In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, it is during Act IV that the four "lovers" wake up the edge of the woods in which they spent the previous evening and try to explain and understand the events of the previous night. This particular moment in the play illustrates a transcendental moment, where we, as an audience, observe young people trying to make sense of their experiences despite their absurd nature. It is in this process that the four characters make comments that lead us to think more about why Shakespeare juxtaposed the two worlds, what their significance is in relation to each other, why they seem so radically "separate" (and yet physically bordering), and why he chose to merge them in this way: by plunging the young men and women of Athens into chaos because of otherworldly fairy magic. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Because this play functions in such a confrontational way, it makes sense that to capture the lovers' true, natural reactions, they must physically straddle the two. worlds. They also do this mentally, as they awaken to what they perceive as reality while remaining perplexed by the events that have occurred in the past few hours in the night world. For example, Demetrius was awake and blood-raged from his lust, but he wakes up transformed – claiming to have found the reason, but not knowing how. He says: “My good lord, I know not by what power… / But by a certain power it is – my love for Hermia, / Melted like snow, seems to me now / Like the memory of an idle gaud” (IV .167-170). Demetrius' attempt to explain himself clearly fails in comparison to Athenian reason, but he speaks perfectly rationally, as far as we, the audience, know. He doesn't know the power that transformed him, and the explanation that the fairies did it wouldn't be useful to him anyway because it lacks logical sense. We also encounter a number of comments that imply being half awake, half asleep. (or half dreamy). Hermia says: “It seems to me that I see things with one half-open eye, / When everything seems double” (IV.i.191-192). Helen's response is: "And I found Demetrius as a jewel, / Mine, and not mine" (IV.i.193-194). Demetrius then concludes with: “Are you sure we are awake? It seems to me / That nevertheless we sleep, we dream” (195-196). Earlier, Lysander uses the expression “Half sleep, half wake” (IV.i.150). In these statements, the lovers share an experience of uncertainty and double consciousness. They simultaneously understand, to some extent, that they have just encountered a strange sequence of events, but also that they are awake in the "real world" which does not allow any of these events to occur. So, they lapse into rationalization – that these events were just a dream – and return to the castle. Here, the lovers do not exercise the wisdom that we saw Demetrius channel when he admitted his ignorance as to why he felt the way he did toward Helena. The only character who does this regarding the night world is Bottom, later on. The "split" they encounter directly parallels the split between the two worlds and the inability to bridge them, but at this point in the play they are as close as they can get to doing so as humans. Even more notable is the shared nature of this experience. The characters in this brief.