A Midsummer Night's Dream

In a moonlit Athenian forest, love becomes a kind of madness. Shakespeare stages a dazzling experiment: what happens when four young lovers and a troupe of bumbling actors stumble into a realm ruled by quarreling fairies with magical potions? The result is chaos both hilarious and unsettling. Puck, Oberon's mischievous sprite, sprays juice from a purple flower on the sleeping eyes of the wrong people, and suddenly men chase women who despise them, women pursue men who reject them, and everyone wakes up certain they've been dreaming. It sounds like a farce, and it is, but beneath the giggles lies something genuinely strange: love as involuntary compulsion, desire as something that happens to us rather than something we choose. The mechanicals rehearsing their play for the Duke's wedding mirror this theme of performed identity, while Titania's enchanted love for the donkey-headed Bottom remains one of the most bizarre and funny moments in literature. Shakespeare understood that love is ridiculous, that we're all a little bewitched, and that the forest is where we go to lose ourselves. Anyone who has ever been in love, or utterly confused by it, will recognize themselves here.