Hi! I remember reading midsummers night dream in grade 7 (though only vaguely, considering my English wasn’t ready even for modern writing), but a thing that stands out to me was confusion that Titanias potion-induced infatuation with Bottom was portrayed as more explicitly wrong, as opposed to Demetrius’ love for Helena. My teacher sort of pointed it out, saying that D will live the rest of his life as if in a dream, not fully in control of himself. Is there any particular reason why?
This is one of those complicated aspects of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and maybe even one of the more disturbing things about this low-level unsettling play. It certainly comes up every time I teach it.
The question of whether the infatuation between Titania and Bottom is treated as explicitly wrong rather depends on whose viewpoint one takes. For Titania, it's definitely not a flattering thing to wake up and find she 'was enamoured of an ass': 'how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!' (4.2.76-78). It's easy to see why it might be loathsome for the queen of the fairies to find she had been in love with a donkey, and the edge of bestiality in that might be something your teacher may not have decided to mention in 7th grade. From Bottom's perspective though, the encounter is unspeakably precious, 'a rare vision' (4.2.203) that surpasses his senses. He feels he would be able to express his experience if his eyes could hear or his ears could see: if he had senses that weren't limitingly human. And of course, Bottom himself is not aware that he had the head of an ass, so from his side, the remarkable thing is that a lowly craftsman like him should have had such a tantalising liaison with a queen, and an otherworldly one at that. There's no overt condemnation of this, the widest social gap ever crossed in Shakespeare's plays. It's rather typical of Shakespeare to present things in this way, so that it's not actually all that explicit what is right or wrong. If you settle on a position, it just means you've arbitrarily privileged one character's view over another's.
Demetrius' case is a little more complicated. It's perfectly valid to see the end of the play as kind of disturbing, with a man under the effect of a potion and robbed of his free will for the rest of his life. But how one sees this depends on the function of the potion and the presentation of love.
From the beginning, Shakespeare goes out of his way to inform us that Demetrius is fickle. He was in love with Helena, and now wants to marry Hermia. As Lysander says,
Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head, Made love to Nedar's daughter Helena And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry Upon this spotted and inconstant man. (1.1.106-110)
And to make it clear that this isn't just Lysander talking jealously, Theseus confirms that this is true: 'I must confess that I have heard so much' (1.1.111). So Demetrius was originally in love with Helena, and, having wooed her successfully, has abandoned her for Hermia. He is accused, quite rightly, of inconstancy. This might seem a minor detail, but what it does show is that humans (and particularly men in this play) are fickle, and their feelings change even without magic potions to affect their feelings. This raises some pretty important questions, the foremost of which is whether we actually have any freewill in love to begin with. Do we choose who we fall in love with? If we did or could, then surely there wouldn't be inconveniences like unrequited love. In other words, is there really much difference between what the love potion does, and falling in love?
You might contend, of course, that where love is not directed by anyone in particular, there is some control behind the potion since it's administered intentionally by the fairies. It's no doubt because it feels like Demetrius is being controlled by someone else that there's an uncomfortable aftertaste about his condition at the end of the play. But from the way the fairies talk about themselves, it is possible to read them as the forces of nature, invisible to the human eye. The unnamed fairy who encounters Puck, for instance, says that he is off to 'seek some dew drops here / And hang a pearl in every cowslips ear' (2.1.14), and the fight between Oberon and Titania has led to bad harvests and floods, dampness and unseasonal cold. So the fairies are like nature itself, they control the waters, the rains, the dew, the seasons. And if that's the case, it's hardly extraordinary that they might control love, like cupid. They could well be personifications of the kind of chemical reactions we call hormones today, though that's obviously not all they are.
So yes, I think that ending the play with Demetrius still under the effects of the potion is significant and raises important questions about love, control and emotions. But for me at least, the more important question is not whether Demetrius is being controlled and lacking in free will, but the extent to which any of us has control over love, especially the kind of infatuation or falling in love which is central to this play.
