Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare, three completely different situations that have to do with different topics become intertwined in the magical forest locates in the suburbs of Ancient Athens. Throughout the play, there are many representations of the character’s emotions and feelings, such as jealousy, betrayal, and most importantly, love. The main reason everyone get into their troubles is due to one reason; love. Hermia and Lysander made a decision to elope because of their love for each other; Demetrius chases after her because he loves her; Helena chases Demetrius due to love, etc. In this comedy of Shakespeare’s, love is displayed as something fantastical and bizarre.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.

With its majority of scenes set in a fairy land, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream still feels much more authentic and tangible than many other love stories, such as Romeo and Juliet, because the play greatly exposes the real difficulties of love. Such difficulties come not from external causes, but instead from the dark vision of our own human natures. In real life, the various impediments of love that Lysander and Hermia have mentioned, including “war, death, or sickness,” actually barely exist, but what we do face is the all-thwarting tests given by our own hearts (Shakespeare 1.1.142). To be more specific, in “The Darker Purpose of A Midsummer Night’s

Shakespeare uses many different themes to present love; relationships, conflict, magic, dreams and fate. Overall, he presents it as something with the ability to make us act irrationally and foolishly. Within A Midsummer Night's Dream we see many examples of how being 'in love' can cause someone to change their perspective entirely. 'The path of true love never did run smooth' is a comment made from one of the main characters, Lysander, which sums up the play's idea that lovers always face difficult hurdles on the path to happiness and will usually turn them into madmen.

            The moon is often seen in literature as an allegory for love, virtue, and chastity. In Shakespeare's comedies, especially, the moon is personified as Diana, the Roman goddess of chastity. In these comedies, the foolish antics of lovers (literally, "lunatics") usually occur under the auspices of the chaste goddess, the lovers behaving like hounds about her feet that snap at each other in competition for her bounty. The moon as allegory for the lunacy of romance helps us understand Shakespeare's view of romance. In the

One of love’s most prominent characteristics is its ability to engulf the human mind in floods of pure emotion. In the short term, love is often associated with phrases such as hearts “skipping a beat” or “butterflies” in one’s stomach. As an act of intuition and instinct, love can have immediate physiological and psychological effects. As a result, love’s psychosomatic manifestations often lead their bewitched to direct as many efforts as possible toward winning another’s heart. With regard to this motif of physical and emotional infatuation, Shakespeare argues, being in love causes us to become inconsistent and to allow ourselves to be buffeted by the wild waves of our ever-changing desires. In the play,

Lysander and Hermia represent a love so strong it can make you think irrational. Love can mess with your feelings when you are willing to do anything for each other. This is a couple which refuse to deny their feelings and risk the consequences in order to be together. Hermia is a big personality with her own opinions. Hermia feels that she should be able to choose whom she marries. Hermia’s choice to be her man is Lysander, a charming, kind, hopeless romantic. It is not Hermia’s choice, it is her father’s Egeus who forces her to marry Demetrius. These two react to their situation in the only way they can think of. The two young lovers, while companions don’t agree with this coming together decide to experience life and confront the conflict of growth with one another (Kennedy and Kennedy 272).This love is so strong that they run away from their families. Being told “no” makes them want to be together even more, it’s the forbidden fruit that drives you to do things you wouldn’t normally do. Hermia and Lysander love is young and rebellious. Lysander sums up the meaning of the play and the relationship with Hermia with “Aye me, for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth…” (Shakespeare 1397). Lysander understands that if he and Hermia are to be together then there will be many obstacles they must face but they will face them together. Lysander is

In the play Midsummer Night’s Dream, the pursuit of love (whether it be true or untrue) is undeniably evident throughout the first two acts. The pursuit of love between Hermia and Lysander becomes more obvious when her

Hermia’s father told his daughter she could marry Demetrius, become a nun, or die. Hermia does not like any of those choices, so rebels against her father and decides to go and marry Lysander, her true lover. Love causes Hermia to choose Lysander, which shows how the human nature of love has controlling powers. However, in the end, Hermia’s father accepts the fact that his daughter has love for Lysander and allows them to marry, but not just because they love each other. The marriage of Hermia and Lysander results from Demetrius falling out of love with Hermia. In Hamlet, Hamlet decides to obey and remain loyal to his father, while in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia decides to go against her father’s requests because of her love for Lysander. While these Shakespearean plays produce two different outcomes between the human nature of love and loyalty, they both show how love controls the loyalty of a person to a loved one.

Hermia’s love for Lysander can be seen as genuine as she states ‘I would my father looked but with my eyes’ which means she wishes her father could see Lysander the way she does. This suggests that she is not under his spell as she truly sees him with her own eyes, and loves him. The audience also sees that she is very passionate about Lysander, as she chooses to ‘yield my virgin patent up’ and live the life of a nun or die rather than ‘wed Demetrius’. We also see the love between Lysander and Hermia is genuine later in Act 1 Scene 1 when ‘Exeunt all but Lysander and Hermia’, as it appears that Lysander is finishing Hermia’s sentences, indicating they are very familiar with each other, and he is comforting her lovingly. Lysander also states ‘true love never did run smooth’ which suggests they truly believe what they feel is true love. Another technique used by Shakespeare to emphasise their love is vivid imagery. Hermia’s speech declaring that she would meet Lysander in ‘the wood’ is filled with imagery suggesting love and passion, such as ‘by Cupid’s strongest bow’ and her reference to the Greek Goddess Venus: ‘By the simplicity of Venus’ doves’, emphasises her passion for Lysander.

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

Love is an emotion that has never been fully defined. Nobody really understands what love is. True love often brings challenges and obstacles between couples. If the love is one which is unrequited, it leads to hatred, jealousy, as well as weakness, when the love is requited, it appears as being strong and happy. Shakespeare depicts true love and its corresponding obstacles in the novel A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare in this novel indicates the characters Hermia and Lysander, Pyramus and Thisbe and lastly desperate Helena and Demetrius in their quest of love and the challenges they underwent. Love can be cunning at times as well as it does hurt. This is observed in the characters Hermia and Lysander who cannot live together due to the father of Hermia, Theseus, dissenting the love between these lovers, they instead elope together. The intentions of Theseus are to marry her daughter to Demetrius because of his liking of this gentlemen. The pursuit and exploration of love as depicted in the novel reveals the nature of romantic love as one that in its pursuit causes individuals be irrational foolish idiots.

Throughout history, the nature of love has been explored through the use of plays, art, literature, etc. In one of history’s most famous examples, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, four young lovers are seen battling the complications that surround love. In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream love is portrayed as something erratic and unpredictable that is an affliction of the eyes -as shown by the use of the love potion and the focus on physical beauty. However, the play is set up in a way that makes the audience feel sympathetic towards the character’s romantic endeavors.

Love is a very common theme that is seen in literature, and love is one of the most powerful things that can be felt for someone or something. Love can drive a person to do incredible or horrible things, and we see many forms of love that take place in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This is demonstrated in the book by many characters including Hermia and Lysander who demonstrate true love. Titania and Bottom show magical love. In the play, love is also the cause of a few broken hearts. While there is no one common definition of love that suits all of the characters, the romantic relationship in the play all leans to one simple rule laid out by Lysander, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a novel written by William Shakespeare, still holds on to some core values about love and marriage to this present day and should be taught in schools all across the nation. A Midsummer Night’s Dream depicts the complications of jealousy in young love and some of the issues with marriage that people had to face and still face in certain places in today’s society. There’s still forced marriages in certain areas but when it comes to jealousy and love, it’s something that every human being all over the world experiences.