	In turn, Helena bandies these very words at Hermia, accusing her of colluding with Demetrius and Lysander: "to call me goddess, nymph, divine . . . Wherefore speaks he this / To her he hates?" Again, the word "goddess" is used, but this time it is spoken with ironical doubt: Helena is rejecting her deification, she is rejecting reality's upheaval, and the polytheistic disorder that pervades the woods. Hermia, however, does not seem averse to polytheistic invocations. In the same scene, when Lysander denounces his love for her, she cries: "O, the gods forbid!" It is telling to note that in an earlier scene in Athens she invokes a singular god when she says: "God speed fair Helena". What has caused this transition, from the invocation of one god to many, and what does it signify? One interpretation is that by this point Hermia has given herself over to the lawlessness of the forest, and she recognizes that the unifying order and rule of Athens, represented in this case by monotheism, is no longer cogent.
	Even Helena is inclined to pluralize the word "god" at one point in the play. After Lysander and Demetrius both profess their love for her, she speaks piteously to Hermia, saying: "We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, have with our needles both created one flower". In opposition to her later denial of her newfound goddess status, she describes herself and Hermia as "two artificial gods", or two artful gods, capable of creation. This is a clear-cut polytheistic invocation of the word god, and by using the word in this manner, Helena is overturning Theseus's invocation of a monotheistic, paternal god. She is falling into the subversive nature of the forest, crowning herself and Hermia as not merely "goddesses", ideal images of femininity, but two full-fledged gods invested with the power of creation.
	Upon Bottom's awakening in the forest, following his amorous night with Titania, he exclaims: "God's my life, stolen hence, and left me asleep!" The word "god" has been reduced to its singular form once more, signaling an awakening from the surreal otherworld of the forest's nightscape and the characters' subsequent return to normalcy. As reality dawns anew, several other invocations of a singular, monotheistic god follow, indicating that Athenian order has been restored. In the next scene, Flute uses the phrase: "God bless us", and while Demetrius watches the mechanicals bungle through their Pyramus and Thisbe play, he remarks: "God warr'nt us . . . God bless us."
	This speaks to the general theme of A Midsummer Night's Dream: reality can be subverted, saturnalia and polytheistic chaos can rule for a time, but ultimately misrule is only a transitory state that will subside into a stable equilibrium of order, but even still, the residue of fantasy may linger.
