SOURCE: Ramsey, Clifford Earl. “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” In Homer to Brecht: The European Epic and Dramatic Traditions, edited by Michael Seidel and Edward Mendelson, pp. 214-37. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977.

In the following essay, Ramsey examines the scenic structure in A Midsummer Night's Dream, maintaining that it expresses diversity and opposition, and yet it also emphasizes harmony and integration. According to the critic, the scenic structure ultimately underscores the play's dual themes of the power of love and the power of imagination.

The history of interpretation, and misinterpretation, of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream demonstrates more strikingly than that of most works a deep truth of literary history: changes in critical fashion, changes in the theory of literature and in approaches to particular literary works, virtually alter those works themselves. Criticism shapes our fundamental responses to the works of art it contemplates. Whatever Iliad we...