The Green World In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been analyzed using nearly every form of critical theory available. The introduction to the Arden edition of the play is the best representation of the many types of criticism, and their varied topics, that have been used when addressing the play. The play has been read as a New Historicist piece, a queer piece, a feminist piece, and many more, but many of these readings overlook where their analyses stem from. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the setting where almost the entirety of the plot takes place is referred to as a green world, a place where social order is reversed and boundaries are blurred. It is from this setting that many of the major points brought up by other literary analysis forms find their origin and support for their argument.
The term “green world” …show more content…
Frye explains that the green world is supposed to be an “ideal world” that consists of “innocence and romance” (Frye 169). Essentially, this world is a representation of spring, where youths are free to express themselves. However, spring is not the only metaphor presented in the green world, but it also a space that humans want to recreate in their daily lives. This does not mean that the green world is representing an escape from reality, but it is something to be incorporated (Frye 170-171). Another term that ties into this description of the green world is found in Laurel Moffatt’s article “The World as Heterotopia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The term “heterotopia,” a Foucauldian term, describes a separate place in similar terms to Frye’s green world. While most critics who write on the green world agree, for the most part, with Frye’s point of view on what the green world, including its place in comedy. Other critics, though, believe that the green world is not limited to comedy. Charles Forker’s article “The Green Underworld of Early Shakespearean Tragedy” proposes that the mortality of