The Second Antidote in A Midsummer Night's Dream
Scholars think Demetrius ends the play drugged. They’re dead wrong
Argument
At the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play published 425 years ago as of 2025, Demetrius is NOT left drugged. Rather, Oberon restores him with a supernaturally sound sleep. Therefore, Dream is a complete, unqualified comedy. [1900 words; 9 min]
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Scholars call A Midsummer Night’s Dream a qualified comedy, believing one of the couples—Demetrius and Helena—don’t live happily ever after.
They’re dead wrong.
In fact, it’s the quintessential comedy, culminating in the marriages of Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena, fairy blessings to ensure both the couples’ faithfulness and fruitfulness, and festivities that are to last an entire “fortnight.”
Here’s the 425yo problem—and its solution. A solution that may surprise you with its simplicity.
The problem
Near the end of the play, Oberon restores one of the young Athenian males, Lysander, but seems to forget about the other, Demetrius. “Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye,” he instructs Puck. Puck proceeds to do exactly that, applying the “remedy” to Lysander’s sight. As for Demetrius, there is no mention of him receiving the same antidote. Therefore, scholars conclude he remains indefinitely drugged.
“For many critics and audiences, there is a residual unease about the fact that Demetrius does not receive an antidote,” says Peter Holland, editor of the current Oxford critical edition of the play. Supposing the Athenian man remains “under the influence of the charm,” Holland adds,
If the play moves from the world of Cupid to that of Diana, Demetrius appears to stay in the world of Cupid, still charmed by the ‘Flower of this purple dye, / Hit with Cupid’s archery’.
Similarly, in her influential “A Modern Perspective: A Midsummer Night's Dream,” Catherine Belsey remarks, “The plot leads up to the marriages of the lovers, but it does not quite confirm the distinction we might expect it to between true love on the one hand and arbitrary passion induced by magic on the other.” Believing “Demetrius still has the love-juice on his eyes,” Belsey comments,
If marriage is a serious social institution, it seems to rest on a remarkably precarious base.
Precarious indeed.
For being “charmed” doesn’t just mean being captivated or spellbound in some conventional sense.
As the night of enchantment makes abundantly clear, it means loving at once violently, arbitrarily and involuntarily.
Means following every fleeting carnal impulse.
Means sexual subjugation—as opposed to sexual sovereignty.
Means loving “not with they eyes but the mind,” that is, loving an abstract idea as opposed to an actual person.
More specifically, it means abject enslavement to the blind god of blind lovers, Cupid.
According to definitions found inside the play itself, Cupid is the god of infidelity, his subjects serially unfaithful. As Helena says, “As waggish boys themselves forswear, / So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.”
More generally, he’s the god of violent, transient sexual passion, instigating desire that’s utterly incompatible with mutual, lasting love—an obvious point but one many critics have somehow failed to apprehend. Early on, Oberon tells Puck about “Cupid’s flower” and its efficacy. The juice extracted from this plant, says Oberon,
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
To dote means “to be silly, deranged, or out of one’s wits” (Oxford English Dictionary 1). Thus, to madly dote is to go altogether crazy. Of course, the plot itself illustrates this, and to hilarious effect. For instance, the narcotic compels Titania to fall for Bottom, a “monster” who is part man and part donkey.
Therefore, if the prevailing view is right—if, as Holland says, Demetrius “stays in the world of Cupid”—then he remains completely irrational, his “love” unstable in the extreme. With Demetrius and Helena’s marriage doomed from the start, Dream is no comedy at all. At best, it’s a “problem comedy,” a category of plays with unresolved endings.
That “fortnight” of festivities? Apparently it’s meant ironically, even sardonically.
The resolution
But is that right? Does Demetrius remain charmed? Not only is the answer No. It’s an emphatic, demonstrable No half a dozen times over.
Nor does Oberon employ one antidote alone. He employs two.
The main problem with the prevailing view? There’s nothing in the text to support it. That is, there’s zero evidence of Demetrius’ persistent enchantment. The opposite: there’s every indication he’s changed. Three symptoms in particular are noticeably absent.
First, his speech is no longer absurdly hyperbolic. The night before, Demetrius had made a number of preposterous assertions about Helena’s beauty, calling her “perfect” and “divine,” and declaring that compared to her bright eyes, “crystal is muddy.” By contrast, the next morning, his speech is substantially plainer. “And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, / The object and the pleasure of mine eye, / Is only Helena,” he says, professing his love for and commitment to her.
Second, he’s no longer belligerent. At the end of Act 3, Demetrius repeatedly insults and threatens Lysander, calling him a “runaway” and “coward” and threatening to impale him at sunrise. As his energy fails, he tells Lysander, “Thou shalt buy this dear / If ever I thy face by daylight see.” Repeating the threat, he says, “By day’s approach look to be visited”—his final words before falling asleep.
