Summer Dreams and moonbeams

This summer working at camp was a time to get out of my world, make new friends and best of all meet him…
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The moment was one that she had replayed over and over again in her mind’s eye. His strong muscular arms enfolded her waist. His hands rested upon her hips as he leaned in pausing with his face so close that she could feel his breath.
This summer working at camp had been a time to meet new people, make new friends and best of all meet him…

If she had known that he was promised to another maybe she would not have kissed him in the moon- light. If she knew he was motivated out of lust and not love would she restrained her heart from beating too fast as he walked past her every day. She had the choice to go on that walk with him that cool summer evening. Her mind may have said no, but her heart refused to listen to reason. Romance had made the choice for her.

She fell in love. He kissed her in the moonlight and left at the end of the week to go home to his girlfriend. Her mind hated her heart for betraying her so foolishly. Romance is unpredictable. Loving couples spend their entire lives attempting to maintain romantic love in the midst of reality. Love is the ordered form of organized chaos and romance is chaos unrestrained. Although the heart and mind of this girl felt betrayed, it was romance that really made her a fool.


Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is a mystical play focused only on the way that love and the race into it is a road full of confusion, emotional outbursts and chaos. It is necessary to define the different aspects of romance and love in order to find truth in the whole matter of romantic relationships. Simply put some romances are meant to be short lived, others are strewn with spats, jealousy and conflict, and then there are the “true loves” that endure forbidding family members and insincere rivals, It is only possible for “true love” to endure when it is lived out honestly in the reality of daily life.

The background of this play falls upon the wedding festivities of Theseus (the Duke of Athens) and Hippolyta (the Queen of the amazons). In the midst of their preparations the Duke is drawn into a dispute between a father (Egeus) and daughter (Hermia) regarding the decision of allowing her to marry for love or to brush aside her feelings to concede to the tradition of marrying the spouse decided upon by her father. Hermia’s father desires that she marry the man he has chosen, but she is not in love with him. Hermia is forced to decide to marry a man she does not love (Demetrius) or be sent away to live as a nun or be put to death. Hermia and her true love Lysander decide that the only way they are to be wed is to run away through the forest and seek sanctuary with Lysander’s aunt. Helena, a young woman obsessed with Demetrius and the romance they once had, overhears Herima and Lysander’s plan of escape. She realizes that this may be an opportunity to regain his affection and tells Lysander of Hermia and Lysander’s plans to run away together. Lysander no longer has any affection for Helena, but follows her directions out of his spite towards Demetrius.

Upon entering the forest, the two couples are no longer alone in their conflict. In fact, their lives are about to be tested and toyed with by Oberon (King of the Fairies), Titania (the Fairy Queen), and Puck the wood fairy. The forest is brimming with activity as a group of laborers also gather to secretly rehearse a play they hope to perform for the wedding celebration of Theseus and Hippolyta.

The king and queen of the fairies have a great difficulty in keeping the peace in their relationship as they quibble over the rights each one has over an orphaned boy.
In his frustration, the king accuses the queen of loving the mortal Duke and she in turn accuses the king of being in love with the Amazon bride to be. Their argument can’t be settled and she goes off to be attended to by her court before she goes to sleep. The king decides to trick the queen into loving someone ugly in hopes that she will loose interest in the orphaned child and release him to become the king’s page.

Magic and potions are introduced when Puck, the fairy king’s servant, is called to retrieve a charmed flower from cupid to control who loves whom. When the petals of this flower are touch the eyes of a sleeping victim they are helpless to fall in love with the first person or thing that their waking eyes see. Upon witnessing a dispute between Helena and Lysander, the king of the fairies instructs Puck to touch Lysander’s sleeping eyes with the charmed flower in order that Helena will have her love and the other couple would be free to marry without interference form Lysander. Puck confuses Demetrius with Lysander and creates more chaos as Hermia realizes her true love no longer loves her. Her feelings are more hurt when she sees Demetrius gazing lovingly upon Helena, her newfound rival. Love is found, love is lost and the once adored Hermia now understands the feelings of rejection experienced by the overwhelmed Helena.

The king of the fairies is unaware of Pucks error as he is wrapped up in his own scheme of revenge and trickery. Puck comes across the laborers rehearsing in the woods and chooses to turn Bottom, the most charismatic actor of the group, into a donkey-faced suitor to be viewed by the flower altered eyes of the Fairy Queen. The Queen falls in love with the donkey faced Bottom and his every whim is attended to by the fairy court. Bottom is enthralled by the beauty surrounding him but is confused by the unaltered affection of the fairy queen despite his ugly appearance.

Puck has realized now that he has cast a spell upon the wrong man’s eyes and seeks assistance from the fairy king to restore the couples to rights. Oberon causes a thick fog to fall upon the wood so that the lovers can’t find each other. All four lovers fall into a deep sleep. Puck is sent to touch the eyes of Demetrius with a correcting potion and correctly carries out the task.

