followers of Common Love” (14) rather than one who is blessed with the love that stems from Zeus. Amo Sulaiman in “Plato: White and Non-White Love” states,

“Pausanias argues that bodily love suggests a temporal duration since the human body undergoes overt changes, and that it is that being pursued by the common people” (82).

According to Pausanias, the followers of Common Love is one “who loves the body rather than the mind. He is not constant, because he loves something that is not constant: as soon as the bloom of the body fades, which is what attracted him, ‘he flies away and is gone’ bringing disgrace on all he said and promised.” And because Demetrius does exactly this, he brings “disgrace on all things he said and promised” (16). That is why in the opening scene, through Lysander’s assessment of Demetrius the audience is able to understand how untrustworthy Demetrius is because Demetrius went through the process of engagement with Helena but then abandons her for someone else. Lysander, in front of both Theseus and Egeus, confirms Demetrius’ fickleness: “Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head, / Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena, / And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, / Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry / Upon this spotted and inconstant man”

83 (I.i. 106- 110). Just as Lysander claims, Demetrius is morally stained; he is inconstant and ever changing in whom he gives his affections to. Moreover, he is dismissive of the one whose soul he has won over, even though he was the one who initiated the courtship between him and Helena in the first place. As a result, even Helena herself thinks he is undependable when it comes to love and his promises are meaningless because he makes them so freely and breaks them just as easily.

However, while all this may be true, Demetrius does, in fact, still fall under one of the category of what is defined to be a “Platonic lover” in the sense Shakespeare might have understood it to be. For this, Shakespeare is not only drawing from what Plato have taught, but rather, draws inspiration from other ideas found in both Phaedrus and

Symposium. So, although certain behaviors of the characters might be disapproved by

Plato, those behaviors are influenced by both works. In the discourse between Socrates and Diotima, she claims that there is a proper way for one to approach the right kind of love. She instructs Socrates that the proper way is by one going through the stages of love. Diotima tells Socrates, “At first, if his guide leads him correctly, he should love just one body” (48). This first step is taken by Demetrius when he first falls in love with

Helena. At this point, he loves her enough to be engaged to her and court her openly.

Therefore, before the play opens, Demetrius is on the right path. Then, Diotima explains, comes in the second stage: “Next, he should realize that the beauty of any one body is closely related to that of another, and that, if he is to pursue beauty of form, it’s foolish not to regard the beauty of all bodies as one and the same” (48). Demetrius’s fickle love can be understood in this light. Having already been in love with Helena, Demetrius falls

84 in love with Hermia, who is also beautiful, an example of becoming a lover of not one but of all “all beautiful bodies”.

After the love juice incident, he then quickly progresses to the stage in which he comes into terms with the error of his ways and goes back to loving the one who is better suited for him. Diotima describes this stage as such: “After this, he should regard the beauty of minds as more valuable than that of the body, so that, if someone has goodness of mind even if he has little of the bloom of beauty, he will be content with [his lover] and will love and care for [his lover]” (48). In doing so, he is returning back to the state in which his reasoning ability is no longer clouded by the need to fulfill his lustful desires. According to Diotima, “Anyone who has been educated this far in the ways of love, viewing beautiful things in the right order and in the way, will now reach the goal of love’s ways. He will suddenly catch sight of something amazingly beautiful in nature; this… is the ultimate objective of all the previous efforts” (48). This “ultimate objective” that Demetrius finally comes to realize is realized at the end of the play. Theseus questions the young couples sleeping in the forest by saying, “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?” (IV.i. 141-144, my emphasis). Theseus is puzzled by the sight before him because just the night before, the two men were hostile towards each other over who has the right for Hermia’s hand in marriage. To add even more to Theseus’s confusion, instead of the impasse there seems to be concord amongst the lovers. To this Demetrius responds with:

My good lord, I wot not by what power—

But by some power it is—my love to Hermia,

85 Melted as the snow, seems to me now

As the remembrance of an idle gaud

Which in my childhood I did dote upon. (IV.i. 163-167)

The power which he refers to is the one Oberon, the Zeus-like figure in the play, uses to bring back harmony to both of the realms. As a result of Oberon applying the love juice in Demetrius’s eyes and saying the right incantation for the spell, Demetrius is guided back to the one who he is meant for. Demetrius has been “educated” in the ways of love and therefore has been able to achieve the ultimate object which Diotima lays out. He has grown out of his “childhood” and has now become an adult who is in control of his desires and is more selective of whom he gives his affections to. As Diotima tells

Socrates, “All human beings are pregnant in body and in mind, when we reach a degree of adulthood we naturally desire to give birth” (43). Thus, Demetrius with his vision and love corrected has reached adulthood and, being pregnant in mind, has given birth to a much wiser version of himself. His unruly passion for Hermia has cooled off now that he is able to see properly and the communication channel between the eye and the soul is fixed. Just as a caterpillar sheds its shell to become a beautiful butterfly with wings to soar into the sky, the ignoble desires have also “melted as snow.” He has gone through the process and has regained the wings he needed in order for his soul lift itself up to the heavens. He continues on to say:

