William Shakespeare 's A Midsummers Night 's Dream

Oberon and Puck are the two biggest contributions to the overall crazy theme of love in the story. The fairy king, Oberon, has a disagreement with the fairy queen, Titania, which is what causes Oberon to come up with his ideal. Oberon's idea was for Puck, one of the fairies under him, to go find a rose with magical properties. The rose is what gives the two fairies the power to make one individual fall in love with another. The flower is used simply by placing the juice of the flower on one's eye lids, and when they wake up they will instantly love that person relentlessly. Shakespear's addition of the magical love flower to the story causes love between the characters to go out of control. As for the four lovers, the magical

Oberon, riddled with jealousy over his queen’s beloved “changeling”, plots to make a fool out of Titania with his magic potion so he may steal away the child. Oberon's love-potion has the same effect of that of the famed Cupid's arrows, it charms the sight of those it is anointed upon, and gets them to fall in “love” with the first creature they see. Oberon anoints the eyes of Titania and she ends up falling in “love” with the first creature she sees, Bottom, an actor who is rehearsing in the woods, who’s head has been turned into that of an ass by Puck. Oberon plan is successful, he is in fact able to steal away the child while his queen dotes upon Bottom, but then things start to get more complicated in the moonlit woods.

Love is a theme which reoccurs through many of Shakespeare’s Plays. In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the theme ‘Love’ is presented from the very beginning in Act 1 Scene 1, through Shakespeare’s use of poetic language, structure and vivid imagery.

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.

Love is constantly changing or being manipulated and an example of this love is when Oberon, the king of the Fairies, gives his wife, Titania, the queen of the Fairies, a potion that makes her fall in love with an ass (77). Oberon does this act out of spite because his wife does not want to give him a changeling boy, an ugly idiot, stupid, fairy baby left in the human world, as a servant. Oberon instructs his personal fairy servant, Puck, to give a potion to Oberon’s wife and make her fall in love with an ass. There are two dreams in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that critics say are the only two that really matter.

William Shakespeare portrays how sometimes love changes as the circumstances change, which indicates that it could not be true love. Throughout the play, several characters change their minds about who they love. For example, when Oberon gives Titania the love potion, she immediately falls in love with Bottom, whom Robin turned into an ass. However, when Oberon gives her the antidote, she “wakes” and her eyes “loathe his visage now” (Shakespeare 4.1.77). Shakespeare puts a comedic twist on the power of “love at first sight,” relating Titania’s bout with Bottom ending as quick as it begun. Often people believe they found their true love only to discover that person is not what’s best for them. Likewise, when Lysander falls victim to the same potion, he declares: “Not Hermia, but Helena I love. Who will not change a raven for a dove?” (2.2.120). Lysander’s fatuation suddenly switches from Hermia to Helena, with his reason being that she’s better looking. Shakespeare is hinting at the fact that people are always chasing the latest and the greatest, be it goods to accessories to love partners, so when someone seemingly better comes around, people often leave whom they previously loved without warning. Additionally, when Demetrius falls under the spell, he denounces his love for Hermia, for now he loves Helena. He claims, “If e’er I loved her, all that love is gone” (3.2.173). Demetrius completely changes his stance on who he loves, and assures Helena he is hers. Shakespeare creates a picture of how people who are quick to love sound in a new relationship, and depicts how fragile their relationship is. Thus, throughout the play and through numerous examples,

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.

A Midsummer’s Love “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged cupid painted blind.” (Shakespeare, act 1) Shakespeare had a way with words and a story line full of romance. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream there is a range of characters falling in or falling out of love- due to magic or from the forces of nature. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is filled with different types of love such as romantic love, friendship love, and unrequited love.

“Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood; stop up the access and passage to remorse……… ………… Come, thick night, and pall thee in the

How Love Alters Perception in the Works of Shakespeare Throughout many of Shakespeare’s works, there is a reoccurring relationship between love and sight. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, is a tragic love story in which the two main characters are brought together through an attraction to one another based solely on physical appearance. In a similar fashion, Sonnet 148, is a poem about a lover, in which he/she believes that love has altered his perception of the person he loves. Through both of these works, it can be seen that Shakespeare believes that there is a direct correlation between love and sight.

The great and famous play written by William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet has a centralized theme of teen love in it. The love between Romeo and Juliet, who are from two different loyal and rich families who apparently have antagonism between them for unknown reasons, is the reason they end up in their tragedious demise. Romeo and Juliet’s love is a typical “love in first sight”, love blinds them and the decisions they make are blinded by it as they even marry the very next morning in secret. Shakespeare conveys through his work that love and sight, which could mean literal sight or a perspective, have a common link. It is though most comprehensible through his work that love deceives sight.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, various references to sight, seeing, and eyesight serve as a constant reminder both to the play’s central characters and audience members of the flawed distortions of appearance, in juxtaposition to the true nature of things—namely reinforcing a constricting tension between appearance and reality. Numerous references to the moon also reinforce the reduced vision, as an effect of darkness, that characters must endure in a world of constant transformation and unrealistic change. In a play where the language of love heavily depends upon sight imagery ry, the magical interventions of fairies—namely, Oberon’s placement of the love juice on characters’ eyes in the play—perturbs their ability to “see” true love. In Act 2, Scene 2, xx declares that 'Reason becomes the marshal to my will / And leads me to your eyes, where I o'erlook / Love's stories written in love's richest book'. Reason and love, it appears, cannot coexist.

He asks his wife many times to give him the young Indian boy but she rejected so Oberon (the king) becomes very angry from her and he swears to revenge and to take the boy from her. But Titania treat the Indian boy as his mother because she sworn to his mother that she will protect the boy and to make him as her son and after that his mother died. The king commands Puck to bring a magic flower to him and to make his wife be under the love and to fail in love with a donkey. So, Oberon punished his wife and he puts the magic powder on the eyes of Titania when she was sleep but when she opened her eyes, she finds the donkey in front her eyes

Love is a powerful force capable of clouding rational thought. The mind succumbs to the whirlwind of emotions over reality, and the lover is sucked into their own fantasy. It is whimsical and irrational. In A Midsummers Night Dream, Shakespeare pokes fun at the effects of love, with its tendency to be blinding, and consequently, a source of contention. Three couples fall victim to love's grip. The young Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius get caught up in a chase for love in the forrest outside of Athens. Love almost tears apart their friendships and leads to foolish actions. Simultaneously in those very woods, the Fairy queen Titania becomes enamored by a half man- half donkey, leading to a night that would be best left unspoken. Quoting Theseus,

Throughout the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, love is portrayed in many contrasting forms. It is depicted in the form of parental love, in the case of Egeus trying to force Hermia to marry Demetrius, real love, shown between Lysander and Hermia, or forced love, caused by the love juice. The playwright interprets these three kinds of love from beginning to end of the play. He does this with the purpose of showing the reader all the distinctive kinds of love in the world and how it can change at any moment, that it is not permanent.