The Dark (and Light) Sides of the Moon Within a Midsummer 's Night 's Dream 's
Just as the sun serves as a symbol of bravery and resonates with masculinity, the moon has long been linked with feminine energy. It 's been associated with virginity, purity, infertility and chastity: aspects typically thought of as womanlike in nature. Its patron is the chaste Greek lunar goddess of the hunt, Artemis, who directly contrasts her twin brother Apollo, god of the sun and the arts. The moon is also associated with the feminine element of water, and holds dominion over the tides: it controls their flowing and ebbing, and can either draw the waters back or overflow them at a moment 's notice to completely devastate the land. It 's a celestial body that manages to embody both strength and grace in equal measure, all while retaining its distinctly female image amongst the celestial bodies. Perhaps it is this strong symbolic presence that allows the moon to become, in
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Shakespeare 's prose in A Midsummer 's Night 's Dream was deliberately intended to evoke this divisiveness, and to show the moon in her various ' 'phases ' ' of either feminist beacon or wrathful crone depending on the viewpoint of the speaker. All in all, despite attempts by the male characters to slander or lessen its strength via their words, the moon remained a mystical, watchful, occasionally wrathful entity that served as an impressive symbol of power to the Shakespearean woman who attempted to defy the men in their lives and make their own choices regarding their lives and their loves– and either succeeded thoroughly, like sweet Hermia living happily ever after with her chosen lover, or failed entirely, like the captured and compliant queens Hippolyta and