A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a tale of chaos and order, light and dark, sane and insane. The setting and environment help the reader understand the emotions the actors were portraying as they entered the woods. Demetrius’ line 192 of Act 2 demonstrates his feelings as he enters the woods, “and here I am, and wood within this wood.” Here he means that he feels confused as if his transition to the woods has brought about this change.
Shakespeare sets the scene where the young lovers are out in the woods unsure of their love. Puck the mystical fairy organizer even takes a jab at this by confusing the lovers with the spraying of his magical juice. Shakespeare takes you along this mystical journey into the woods and you are as lost as the characters.
The characters are Shakespeare’s version of young immature teens searching for love. The characters in the play old or young, mortal or immortal all become immature due to the chains of love. Oberon, the mighty King of the fairies and Titania, Queen of the fairies are constantly at each other’s throats over the young changeling. Shakespeare captures the tension by having both enter the play from different sides. He then leads us to see the growing resentment in Oberon when he sets his henchmen Puck to spray into the Queen’s eyes and trick her into loving a transformed donkey. This immaturity is very strange and Shakespeare makes a mockery of the “love” going around.
The question of the age of a character and his or her degree of maturity is always interesting, as Sanjay suggests here. I would guess that Titania and Oberon are ageless, perpetually adolescent in their susceptibility to erotic possibility. (Too many words ending in y in this sentence!)