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Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Throughout the events which unfold in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare delivers several messages on love. Through this play, one of the significant ideas he suggests is that love is blind, often defying logic and overriding other emotions and priorities. Helena loves Demetrius unconditionally and pursues him despite knowing that he loathes her; conflict arises between Helena and Hermia, childhood best friends, over Demetrius and Lysander; and because she is in love, Queen Titania is able to see beauty and virtue in the ass-headed Nick Bottom. During much of the play, Helena relentlessly chases Demetrius, giving him love no matter how many times he spurns her. While in pursuit of him in …show more content…

However, it is Hermia who delivers one of the most scathing insults: “You, mistress, all this coil is ’long of you” (III.ii.338). Hermia means to say that all this turmoil has been brought about by Helena, as she cannot fathom why her lover Lysander is now in love with her best friend, and therefore can only accuse her. Similarly with the use of the word “thief”, she calls her “mistress” to further insult her, comparing her to a woman a man has an extramarital affair with—which is a dishonourable position—and Hermia may be taking the role of the man’s wife. Distressed that Lysander loathes her now, Hermia sets aside the fact that her and Helena have been close friends since childhood and she chooses to lay blame on Helena for her woes. In retribution for not giving up the changeling to him, Oberon places a spell on Titania, and as a result, she falls in love with Bottom, who has the head of an ass then. Since she is in love with him, she is able to see beauty and many other good qualities about him instead of the ignorance and naiveté readers see instead. As Titania awakes to Bottom’s singing, she falls in love with him instantly, saying, “And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me / On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee” (III.i.141-142). “Fair” is a word often used in this play to describe physical beauty,

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