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Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Good Essays

Since the beginning of time, the ideas of love and the carnal need of lust has plagued the human race. In William Shakespeare’s works, he too, often makes the distinction between love and lust, but what message is he trying to portray? Is he on team love or team lust? In William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream and in his poem “Venus and Adonis”, Shakespeare clearly argues that true love is a temporary, irrational, deceitful facade that cannot be trusted, and lust is the “real love” and the true concept that is driving the world.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, readers and spectators can clearly see that Shakespeare has an uncanny fascination for the aspects of love. Since this play is a comedy, its goal is to entertain and have a happy ending, but at the end of the play, audiences can question its idea of love. Due the fact that Shakespeare includes mythology in his writings and uses it as a foundation for his play, this is where the idea of love can become quite confusing and discredited. In order for a person to fall in love, they must be given a love potion in their eye by Cupid and must see their intended love at the exact moment when they receive the potion in order for it to work. When Oberon says, “Take some of it [the love potion], and seek through this grove. / A sweet Athenian lady is in love/ With a disdainful youth. Anoint his eyes…” (Act 2
Boudreaux 2
Scene 1 Lines 259-261), he is ordering Robin to put the potion in Demetrius’ eyes, so he can fall

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