Digital Commons @ Assumption University Philosophy Department Faculty Works Philosophy Department 2016 Ass, You Like It? Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as Political Philosophy Nalin Ranasinghe Assumption College,
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[email protected]. ESSAYS & LECTURES 79 Ass, You Like It? Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Political Philosophy Nalin Ranasinghe William Shakespeare’s early comedies are marked by the perva- sive presence of twins. Remarkably, this theme extends even to the level of the plays themselves: comedies and tragedies with striking similarities appear on stage at about the same time. While each play in such a dyad conforms to the requirements of its re- spective genre, the presence of a doppelgänger creates irony, and raises questions about the comic or tragic conclusions reached in each play. One such pair is Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both were written and performed in the mid-1590s, and both raise very similar questions about love, marriage and politics while yet describing exactly opposite—and thus perfectly com- plementary—dramatic trajectories.