Shakespeare's comedies are generally less well-known than his crippingly depressing tragedies.
But the key exception to this principle is also one of Shakespeare's best plays,
with a colorful distinctive cast and a beautiful integration of Celtic folklore with classical mythology.
I refer, of course, to A Midsummer Night's Dream.
In this classical Greek rom-com (romantic comedy), we are exposed to two very different worlds and the hijinx that ensue
when the fairy denizens of the forest try to play matchmaker with the starcrossed love quadrangle of Athens.
There's romance.
Fairies
Blatant fanservice
Creepy manipulation
Fursonas
And an ending that's like 50% happy and 50% viscerally unsettling.
And so without further ado, I present you to Shakespeare's classic comedy:
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The story takes place in Athens but for some reason, the movie versions never use that setting.
Whatever.
The first characters we encounter are Theseus and Hippolyta who are due to be married.
Theseus, the duke of Athens, apologizes to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons.
No, not those Amazons.
For "wooing her with his sword".
[Snort, scoff]
And says that their wedding will be super awesome.
Hippolyta seems somewhat less thrilled to get hitched.
So now we meet the four main characters:
There are these two dudes: Demetrius and Lysander
And these two girls: Hermia and Helena
Hermia and Lysander are in love.
Demetrius is in love with Hermia.
Helena is in love with Demetrius.
Hermia's father wants Hermia and Demetrius to marry.
Got it? Great.
Theseus tells Hermia to marry Demetrius or die. Because Athens was a really progressive society.
But instead, Hermia and Lysander resolve to flee into the magic fairy woods because clearly, that's the superior alternative.
Hermia tells Helena that she can totally have Demetrius but Helena decides to tell Demetrius about their plan instead,
in a misguided effort to prove to Demetrius how she's really the one for him.
Instead of responding by fainting into her arms and declaring his undying love for her,
Demetrius instead charges off into the woods on his... bicycle?
[ANACHRONISM ALERT] "I'VE FALLEN OUT OF TIME AND CAN'T GET UP"
in order to chase down Hermia and force her to return to Athens.
Over to still more main characters:
We meet the rude mechanicals, a group of roughshod dudes who want to put on a play to honor Theseus and Hippolyta's marriage.
The only important one of these guys is Bottom so you can just ignore the other ones.
And finally rounding out the cast, we meet the fairy court:
Ok, so before we continue, this requires a little bit of clarification.
The modern view of a fairy probably looks something like this:
Tiny, adorable, generally friendly and surrounded by a comforting haze of glitter.
"That's not right," I hear you cry?
[Song] "You're wrong"
No.
These Shakespearean fairies are the old kind.
See, way back in the old days, fairies were seriously bad news.
[also generally less attractive than Tinkerbell] Actually, they were pretty much the definition of bad news.
They were the favorite superstition-rooted explanation for everything that went wrong in someone's life.
They were the things that led travelers astray,
seduced wives and husbands,
stole children and replaced them with fairy babies that would never grow up.
And generally, they wreaked havoc among unsuspecting humans.
These were the monsters of the dark. These were the boogeymen you warded off with cold iron and locked doors.
And with that in mind, we meet the court of Oberon happily getting drunk off their collective asses.
Here's where we're introduced to the last of the main characters:
Puck, the fairy trickster
No, not that one.
Not that one either!
Puck is Oberon's BFF, doing the majority of his dirty work.
Puck's a bit nervous though since Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of fairy respectively,
are currently in the middle of an argument over who gets the most recent baby kidnapping victim.
Titania was good friends with the kid's mother who died in childbirth. And out of respect for her dead friend,
Titania wants to raise the boy herself.
Oberon, meanwhile, wants a new servant.
So clearly, clearly, this is an argument of equal standing and validity of points.
So Oberon decides that a wacky revenge scheme is the way to go and orders Puck to find him a magic love flower.
The plan is to entrance Titania with a love potion so that she'll fall in love with the next ugly and/or ridiculous creature she sees.
Oberon figures that while she's entranced, he'll trick her into giving him the boy.
And then he'll release her from the spell. Real simple stuff.
But at that very moment, Helena and Demetrius come crashing through the undergrowth on their... bicycles?
Demetrius tries to escape Helena while she demands that he, uh, treat her as a spaniel.
[Disgusted shrug]
Upon seeing Helena's display of terrifying stalker tendencies, Oberon decides that she needs help.
But rather than the psychiatric help that we were all thinking, he decides that Demetrius should reciprocate Helena's love.
So he also tells Puck to go and find the Athenian guy and give him the love potion too.
However, what Oberon doesn't realize is that there are in fact two lovelorn Athenian dudes in his woods.
Predictably enough, Puck instead stumbles Hermia and Lysander sleeping in the woods.
And gives Lysander the love juice instead of Demetrius who is still trying to convince Helena to leave him alone.
Demetrius has managed to shake Helena's pursuit but Helena bumps into Lysander who wakes up and promptly falls in love with her.
Helena is severely weirded out by this sudden change of heart and flees into the woods
where Lysander hops onto his trusty bicycle and peddles furiously after her.
