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A Midsummer Night's Dream Bully Quotes

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According to an article written by Christine Hsu, brain scans reveal that when one falls in love, their frontal lobes completely shut down. Without one’s frontal lobes, judgement is lost in many, and love ends up forcing one to get completely thrown off their mentality. When one forces someone else into doing something, it is obvious that this is a form of bullying. The curse of love hits characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with extreme force causing readers to question loves role in the play. After readers closely examine love in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one can see that love acts as a bully because it brings out jealousy in others, causes its victims to act out of their character, and starts fights. Similar to a bully, …show more content…

This is manifested when Titania says, “And this same progeny of evil comes/ From our debate, from our dissension;/ We are their parents and original” (2.1.118-120). When Titania speaks this quote she is saying that there are many consequences of her and Oberon’s debate. This fight in between them wouldn’t have started if Titania didn’t love the Indian Boy as much as she did because if she she didn’t care about the boy, she would just give him over to Oberon and Oberon wouldn’t have to fight her for it. The bully loves uses Titania’s love for the Indian boy to cause a fight in between her and Oberon. Another place in the text where it shows love’s tendency to trigger fights is when Hermia exclaims, “Puppet? Why so? Ay, that way goes the game./ Now I perceive that she hath made compare/ Between our statures” (3.2.304-306). This quote shows one of Hermia’s comebacks to Helena when they are bickering. It proves that love bullied Hermia and Helena into fighting because if Hermia had not been so deeply in love with Lysander, there would’ve been no reason that Hermia would have to fight Helena for him. Therefore, the bully love ran Hermia and Helena’s friendship into the ground with the argument it caused. A final example of love causing fights is shown when Helena argues, “You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!/ Your wrongs do set a …show more content…

A reason that could support one’s opinion that love is not a bully is that love gives everyone a happy ending in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, in Act 5, neither Hermia nor Helena spoke once. It seems as if that the love that led to this marriage meant for both women that they had to give up their voice, give up their independence. Looking back at the traditions of wifes in these old times, readers wonder if love is such a great thing, why does it take away the valuable gift of freedom from Hermia and Helena? Another reason why some could think that love is not a bully in this play is that now everyone is with there one true love, all relationships are improved. This is not accurate for many reasons. One being that multiple relationships in this play are built off of lies, which are never the marriages or friendships that last. For instance, Oberon lied to Titania about her relationship with Nick Bottom, which is why they stopped fighting about the changeling boy. Therefore, love did not improve this relationship because it forced Oberon to commit an act of jealousy, and as a result turned a marriage into a myriad of lies. Another case in which love did not improve a relationship is in the friendship of Hermia and Helena. Even though both women cannot remember the hurtful comments they said to each other now, such a big secret about the truth of how the marriages came to be

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