And all the faith, the virtue of my heart

The object and pleasure of mine ye

Is only Helena. To her, my lord,

Was I betroth’d ere I saw Hermia

86 But, like a sickness, did I loathe this food;

But, as in health, come to my natural taste,

Now I do wish it, love it, long for it

And will forevermore be true to it. (IV.i.166-175)

Shakespeare’s phrasing, “like in sickness,” recalls Eryximachus’ approach to love through a medical lens, whereby “medicine” would be prescribed to heal the illness. The inclusion of “sickness” also brings to mind Socrates calling love based on carnal desire a

“disease.” Having returned to Helena’s love, which, as discussed before, is a love close to Shakespeare’s true Form of Love, Demetrius is healed and is once more true to his virtues, the vision which Diotima refers to. And once more, with the love potion restoring proper “vision,” he is able to make Helena the object of his eye’s love. It can also be argued that while he was going through the stages of love, he pursues Hermia with the same kind of enthusiasm as Helena when Helena chases Demetrius, because at that moment he believed to Hermia. Like Helena, he is persistent in acquiring his beloved. However, he does not pair up with Hermia; rather, as he progresses through the stages of love (under the help of the love juice and with the guidance of the faire king), he discovers that Helena is a better match for him because she complements him in every way.

As Plato writes in Phaedrus, the sight of something that gives the soul a glimpse of the true Form, in this instance love, it is like nourishment for the soul. Similarly,

Shakespeare has Demetrius explain this theory of love acting as the nourishment for the soul: “Like a sickness, did I loathe this food” (IV.i. 173). In Platonic terms, when

Demetrius was overcome by his passions and allowed the junior horse of the chariot to

87 take control over his actions, he rejected the “food” which was meant as nourishment because he was under the influence of some sort of “sickness.” Helena becomes the

“good practitioner” for Demetrius that Eryximachus describes in his speech: “The good practitioner can bring about change, so that the body requires one of type of love instead of another” (19, my emphasis). Throughout the play, we see Helena work tirelessly to try to steer Demetrius back to his original path and abandon his quest to marry Hermia.

Helena is able to detect that he needs a particular type of love (hers) and not the one he is wanting from Hermia. Eryximachus continues to explain that the lover “knows how to implant one type of love, when it isn’t there but should be, and to remove the other type of love that is there” (19). This perfectly explains what Helena attempts to do throughout the play with the incessant following and unwavering devotion to Demetrius. Moreover, through her actions and treatment of Demetrius, Helena also completes the task

Eryximachus sets for the good practitioner: “it is wrong to gratify the bad and diseased parts and you should deprive them of satisfaction” of the things they desire though

“medicine,” which at first the lover will hate but will come to love once he is cured.

Helena fulfills her role as a “doctor” by “bringing about change” in Demetrius and curing the “sickness” he has been experiencing and as a result “in health” his “body requires one type of love” (hers) which, as he declares, “Now I do wish it, love it, long for it.”

According to Sulaiman, Eryximachus “contends that it is possible to teach a brute to love because he has the capacity to love and further holds that a good practitioner can cure a sick person” (82). Therefore, although Demetrius has his flaws, he is still capable of learning how to love and does end up learning how to do so with the help of two capable practitioners, Helena and Oberon.

88 Demetrius too has reached the last stage of love in which he is capable of

“viewing beautiful things in the right order and in the right way”; in other words, he is finally able to see Helena’s value to him and benefit from the “nourishment” she provides to his soul. Earlier, he told Helena “For I am sick when I look on thee” (II.i. 113).

However, because she is his “cure” he has been able to regain his “natural taste” since the sickness that was in him before dulled his senses for what is good for him (IV.i. 173).

Whereas before he constantly tried to stay away from her, as he did in the forest when he told her “I’ll run from thee and hide in the breaks. / I’ll leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts” (II.i.227-228), now that he has regained control over his junior horse, he “love[s] it, long[s] for it” (IV.i. 175). Demetrius has recovered from the madness which had made him so irrational before, and thus he has been “transformed” to a version of himself

Helena always knew existed. He has come to the last stage of love in which he, as

Diotima suggested, “regard[s] the beauty of minds as more valuable than that of the body” (48). In doing so, Brooks explains in the notes, “his heart’s orientation to fidelity and virtue” has returned (98, n.168). Theseus, seeing both couples back to the correct pairings, tells Egeus he will “overbear your will / For in the temple, by and by, with us /

These couples shall eternally be knit” (IIII.i. 174-176). This is because Theseus is the reproduction of “lord” in the human realm, which is situated below Oberon but above

Egeus. Just as Oberon guided the couples back to each other, Theseus ensures the couples stay together through matrimony. Throughout the play, Demetrius demonstrates the qualities of the unwanted lover Lysias describes and becomes the lover who allows his passions to control the direction the chariot goes, but then is able to regain his wings by redeeming himself. In a sense, Demetrius is the only lover to go through the various

89 trials Socrates believes lovers should and will go through. It is his transformation that brings back harmony to the human realm. It would appear that through Demetrius,

Shakespeare is able to show all steps and stages of a Platonic lover.

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