Pettiness: Not Just For Humans

After our class discussion, I was interested in looking over A Midsummer Night's Dream with an eye attuned to the "darker elements" present, especially in conjunction with the fairies. Using the library's Shakespeare guide as a starting point, I stumbled onto an article discussing just that. For the most part, it expounded on things we had touched upon in class (darkness being a central part of the fairies' world), but then it made a fascinating connection: though the fairies follow the dark "like a dream" (V.i.393), they are anthropomorphized to exhibit human pettiness. Puck's sense of superiority to the mortals in the woods shows up a few times in the play. Oberon and Titania's relationship is portrayed like the common trope of jealousy, petty squabbles, and the nagging wife who ultimately submits to her much more knowledgable, rational husband. (Eew. Typing that made my fingers weep. But you get the point.) Though the fairies are portrayed as the wild, natural creatures, they are subject to a similar ordering of the world as the lovers are: a world where males reign supreme. These parallels with the human world take the fear out of the untamed natural world the fairies dominate. It allows the audiences of Shakespeare's day to even identify with the supernatural instead of being scared of its foreignness.