A Midsummer Night's Dream: Worlds CollideFour worlds collide in a magical forest on a summer night in William Shakespeare's mystical comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. The mythological Duke of Athens, on the eve of his marriage to the newly defeated Queen of the Amazons, is called by the mortal Aegeus to settle a quarrel. Hermia, the noisy daughter of Aegeus, refuses to marry the man her father betrothed to her, the lover Demetrius. Theseus sides with the authoritarian Aegeus and forces Hermia to marry Demetrius or face death. In defiance, Hermia and her love interest, Lysander, decide to run away and escape into the woods, only confessing their plan to Hermia's greedy friend Helena. Helena, in a rash attempt to win Demetrius's love, reveals the lovers' plan to him. He leaves to look for Hermia and Helena follows him in the hope of seeking his love. In another plane of imagination, Oberon, king of the fairies, desires to possess the Indian boy whom Titania, queen of the fairies, has adopted. When she refuses to abandon the boy, Oberon plots with his servant, Puck, and orders him to retrieve a flower to use for a spell in which the person under the spell falls in love with the first person seen. Oberon plans to use the spell on Titania and charm her into falling in love with a hideous creature while Oberon takes the Indian boy away. While waiting for Puck to return with the flower, Oberon witnesses Helena's pitiful persistence in conquering Demetrius. Once Puck retrieves the flower, Oberon takes enough to carry out his plan and leaves Puck with the rest, asking him to help the poor mortal whose love is unrequited. While Puck travels on his m...... middle of paper. .....asked to explain their crazy night, the only explanation that can be given is that of a dream. Therefore, there is no other way for Shakespeare to end this crazy tangle of lovers, mythological beings, fairies and artisans but to explain it as a dream. Throughout the play, with the nocturnal atmosphere and the repetition of sleep, the dreamlike state of the characters is transmitted to the audience. The play itself is inconclusive as the characters leave, with questions remaining in the audience's minds, but Puck's final monologue explains that bemusement is the appropriate emotion to feel during the play. He goes on to persuade the audience that the only logical explanation for the unusual and ambiguous nature of the play is that, just as the characters themselves experienced it, the audience has just awakened from a fantastical dream..