Recently in multiple classes of mine we have talked about archetypes and how these theories, for want of a better word, affect all literature. Last semester I was exposed to Northrop Frye for the first time and I have come to believe that he is an absolute genius. I have not read a lot of his work because it is so dense that it takes me a long time read and understand what he is saying. I have had a hard time trying to decide how to blog about Shakespeare's plays because I didn't know how I felt about them. To try and remedy my dilemma I have decided to approach each poem from the perspective of evaluating archetypes and use Frye's work as a reference point.
As discussed in class A Midsummer's Night Dream is obviously a comedy but according to Frye a comedian must have a hero. I am having a hard time trying to decide which character is the actual hero. The hero could be a multitude of characters, especially when one considers the play within the play. So in all actuality there is two heroes. At first I was considering who would be the hero out of Lysander and Oberon but after further investigation into Frye's work I found that Lysander is most definitely the hero of a Midsummer's Night Dream. He leaves society, has to overcome an obstacle to win his lady love, and eventually re-enters society. However in my research I found the word Eiron which I had no clue what it meant. But it is from Old Comedy and incorporates philosophy of Aristotle. A character who embodies eiron makes myself appear less than he is in order to make others appear better than they are. I vaguely remember someone mentioning how Lysander did not seem good enough for Hermia but I believe that Shakespeare meant for Lysander to appear less intelligent that Hermia in order to make her look better. One speech we talked about in class was when Lysander was telling Hermia about the choice of love and how it is a "momentary as a sound". We were all surprised that Lysander would be able to be as poetic as this shows but if taken in the perspective of eiron, it is not surprising at all. The idea of eiron is what truly makes A Midsummer's Night Dream a true comedy because it has most of the main points of being a comedy. There is one more connection that I would like to make between this play and comedies. Frye refers to comedies as the Summer part of the year and so the title of the play should tip us off immediately of what to expect from the hero and the rest of the characters.
Eiron: A self-deprecating or unobtrusively treated character in fiction, usually an agent of the happy ending in a comedy and of the catastrophe in tragedy
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