According to Andrew Stott in Comedy; ‘Marriage serves as a conclusion towards which traditional comic narrative inevitably moves; a cultural symbol of the harmonious symmetry and the resolution of troubles.’ To what extent do the marriages at the end of a midsummer night’s dream represent an amicable conclusion?
An amicable conclusion indicates an ending in which there is peace and no discord. The four marriages at the end do well to eliminate all of the problems that happen during the play and do to some extent represent a harmonious conclusion to all the bad events that occur throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The first time Titania and Oberon speak (since getting married) both lovers speak in continuous rhyming couplets ‘to the best bride-bed will we, which by us shall blessed be.’1 This therefore is a sign to the audience that their marriage has joined them, giving the audience the idea of an amicable conclusion. The rhyming couplets are used by Shakespeare to show the audience that the couple have finally come together as one, and therefore reflects the couples love for each other. Rhyming couplets were used broadly by dramatists to round off acts in a play. The rhyming couplets are structured at the end of the play to round off the events between Titania and Oberon and show the audience that all is well. Couplets are used as a sign of love, not only did Shakespeare use them to show the love felt between Oberon and Titania but he used it to emphasise the spell (put on the lovers) and its importance; by Shakespeare doing this he is providing the couples with happiness as none of their children will be deformed. The importance of this is that by using rhyming couplets the audience are left with a memorable finish of him being a changed man, seeking the audience to feel as though he has redeemed himself. But whether or not the audience believed his intentions were genuine is debatable. During the Elizabethan Era fairies were thought of as little devils, and they were believed to be responsible for the cause of some of diseases. The audience would have found it difficult to believe that his intensions were good; this would therefore allow them to understand the importance of Oberons spell as the audience would have believed that fairies were bad and caused diseases, so Oberon doing the opposite and blessing them would be surprising. The suspicion of the supernatural is shows in the play through the play of Pyramus and Thisbe where Pyramus says ‘his eyes were green as leaks, sisters three.’ Through this quote the suspicion of fairies and their intentions can be seen by Pyarmus pointing out that their eyes were as ‘green as leaks’ the reasoning behind the suspicion of green eyes is that women seen to having green eyes would be declared as a witch as green eyes often appear cat-like and historically witches are tied to cats. The simile used here is powerful as it portrays a picture in the readers mind and allows them to conjure up an immediate opinion the statement ‘as green as leaks’ causes us to immediately think bad thoughts as leaks are not seen to be a nice vegetable and are usually disliked by many people. As with the