[DIGRESSION ALERT] "I'VE FORGOTTEN THE POINT AND I CAN'T GET UP" Ok, ok, seriously, I know this is a little point but what's with all the freaking bikes?
[DIGRESSION ALERT] "I'VE FORGOTTEN THE POINT AND I CAN'T GET UP" Is this some kind of secret triathlon advertisement and no one told me?
[DIGRESSION ALERT] "I'VE FORGOTTEN THE POINT AND I CAN'T GET UP" Because seriously, I'm pretty sure that's not there in the original text.
[DIGRESSION ALERT] "I'VE FORGOTTEN THE POINT AND I CAN'T GET UP" I've checked.
Anyway, a very confused Hermia wakes up all alone in the woods.
Puck continues on through the woods and finds the rude mechanicals where he decides on a whim
to cast an illusion on Bottom that will make him look as though he has an ass's head.
You see? It's a pun. 'Cause bottom, ass, hehe.
So the mechanicals freak out and run away.
And the lovestruck Titania is awakened by the sound of Bottom's melodious "singing".
Titania is so in love with Bottom that she decides that he'll stay will her in the forest forever.
And as a special favor, she'll also free him of his mortality which, well, honestly sounds like a pretty sweet deal.
But doesn't detract from the fact that 2/3 female leads radiate sheer essence of overly attached girlfriend (a meme).
So Puck goes back to report to Oberon when conveniently,
Hermia and Demetrius come crashing through the woods again on their bicycles.
What is even going on here?
So Oberon notices that Demetrius seems distinctly unmagic-ed and Puck realized that he enchanted the wrong guy.
Hermia storms off into the woods again.
And Demetrius decides to take a nap since following Hermia would probably result in personal injury.
Oberon realizes that Puck has ruined everything and orders him to go fix it,
by bringing Helena to the sleeping Demetrius so that he can force him to fall in love with her.
Given Puck's current success rate at carrying out orders without mistakes, I'm sure this will work out fine.
Titania and Bottom are getting married!
Or something. Let's just gloss over this part.
So now reaching lover critical mass in the woods, Helena and Lysander stumble upon the sleeping Demetrius,
who promptly wakes up and declares his undying love for Helena.
Helena at this point is convinced that they're playing a cruel joke on her and she flees on her
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] "BICYCLE"
And the two dudes pursue her.
And here's where Hermia finally chooses to join the fray,
demanding that Lysander explain why he left her all alone in the woods.
And Lysander's all like "It's 'cause I hate you."
And she's like "Uh, no, you don't."
And he's like "I totally do."
And poor confused Helena decides that Hermia must also be in on the joke.
So they have an actually tragic and heartrending argument where Helena asks why Hermia has forgotten their friendship.
And Hermia, completely baffled by what's going on, can't give her an answer.
Hermia decides that Helena somehow stolen her boytoy and their tragic philosophical argument turns into a
mud-flinging argument about whether or not Helena used her height to seduce Lysander.
Mud fight transition
What, you thought I was joking about the mud-flinging part?
Helena promptly forgets that she thinks the boys are playing a trick on her and demands that they pull Hermia off of her.
God, double-standard much?
So Demetrius and Lysander march off to do over Helena's affection while Helena runs for her life away from the enraged Hermia.
Sooo Oberon is unsurprisingly miffed at Puck's amazing ability to ruin everything.
And orders him to fix everything for real this time by making it too foggy for the men to find each other.
And then removing the love spell from Lysander.
Lysander, this guy.
Not this guy!
This guy.
Not this guy.
This guy!
Then Oberon will go and get that boy from Titania and remove the love spell from her too.
And that everything will be fixed forever.
Puck invokes his slapstick powers of wacky hijinx to distract the men and they both fall asleep.
Hermia and Helena finally exhaust their self-pity supplies and fall asleep too.
And then Puck fixed everything.
And then Oberon fixed everything too.
And then all of these fairies fixed their bikes for some reason.
And then Demetrius was allowed to marry Helena so Lysander was allowed to marry Hermia.
And then Bottom woke up confused and in a strange location with a few fuzzy memories of the previous night.
And then the mechanicals put on the play and it was hilariously bad.
And then everyone had a happy ending and it was totally adorable.
The end.
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE IT WHERE I LIKE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] YOU SAY BLACK, I SAY WHITE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] YOU SAY BARK, I SAY BIKE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] YOU SAY SHARK, I SAY HEY MAN
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] GEORGE WAS NEVER MY SCENE AND I DON'T LIKE STAR WARS
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] YOU SAY ROLLS, I SAY ROYCE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] YOU SAY GOD, GIVE ME A CHOICE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] YOU SAY LORD, I SAY CHRIST, I DON'T BELIEVE IN PETER PAN, FRANKENSTEIN OR SUPERMAN
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] ALL I WANNA DO IS
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE
["Bicycle Race" - Queen] I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE (x2)
This has been an overly sarcastic production ["Bicycle Race" - Queen] BICYCLE RACES ARE COMING YOUR WAY