Meanwhile, the king of the Fairies sees that his plan to trick the queen is resulting in her paying absolutely no attention to him and grows jealous of her attentions towards donkey- faced Bottom. He casts a deep sleep over Titania and Bottom and uses the eye remedy to restore her love toward him. In his sleep, Bottom is restored to his normal form and sleeps on the edge of the wood until morning. The king and queen of the fairies are reconciled and are once again happy in the love they hold for each other; and the quarrel is forgotten.

Demetrius, Hermia, Lysander and Helena are found sleeping on the edge of the forest by Ergus, the duke and his fiancé’ Hippolyta. The Duke and Hermia’s father listen attentively as Lysander makes a pledge of his love to Helena and Demetrius restates his ongoing devotion to Hermia. In this odd turn of events, the Duke grants permission for them to marry for love and invites the two couples to join him and be wedded at the upcoming festivities. Ergus is not pleased at this decision, but does nothing to interfere with his daughter’s wedding plans.

Bottom wakens to find his mind full of images and dreams from the night before, but rushes off to find his fellow actors in order to attempt a performance for the wedding of the duke. The actors assemble and hurry off to the court in order to be considered by the wedding party as a source of entertainment and are chosen by the duke to perform their short comedy tragedy.

The play performed by Bottom and his friends tells a tale of love between separated lovers that when finally given the chance to meet are met with disaster. The girl goes to the garden and is pursued by a lion that injures her and she flees. The man goes to the garden to meet his love only to find her bloodstained scarf and kills himself thinking his love dead. She returns, to find her love dead and takes his sword and in grief ends her own life.

The players bumble through the tragedy, but their errors in execution of the play turn this tragedy into a comedy as the wedding guests take the errors as intentional farce. The newly wedded Duke gives his approval of their efforts and they are rewarded with tokens of appreciation.

The couples climb the stairs to bed at “fairy time” (midnight) and go to sleep in the arms of their true loves arms. Bottom returns home and looks to the night sky to ponder the night in the woods and the love he received from the Queen of the fairies.
Puck wraps up the story and tries to make good on the chaos of the entire Dream and
states,

“Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:”

Puck enjoys all the meddling with the foolish mortals relationships, but he’s willing to mend things given a little direction and help. Puck really could be considered the risk in all the romances explored in this play. Romance is composed of risks, hope and excitement. If romance is to last, the conflicts of romantic relationships must be balanced with grace forgiveness and unselfish love. We have to be willing to “mend “ if romance is going to live a long life.
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Summer camp is a place where love can grow, bloom and die at such a fast pace. It is a greenhouse of social and cultural societies. Various people are thrown together to work, live and play together; they are tossed together and create this magical microcosm functioning apart from but still touching the lives and macrocosm of the outside world.

While summer camp romances and friendships live or die by the interest or whim of the members of that “camp world”, the couples in Midsummer Nights Dream are initially limited in their reality by the authorities in their daily lives. It is only when the “fairies” have a chance to take action, however bumbling the efforts, that the couples are freed to marry for love. This reversal of control is much like the first year camp staffer experiencing the freedom to make his or her own bumbling choices their first time away from home.
The first time away from home is an opportunity to create your own life. Demetrius and Hermia simply wanted to start their life together. Helena desired to mend her relationship with Lysander and regain the love they once had. Egeus hoped to make the best decision to provide for his daughter’s future. Theseus and Hippolyta were committed to each other and through the festivities of their marriage were able to bring two other couples into loving committed relationships.

Not everyone is looking for the same things from their relationships. In this play, the whim of romance could have turned all the characters lives upside down. Demetrius could have lost his love to death by her decision to choose him. Hermia could have been put away in isolation due to the decision to commit to Demetrius. She could have also made the choice to follow her father’s wishes and marry a man she did not love, in order to save her own life. Helena, Demetrius, Hermia and Lysander all would have suffered if Hermia had chosen to marry out of obedience and not for love. Her father may have had the satisfaction of making that decision; but he wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of it.

Love is unpredictable, even the King and Queen of fairies knew that. While most of the love relationships in this play bounced around between courtly love, erotic love, puppy love, lust love, unrequited love, romantic love and instantaneous love; it is obvious that true love was the inspiration for the creation of this play. So many of Shakespeare’s plays focus on the tragedy of love lost or love unrequited so it’s wonderful to read and watch a play (in the midst of it’s frivolity) have a truly happy ending.
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My summer at camp may not have had a happy ending, but it was my hope for true love that eventually helped it to be delivered into my real life. Love is a risky proposition. There are risks for looking foolish, living with heartache or losing your love to another. True love is worth all of the risk to invite moonbeams on cool summer evenings, to welcome romance into the everyday and to live magically in fairy time and the real time of my life.