` A Mid-Summers Night Dream`.

There are many contrasts in this play one significant contrast is between the normal , sunny Athens and the dark , magical world of the woods

The forest is ruled by the magical beings Oberon and Titania . It is a dark place teeming with fairies - a strange and forbidding world , but the place where the serious love-related problems of the human lovers are resolved

The forest is dominated by the then-quarreling Oberon and Titania . In the forest we see the many difficulties that often accompany love . For example , Oberon and Titania are in

disagreement , and are quarreling over each other 's infidelities Oberon was supposedly in love with Hippolyta and Titania with Theseus . Because of their prolonged disagreements the land has become difficult , visited by floods and disease

The forest suggests fear and confusion , but it is the place where struggles with issues of love and other personal problems are finally resolved . For example , Hermia seeks freedom from Egeus in the woods , and also encounters her other issues there - her arranged marriage and her real love

The forest is where the more serious ' events of the play unfold , and where the lovers ' problems are drawn out . But the forest is also where the human characters situations are improved . It can be understood as a trial zone , a place that the lovers had to confront in to fix life 's problems

In contrast the palace is where ordinary human rulers reside . The palace in Athens is where the less serious of the events transpire (and conclude . In the palace , the mundane returns , and when the lovers report the previous night 's events , Theseus doubts the validity of the events in the forest as reported by the lovers

The unpolished Pyramus and Thisbe play presented in the palace parallels , yet at the same time contrasts sharply with , the events in the woods . The supposedly serious story of Pyramus and Thisbe , which should have come off as a tragedy , becomes comical and nonsensical in the hands of the incompetent actors it is a light and comical satire of the problematic events that transpired in the forest

However , the play in the palace mirrors the events in the forest the difficulties of love and the confusions that occurred in the woods are again invoked , although this time in such a bugled manner that it serves only as comic relief (there is , however , one serious aspect of the events in the palace - the demonstration of what could possibly have happened - that untimely deaths could have been met

In spite of the differences (and the apparent inferiority of humans , who have no hold on magic , however , the events in the realm of the fairies and that of the humans have similarities , specifically , that the residents of both realms are subject to the difficulties and confusions that often accompany love ...