• „for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, his Love labors wonne, his Midsummers night dreame, & his merchant of Venice".

• Ever shall in safety rest

• Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
  Draws on apace.

Secondly, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is comparatively short, although there are many opportunities - some explicitly stated, others of an implicit nature - to lengthen the whole through dances and songs, something which would add to the festive celebrations of a wedding ceremony. Moreover, the implication here, of a lavish visual and aural extravaganza, suggests that Shakespeare had at his disposal considerably greater resources than was uaually the case.

lt is highly likely that Queen Elizabeth I was present at the play's first performance. This can be deduced from compliments built into the work which would very positively impress her. For example, it was well-known that she placed great value on the love of her subjects and cherished this greatly; so Theseus, when Philostrate and Hippolyta fear that the mechanicals’ play will be more farce than comedy, will have nothing of their protests. The quality may leave much to be desired, he says; nevertheless, it is the love which they thereby show that he most values, and he wishes to show how much he values it by seeing - or enduring - their little performance, however awful it may be.

lf we take all of these factors into consideration, and add to them the question of style, we can tentatively conclude that the play was written to be performed at the wedding of Elizabeth Carey and Thomas, the son of Henry, Lord Berkeley, on 19 February 1596. The bride was one of Queen Elizabeth's goddaughters and granddaughter of the Queen's Lord Chamberlain, so we can assume with a fair degree of certainty that Eliasbeth I was present. Moreover, Shakespeare's troupe of actors were under the patronage of this same Lord Chamberlain, taking the official title a year later of The Lord Chamberlain's Men. And the bride's father, who inherited the troupe together with his father's title, was a notable patron of music.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is, to all intents an purposes, a comedy. However, we should not lose sight of the potential for tragedy that it contains. For example, Oberon feels the need to restore order in the Fairy World; yet he also wishes revenge on Titania for her treatment of him, he is jealous of her "Indian boy" - and also of her affection for Theseus. At the end, Titania willingly submits to her husband's wishes again, but we are perhaps left with a feeling of unease - the King of the Fairies has shown an alarmingly human trait.
    Of more importance ist the fate of the lovers. It seems at first that at least one of them will end unhappy... and later, through Puck's error, all four appear destined for distress and even disaster. The scene in the woods where all four meet up, with both men pursuing an unhappy Helena, and Hermia to all intents and purposes abandoned, can be seen as highly comic; we have preferred to regard it as bordering on the tragic, Puck's comment

    Lord! What fools these lovers be

being most ambiguous. It is true that all ends happily; but, once again, there are moments where the outcome can be said to be in doubt.

Similarly, one should avoid the opposite danger, that of dismissing the play or any of its component parts as farce. This danger is most likely to arise in conjunction with Bottom. He is totally preoccupied with himself - his suggestion for a prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe contains the revelation that he, Nick Bottom the weaver, is playing the hero's part; he wants to play all the parts in the play himself; his constant malapropisms reveal his great self-confidence - after his demonstration of his talents in playing a "tyrant", he cannot resist the comment

    This was lofty.

Yet we cannot help liking the fellow, forming a bond of affection with him which would be impossible with a farcical figure. When he is transformed, the thinking spectator may well also find himself thinking about the situation in which Bottom finds himself, as well as laughing at him - indeed, possible laughing more with Bottom than at him. And he does show sense: his suggestions for improving the mechanicals' play are sound, as can be seen from the tendency of the mechanicals to turn to him for the solution of problems, rather than to the theoretical producer, the rather clueless Quince. Bottom may be turned into an ass for part of the play; yet he copes superbly with the situation, adapting instantly like the good actor that he is. And we can say that, in himself, he is truly no ass. Even when he has been transformed, he makes one of the most sensible and relevant speeches of the whole play:

    And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays. 
    The more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends.

As regards Pyramus and Thisbe, it is important to take two factors into consideration. First of all, there is the social aspect, as touched upon above: the play has a symbolic nature, in that the mechanicals are doing their very best to honour their Duke. That best may not be much, but Theseus, at least, knows how to value it. Secondly, it, too, is picking up the theme of love, and, as such, is saying as much (in this case with regard to the blind exercise of perental authority) as the rest of the play proper - one might wonder what the ultimate fate of Lysander and Hermia might have been, had the Fairies' intervention not taken place. Would they, too, have ended in disaster? There is no ruler to step in for Pyramus and Thisbe, no one to temper the black-and-white order of the law with humanity and demonstrate the greater importance of love over a blind insistence upon the exercising of authority. In the absence of a benign ruler, Egeus' insistence upon his rights as father would probably have had fatal consequences for the two lovers...

In general, we can say that the dominant themes in Shakespearean comedy are the course of true love coupled with threat posed and then averted. By the end of Act IV in the Dream, therefore, the plot is completed - the lovers problems have been resolved. Titania and Oberon are happily back together, all is set for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, Bottom is safely restored to the mechanicals: all four threads of the play have satisfactorily sorted themselves out, after becoming interwoven and tangled with each other. 

What, then, is the role of Act V?

First of all, we can see it as devoted to mirth and benedicticn - as befits a play written for a marriage ceremony. Secondly, while there is no lack of links between the four groups elsewhere in the play, it is not until the final act that all four come together in one action, symbolising and emphasising their togetherness and interdependence.
There is neither room nor time here te touch upon the many interlinkings between the groups - Titania's passion for Bottom placed next to that of Lysander for Helena; Puck and Bottom as counterparts in leading comics, the jester conscious of every joke, the clown seeing none except the one which he imagines his colleagues are playing on him; the „invisible“ stage-audience of Oberon and Puck, long before Pyramus and Thisbe; the clash of love and authority in the pairs of Egeus-Hermia, Oberon/Titania, formerly in Theseus/Hippolyta, implicit in Pyramus/Thisbe. As one critic has commentated,

    the plot is a pattern, rather than a series of events occasioned by human character and action.

Furthemore, there is a clear sequence running through all levels of cause and effect, one conducted

    by balancing a number of self-contained groups, one against the other.

Accordingly, it is only in the coming together of all four groups in the final act that the richness of the pattern, the rhythmic design, can be said to be complete.