A Midsummer Night’s Dream Irony Quotes

Lo, she is one of this confederacy!
Now I perceive they have conjoined all three
To fashion this false sport in spite of me. –
Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid,
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived,
To bait me with this foul derision?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us? O, is it all forgot?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Helena accuses her childhood friend Hermia of joining in a conspiracy with Lysander and Demetrius to make her the target of a sick joke and cruel mockery. She calls Hermia an "ungrateful maid." The two men have been enchanted by a love potion to make them fall in love with Helena. But none of them knows that, while the amused audience does – one of the many examples of dramatic irony in the play.

Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn,
To follow me and praise my eyes and face?
And made your other love, Demetrius,
Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,
To call me goddess, nymph, divine and rare,
Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this
To her he hates?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Helena is very confused and upset about the situation when Lydander and Demetrius both declare their love for her. She believes that they and Hermia have conspired together to make fun of her. This is an example of dramatic irony, as the audience knows the two men are under the effects of a love potion.

LYSANDER: Hang off, thou cat, thou burr! Vile thing, let loose,
Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.
HERMIA: Why are you grown so rude? What change is this,
Sweet love?
LYSANDER: Thy love? Out, tawny Tartar, out!
Out, loathèd med’cine! O. hated potion, hence!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Lysander uses a series of metaphors to insult Hermia, calling her cat, a burr, a Tartar and disgusting medicine. He compares her to a serpent, using a simile. Referring to Hermia as "loathèd med’cine" and "hated potion" is ironic, seeing as Lysander is the one drugged by Oberon’s love juice. A confused Hermia cannot understand the transformation in her "sweet love" and why he is now so mean to her.

What, can you do me greater harm than hate?
Hate me? Wherefore? O me, what news, my love?
Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. A stunned Hermia cannot understand Lysander’s sudden change from love to hatred of her. She says that she still is the same person that she was when Lysander loved her, and asks is he not Lysander. But the audience knows that he is not quite the same anymore, having been transformed by a fairy spell – an example of dramatic irony.

LYSANDER: Where art thou, proud Demetrius? Speak thou now.
PUCK [in Demetrius’ voice]: Here, villain, drawn and ready. Where art thou?
LYSANDER: I will be with thee straight.
PUCK [in Demetrius’ voice]: Follow me, then, to plainer ground.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Puck’s ability to transform himself is not confined to shapeshifting. He can also mimic other people’s voices. Here he tricks Lysander by disguising his voice to sound like Demetrius. Since the audience is in on the deception, this is an example of dramatic irony.

Lysander, speak again.
Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?
Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Demetrius calls out to Lysander to reveal himself and say something. He labels him a coward and a runaway for hiding himself away. What he doesn’t know is that the mischevious Puck is manipulating the situation and mimicking the voices of the two Athenian rivals. Since the audience is aware, this is dramatic irony.

PUCK [in Lysander’s voice]: Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com’st thou not?
DEMETRIUS: Abide me, if thou dar’st, for well I wot
Thou runn’st before me, shifting every place,
And dar’st not stand nor look me in the face.
Where art thou now?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Puck, who is invisible and speaking in Lysander’s voice, challenges Demetrius to come to him and brands him a coward. Completely fooled, Demetrius accuses Lysander of running away and not daring to face him. This is dramatic irony as the audience are in on the trick.

Nay, then, thou mock’st me. Thou shalt buy this dear,
If ever I thy face by daylight see:
Now, go thy way. Faintness constraineth me
To measure out my length on this cold bed.
By day’s approach look to be visited.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. When Demetrius hears the voice of Lysander calling him, he promises his love rival that he will pay dearly if he ever sees his face in the daylight. The macho Demetrius, bent on revenge, doesn’t realize that it is Puck mocking him in Lysander’s voice. This is dramatic irony.

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was – there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had – but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Bottom is at his bombastic and comic best when he wakes up in the forest, ass-head gone, and makes this speech about the previous night’s strange happenings. As he thinks back on Fairy Queen Titania taking him as her lover, he decides that it was all simply a dream. He says that a man would have to be "an ass" if he thought he could explain the dream – ironically Bottom was an ass at the time! Still he believes his dream is worthy of turning into art, he hopes that Quince will write a ballad about it and call it "Bottom’s Dream." In his speech Bottom manages to be both serious and funny at the same time. His attempt to rewrite the Bible is very funny, as he mangles the quote from 1 Corinthians 2:9 – "The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was." In his garbled version, he gets all the body senses mixed up.

Get your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the palace; every man look o’er his part; for the short and the long is, our play is preferred. In any case, let Thisbe have clean linen; and let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall hang out for the lion’s claws. And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath, and I do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy. No more words: away! go; away.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 2. The irrepressible Bottom, ass-head gone and magically restored to normal, gives his fellow actors advice on how to best please the royal audience with their play. With comic irony he warns them to avoid onions and garlic so that they will have agreeable breath for the "sweet comedy" they are to perform for the Duke.

THESEUS: The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.
BOTTOM: No, in truth, sir, he should not. "Deceiving me" is Thisbe’s cue. She is to enter now, and I am to spy her through the wall. You shall see it will fall pat as I told you. Yonder she comes.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. This is another wonderful example of how dreadful the acting of the Mechanicals is and farcical their performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. Right in the middle of the play actors break character to address the spectators. Theseus ironically comments that maybe the wall should curse back, and Bottom comes straight out of character to tell him no, it shouldn’t. Bottom takes his acting so seriously and believes he is so good, that he needs to explain the workings of the play to Theseus. He doesn’t get it that Theseus is simply poking fun at the play and players.

You, ladies, you whose gentle hearts do fear
The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
May now perchance both quake and tremble here,
When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
Then know that I, as Snug the joiner, am
A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam.
For if I should as lion come in strife
Into this place, ’twere pity on my life.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. The Mechanicals’ farsical performance of the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe continues with Snug entering playing the role of Lion. He addresses the ladies in the audience, concerned that they may tremble and shake at the sight and roar of a wild lion since they fear the smallest mouse. So he reassures them that he’s not really a lion, but is Snug the carpenter. He doesn’t appear to grasp the nature of theatre and that the audience will be able to distinguish between a pretend lion and a real one. There is also irony in his comment about the ladies being so fearful, as his female audience includes Hippolyta, the Amazon warrior queen.

No epilogue, I pray you, for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse, for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Theseus says that no epilogue is necessary, as everybody is dead and no one needs to be blamed. This is a bit of irony, as Shakespeare does provide an epilogue to his play. It comes in the words of Puck’s final speech – "If we shadows have offended." He tells the audience that if they are offended by what they have seen to remember it as "but a dream."
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