My first time reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream was in secondary school. I remember being astonished by how beautiful Shakespearean English is, as well as how complex romantic comedies can be. Having read a lot more Shakespeare and other literature since then, I thought I would take the opportunity to re-examine this text. As indicated by the title, I have come away with an unexpected conclusion!
Sources
I used an XML file of A Midsummer Night’s Dream made available on this open-source resource: http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/examples/.
Processes
After uploading the XML file to Voyant Tools, the first thing I did was check the list of stop words. I decided to replace the auto-detect list with the English list since it already included basic anarchic English words such as “thou” and “thy”. Then, I began examining word frequencies and collocations through the Cirrus, Terms, and Links tools. As expected, the names of the main characters dominate the Cirrus slot. Other key themes in the story (“love”, “night”), anarchic words (“doth”, “hath”) and stage directions (“enter”, “exit”) also make it to the top of the word frequency list (generated by the Terms Tool). Later in the process, I pinpointed the location of my data through the Context and Reader tools. Finally, I filtered out one character’s speech by adding an XML code on Voyant’s landing page. I will discuss my journey and findings in more detail down below.
Presentation & Significance
HERE is my exploration in Voyant:
Observation #1:
If you add “love*” as a filter, the network graph generated by the Links tool will look something like this. Note: “love*” includes all words that start with “love” as one term.
“Love*” shares edges (or links) with the four main characters: Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena, but not with the older couples (Titania and Oberon, Hippolyta and Theseus). Perhaps influenced by my own background, I was initially a bit surprised that the words “Egeus” (Hermia’s father) and “father” are not linked to “love*”. Then again, unlike most governments today, if you go against your father’s wishes in Shakespeare’s Athens, he can legally force you to become a nun or give you a death sentence. Another possible explanation for the weak connection between these words is the fact that Titania, Oberon, Hippolyta, Theseus, and Egeus have significantly fewer lines compared to the young couples.
Observation #2:
“Eyes” is one of the most frequently used words in the play. This is within my expectations since we all know that the little fairy, Puck, places the love-potion on Demetrius, Lysander, and Titania’s eyes so that they may fall in love with the right and wrong characters. The network graph generated through searching for “eye*” confirms that the words “eye*”, “love”, and certain characters, appear in close proximity to one another.
Observation #3:
Why might Shakespeare link “eyes” with the concept of love? What might this association tell us about Shakespeare’s illustration and understanding of love? Using the Context and Reader tools, I discovered a variety of ways Shakespeare MIGHT BE connecting the two terms:
- Love is fickle?
- Helena believes that Demetrius broke their oath because he is attracted to Hermia’s “bright” eyes.
- In her recount of this happening, she says, to put it simply, that love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, which is not entirely logical.
- In fact, Lysander seems to confirm Helena’s words: when he is struck by the love-juice, he suddenly becomes infatuated with Helena instead of Hermia. More precisely, he says, “Not Hermia but Helena I love: 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 So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason; And touching now the point of human skill, Reason becomes the marshal to my will And leads me to your eyes…”
- If love can be compared to a growing thing, then is it also “not ripe until their season” and withers when its season passes? Might this be the case for the other couples in the play?
- Love is an illusion?
- Oberon decides to put love-juice on Titania’s eyes so that she will realize his importance/power/appeal(?) and hand over the Indian boy she dotes upon. Funny enough, this plan works: when the love-juice no longer has an effect on Titania, she describes her temporary affections for a donkey head Nick Bottom as loathsome “visions” and is once again obedient and loving towards Oberon.
- Oberon and Puck try to pair up the young couples with the love-juice too. Despite their supposed success (none of the main characters are killed, sent to become a nun, or single by the end of the story), we should keep in mind that this pairing only worked because of the love-juice, which can easily ruin everyone’s relationships once again.
- The conversation between Hermia, Theseus, and Egeus suggests that to look with someone else’s eyes is to understand something from another’s point of view. Arguably, the main cause of conflict between Hermia and her father is their inability to share and accept each other’s views. This gives us some insight into how Shakespeare may perceive familial love, although it seems like little is explicitly stated on this matter in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
As you can see, many questions remain unanswered and many more have arisen from my short textual analysis. To further investigate all the different forms of “love” between characters within and beyond this text, we can add multiple books to Voyant and even filter out specific characters’ speeches!
HERE is what happens when you only include Egeus’ lines in Voyant. To try it out yourself, just go to Voyant’s landing page. Open the options dialog. Under XML, type the expression below in the “Content” line. Note: insert your character’s name between the double quotation marks.
//SPEECH[contains(SPEAKER,”insert your character’s name”)]/LINE
