SOURCE: “Preposterous Pleasures: Queer Theories and A Midsummer Night's Dream,” in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Critical Essays, edited by Dorothea Kehler, Garland Publishing, 1998, pp. 369-97.

In the following essay, Green explores the homoerotic aspects of A Midsummer Night's Dream by examining Bottom's explication of his “dream,” Oberon's attraction to the changeling boy, and the relationship between Helena and Hermia. The critic contends, however, that the play ultimately upholds conservative cultural ideologies.

“how Happy Some O'er Other Some Can Be!”1

Pleasure and power do not cancel or turn back against one another; they seek out, overlap, and reinforce one another. They are linked together by complex mechanisms and devices of excitation and incitement.²

Of all the illusions produced by performance, for me the most immediate is the illusion that performance can accommodate all of my desires at once. This is the lure of performance and, of course, its failure...