A Midsummer Night’s Dream Essay: The Perspective of Theseus

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the true love between Hermia and Lysander is unstable because of many obstacles. The very first obstacle

Classical ideals of behavior between man and woman are presented in the play. Also Theseus seems to be noble and smart ruler, who cares about his nationals.

Hermia and Helena's relationship has changed greatly after the intervention of Puck with the love potion. Once best friends, they have become each others enemies, and all for the love of Lysander and Demetrius.

Mandy Conway Mrs. Guynes English 12 16 March 2000 A Critical Analysis of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" William Shakespeare, born in 1594, is one of the greatest writers in literature. He dies in 1616 after completing many sonnets and plays. One of which is "A Midsummer Night's Dream." They say that this play is the most purely romantic of Shakespeare's comedies. The themes of the play are dreams and reality, love and magic. This extraordinary play is a play-with-in-a-play, which master writers only write successfully. Shakespeare proves here to be a master writer. Critics find it a task to explain the intricateness of the play, audiences find it very pleasing to read and watch. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a

Lysander on the other hand was not able to hold on to his love for Hermia during the time in the woods. In the beginning he started out madly in love with Hermia and unable to hide his true feelings for her. He was forced by the spell to forget about Hermia and instead he wanted her friend Helena, because of the nectar in his eyes, which made him fall in love with the first person he sees (intervention of supernatural, to change destiny). Lysander chased Helena and begged for her love. The spell from the nectar caused Lysander to take a totally different view on his life. Now, he wanted Helena and he could not even stand to look at

Above all the tensions created by the discussion of marriage, Lysander deliver a quotes to his love Hermia. “The course of true love never did run smooth…” (Act 1, Scene 1, line 134) is a famous quote by Lysander. In the quote he conveys to readers that love is not perfect, it also has its ups and downs and that he and Hermia are going through a tough situation. Hermia and Lysander both love each other and have made a plan to meet in a forest and then escape Athens however the problem arises when Hermia has tells Helena this and she plans to tell Demetrius about this so that he will love her and not Hermia. The King of fairies− Oberon hears all this and decides to settle the dispute between all of them. He instructs his assistant Robin Goodfellow to search for Demetrius and put the love juice on his eyelids so that he is compelled to love Helena, he informs him about the dressing style of Demetrius in "thou shalt know the man by the Athenian garments he hath on" (Act 2, Scene 1, line 263-264). However there is a problem, in the forest there are two Athenian men dressed in Athenian garments and their identities were mistaken; instead of putting the love juice on Demetrius's eyelids Robin Goodfellow put it on Lysander's eyelids. Now Lysander "loves" Helena and wants to get away from Hermia. After discovering Robin Goodfellow's mistake, Oberon tries to correct this mistake by putting the same love juice in Demetrius's so that he loves Helena eyes however

The concept of how love blinds in Shakespeare’s, A Midsummers Night’s Dream is significant in viewing the fact how the ‘eyes of love’ are not always rational. When eyes and sight

Ryan: And of course, Lysander wakes up to Helena, falling madly in love with her. But then Helena´s all like, you´re mocking me, what did I do to deserve all this embarrassment. But Lysanders dead serious, he was all out for Helena and started following her through the forest

It is clear that the characters are much too young to understand love’s true consequences, yet this does not distract Lysander from attempting to elope with Hermia, but his quote would eventually come to fruition once they run into the woods. The first act also reveals that Lysander had previously wooed Hermia, and he succeeded in winning her over as she wishes to marry him over Demetrius, the man her father wanted her to marry. Meanwhile, Helena is heartbroken over Demetrius because he is still in ‘love’ with Hermia, despite the fact that she ‘loves’ someone else. An emotionally stable person would view their behaviors as irrational and ridiculous because of how far they are going for the sake of making their ‘love’ survive. It is a known fact that love makes people do crazy things, as according to Helena:

Once Demetrius and Lysander are bewitched with the love potion, their love for Hermia is entirely tossed aside in favor of singing Helena’s praises. Yes, they are under a spell, but it is worth noting that at no point in the play does any character make reference to any distinguishing features other than the difference in height between the two girls and perhaps a slight difference in their complexions. Their beauty is made much of, but really nothing beyond that is ever referred to. Also notable is that, as little distinction as there seems to be between the women, there is even less between the men. Both are equally determined to have Hermia when the play starts, and both men speak with equal venom to whichever girl happens to be in their way at the time. When Helena pursues Demetrius while he is pursuing Hermia, she meets with threats and retorts very similar to those that Hermia hears from the enchanted Lysander when he is pursuing Helena.

As the readers read A Midsummer Night’s Dream the choice of how Puck changed the play became evident, as they read act 2. In the book it stated “Radiant beautiful Helena! I feel like Mother Nature has allowed me to see into your heart, as if by magic” (2.2.110). This means that since Puck put the flower juice on Lysander’s eyes it made him love Helena. The second piece of evidence that proves Puck is the most important

“O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence! Love takes the meaning in love's conference.” Lysander's quote, “The course of true love never did run smooth,” is proven throughout the play as three couples face challenges and hardships as time goes on, that no love is easy and that anyone would do anything they can to keep the love they have. In “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” there are many examples of rough love, as seen with Hermia and Lysander when Lysander stops loving Hermia, when Helena love Demetrius but he does not love her back and with Titania and Oberon, as they argue over the changeling boy.

Love is such an abstract and intangible thing, yet it is something that everyone longs for. In Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the difficulty of love is explored through the obstacles that characters have to face while pursuing their loved ones. Those characters that are in love in the play were conflicted with troubles; however, the obstacles of love do not seem to stop them from being infatuated with each other. The concept of true love is examined throughout this play. By creating obstacles using authority and a higher power, Shakespeare examines the power of love. Through Hermia and Lysander’s loving words, it is reasonable to conclude that love conquers all if you believe in it.

If there was no such thing as sympathy, empathy, or love in our world, it would be a hard place to live. If there was no hard law or reason in our world, it would be a crazy place to live. Neither of these worlds would be anybody’s first choice as a home - it's just common sense take away either of these two fundamental aspects of life, and everything is immediately chaos. In fact, it is only in a world such as ours, where legal and human emotion work together, that we are happy. In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare recognizes this truth and uses the two settings to represent the city of Athens as law, order, civility, and judgment, while the woods represent chaos, incivility, dreams, and love.

Where Shakespeare's tragedies will tell the story, chiefly, of a single principal character, this is rarely the case with his comedies. The comedies are more social and deal with groups of characters. In the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the principal groups are, at first, introduced severally. Though, one group may interact with another (as when Puck anoints Lysander's eyes, or Titania is in love with Bottom) they retain separate identities.