SOURCE: "A Kingdom of Shadows," in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576-1649, edited by David L. Smith, Richard Strier and David Bevington, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 68-86.

In the following essay, Montrose analyzes A Midsummer Night's Dream as it displays Shakespeare's concern with the artist's place in the Elizabethan social order.

I

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the interplay among characters is structured by an interplay among categories—namely, the unstable Elizabethan hierarchies of gender, rank and age. For example, Titania treats Bottom as if he were both her child and her lover—which seems entirely appropriate, since he is a substitute for the changeling boy, who is, in turn, Oberon's rival for Titania's attentions. Titania herself is ambivalently benign and sinister, imperious and enthralled. She dotes upon Bottom, and indulges in him all those desires to be fed, scratched and coddled that render...