The Nature of Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Abstract

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream explores the fundamental nature of love. It deals with the various aspects of love presented in the experiences of the four couples: Demetrius and Hermia, Lysander and Helena, Titania and the ass-headed Bottom, and Theseus and Hippolyta. play presents the difficulty of love. As Lysander comments, The course of true love never did run smooth. In particular, the conflicts of the two young couples, Demetrius and Hermia, and Lysander and Helena, present the tangled course of love. Their relationship is out of balance because two young men (Lysander and Demetrius) love the same woman, Hermia. Demetrius falls in love with Hermia instead of Helena, who loves him. However, Lysander and Demetrius come to love the same woman, Helena, when Puck mistakenly applies the love potion, which is made from the juice of a flower, to the two young men's eyelids. lovers' tangle is presented again in the relationship between Titania, Oberon, and Bottom, because Titania, the wife of the fairy King Oberon, falls in love with the ass-headed Bottom when the magical love potion is applied to her. lovers' tangle ultimately resolves itself into symmetrical pairings by the power of the magical love potion, and the play ends happily. However, the aspects of the lovers' tangle and the clearing up of the tangle illustrate that love is blind, unreasoning, and magical. A Midsummer Night's Dream ultimately presents the irrational, erratic, agonizing, and irresistible nature of love which cannot be easily explained in the eyes of reality.