<P> In 1987, Jan Lawson Hinely argued that this play has a therapeutic value . Shakespeare in many ways explores the sexual fears of the characters, releases them, and transforms them . And the happy ending is the reestablishment of social harmony . Patriarchy itself is also challenged and transformed, as the men offer their women a loving equality, one founded on respect and trust . She even viewed Titania's loving acceptance of the donkey - headed Bottom as a metaphor for basic trust . This trust is what enables the warring and uncertain lovers to achieve their sexual maturity . In 1988, Allen Dunn argued that the play is an exploration of the characters' fears and desires, and that its structure is based on a series of sexual clashes . </P> <P> In 1991, Barbara Freedman argued that the play justifies the ideological formation of absolute monarchy, and makes visible for examination the maintenance process of hegemonic order . </P> <P> During the years of the Puritan Interregnum when the theatres were closed (1642--60), the comic subplot of Bottom and his compatriots was performed as a droll . Drolls were comical playlets, often adapted from the subplots of Shakespearean and other plays, that could be attached to the acts of acrobats and jugglers and other allowed performances, thus circumventing the ban against drama . When the theatres re-opened in 1660, A Midsummer Night's Dream was acted in adapted form, like many other Shakespearean plays . Samuel Pepys saw it on 29 September 1662 and thought it "the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw ..." </P> <P> After the Jacobean / Caroline era, A Midsummer Night's Dream was never performed in its entirety until the 1840s . Instead, it was heavily adapted in forms like Henry Purcell's musical masque / play The Fairy Queen (1692), which had a successful run at the Dorset Garden Theatre, but was not revived . Richard Leveridge turned the Pyramus and Thisbe scenes into an Italian opera burlesque, acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1716 . John Frederick Lampe elaborated upon Leveridge's version in 1745 . Charles Johnson had used the Pyramus and Thisbe material in the finale of Love in a Forest, his 1723 adaptation of As You Like It . In 1755, David Garrick did the opposite of what had been done a century earlier: he extracted Bottom and his companions and acted the rest, in an adaptation called The Fairies . Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in 1816 . </P>

Main characters in a midsummer night's dream by william shakespeare