SOURCE: Clayton, Tom. “‘So quick bright things come to confusion’: or, What Else was A Midsummer Night's Dream About?”1 In Shakespeare: Text and Theater, edited by Lois Potter and Arthur F. Kinney, pp. 62-91. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999.
In the following essay, Clayton highlights the brighter, more lighthearted aspects of A Midsummer Night's Dream, emphasizing the civilized and complementary features of the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta and downplaying the bestial connotation in the relationship between the transformed Bottom and Titania.