SOURCE: Hunt, Maurice. “A Speculative Political Allegory in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Comparative Drama 34, no. 4 (winter 2000-01): 423-53.

In the following essay, Hunt alleges that A Midsummer Night's Dream functions as a cryptic allegory that criticizes Elizabeth I and the problem of securing a successor to her throne.

Every so often commentators on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream quote Bottom's judgment on his own “most rare vision” of the Fairy Queen—“Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream” (4.1.203-4)—with tongue-in-cheek reference to their own interpretive efforts.¹ Given the frequency with which Bottom's words have been invoked for this purpose, one can be excused for believing that the utterance has lost most of its value as a beforehand deflector of criticism against the commentator's argument. Yet if ever a commentator on A Dream risked appearing an ass to his or her reader...