Shakespeare's sources for A Midsummer Night's DreamA Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most performed plays: a delightful comedy, but full of enough potential tragedy to avoid to become sappy. Much of that tragic possibility comes from Shakespeare's sources, as he directly acknowledges in Act V. The plays proposed by Philostratus, all stories taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, show the unhappy endings that most likely arise from tales such as that of the four lovers of Shakespeare's work. , or fairy rulers torn apart by conflict. “The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung / By an Athenian eunuch with the harp” (Vi44-5) is the first of Philostrates' suggestions, and the most brazen. The centaurs are almost the epitome of the dangerous fairy world that underlies much of Shakespeare's work: half man, half beast, they are reminiscent of the similar, if funnier, condition of Bottom. Lust and jealousy cause the wedding banquet to be ruined, as the Centaurs' theft of the women causes a battle. Thanks to the fairy's intervention, in Shakespeare's play everyone is happy with their spouses: but how could the marriage have been ruined if Demetrius and Lysander both still loved Hermia? "These are the false ones of jealousy" (II.i.81) Titania shouts to Oberon, and their quarrel, also the result of lust, jealousy and unbridled nature, fortunately enters the drama only marginally. The law of Theseus and the fairy medicine prevail over the lustful and animal side of love and prevent such violence from ruining, or rather destroying, the comedy. “The revolt of the drunken Bacchanals, / Who tear the Thracian singer [Orpheus] in their rage” (Vi48-9) is an alternative, but equally significant selection. "The crazy Ciconian women" (p.259) cry "There is... in the center of the paper... scene. The metadrama surpasses the actual work, and what was tragic becomes "tragic joy," that which was a dire warning to abide by the laws of society or fear the consequences is gross entertainment and a farce The laws of Theseus have surpassed the bloody and passionate side of love: the man himself seems to have ceased his youthful loves for. settle down with a wife, Hippolyta, vigorous enough to match his martial nature. Indeed, he regards the sights as those he has already heard or told: for him they are old news, settled affairs, and he no longer needs to hear about them he only reason why "Pyramus and Thisbe" gets a hearing is its strange synopsis - and the equally strange presentation! Shakespeare shows the alternative endings that his play could have taken all too easily, to make us savor the happy one even more solution that he and the characters received. I found.