If critics are right and Demetrius remains unchanged, one would expect him to wake up, see Lysander, and instantly make good on his threat, “visiting” his fellow with a violent attack. Instead, his animosity is simply gone—a fact which Theseus notices, comments on, and finds extraordinary. “I know you two are rival enemies,” Theseus tells the two men, before asking,
How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far from jealousy
To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?
Before there was “hatred” and “enmity.” Now there is “gentle[ness].” Before there was “jealousy.” Now there is “concord.” Before the two were “rivals.” Now they appear to be friends. It isn’t that Lysander is composed and Demetrius still combative. Rather, the friendliness appears to be common, the change in attitude shared. Clearly, the morning has brought with it a sharp break, and the change is seen not in one man but both.
Third, Demetrius is no longer lovesick. The night before, he had begged Helena for “remedy.” The next morning, he speaks of his new-found “health.” “But like a sickness did I loathe this food,” he says,
But, as in health, come to my natural taste,
Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,
And will forevermore be true to it.
Oberon’s antidote is called an “herb” and “bud” and “remedy.” Therefore, Demetrius’ reference to his “health” forms part of a larger pattern of references to healing and indicates that, along with the others, he too has been released from the detrimental effects of Puck’s floral extract. Gone is the hyperbole, the jealousy, the belligerence—and gone too is the lovesickness.
Nor is there any gap between Lysander and Demetrius in the final part. Were one man under the influence of Cupid, the other Diana, there could be little mistaking the disparity. In general, the difference is anything but small. The difference is between being “fancy-sick” and “fancy-free,” between possessing, or not possessing, reason, judgement and self-determination. In the case of Titania, the difference is between loving or loathing a bare-brained mechanical with the head of an ass.
But if Demetrius doesn’t receive the antidote “Diana’s bud,” how has he been transformed? Because Oberon uses multiple means in restoring the lovers and readying them for marriage. Most notably, he gives the lovers rest, singing them to sleep with a lullaby and then ensuring their slumber is extraordinarily serene and therefore salutary.
In Act 4, Scene 1, with the lovers before them on the ground, Oberon calls on Titania to
strike more dead
Than common sleep of all these five the sense.
Titania responds,
Music, ho—music such as charmeth sleep.
As Oberon’s words indicate, the sleep is no “common” sleep, but one that wholly deadens the senses, allowing for a supernaturally deep—and therefore supernaturally regenerative—level of stillness and repose.
Further, the music is such as “charmeth” sleep, a verb that suggests that the sleep constitutes a counter-charm to Puck’s love-charm, neutralizing the effect of the earlier spell. In other words, like “Diana’s bud,” the rest harbors a counteractive potency, undoing the lovers’ enchantment and nullifying the influence of Cupid.
Two stage directions draw attention to the importance of the sleep. At the end of 3.2, a direction reads, “They sleep all the act.” A hundred lines later, another direction reads, “Sleepers lie still.” Here, the term “still” conveys something about both the duration and quality of the sleep. Before, Demetrius and the others were extremely restless. Now, unmistakably, right there in front of us, for as many as 200 lines of text, they all lie peacefully.
Immediately after asking Titania to “rock the ground whereon these sleepers be,” Oberon speaks of the happy ending that will result. “Now thou and I are new in amity,” he tells his wife,
And will tomorrow midnight solemnly
Dance in Duke Theseus’ house, triumphantly,
And bless it to all fair prosperity.
There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be
Wedded with Theseus, all in jollity.
As these lines suggest, the happy ending results from the exceptionally sound sleep the lovers experience at the hands of the fairy king and queen. Perhaps the most notable detail here is the inclusion of Demetrius and Helena as a pair of “faithful” lovers. Clearly, Demetrius is no longer subject to the boy-god who is “perjured everywhere.”
Later, in his final speech in the play, after instructing his fairy-teams to bless the lovers, Oberon remarks,
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be.
Of course, the “three” couples are Theseus and Hippolyta, Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena. As such, this constitutes an explicit remark on Demetrius’ new-found capacity for fidelity and thus his transformation. Earlier on, it was Oberon himself who drugged Demetrius (see 3.2.104). If he remained ill, Oberon would obviously know. Instead, not once in the final part does he give any hint of the Athenian man’s enduring intoxication.
Finally, sleeplessness is one of the effects of Cupid’s drug. As Puck charms Lysander, he enjoins,
When thou wak’st, let Love forbid
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.
If sleeplessness is a symptom, sleep itself is a cure. Were it the case that Demetrius never went to sleep, it would be apparent his spell never wore off. What actually happens, of course, is that Demetrius goes to sleep and wakes up along with everyone else.
In Demetrius’ sleep, then, we have the cause of the transformation we see the next morning, his subjugation to Cupid ending when he experiences what Love forbids—a good night’s rest.
Therefore, Dream is a comedy, no qualification needed.
Wish to read more of my writing on A Midsummer Night's Dream? Check out Is Hermia Black? The dark lady that never was.