William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream can be said to be one of his most light hearted and comical plays. This is because at some point multiple characters, whether they be human or fairy, fall in love with the wrong person. The play takes place in Athens, where the duke will have his wedding in four days. Most of the play, however, takes place in the forest where two lovers named Hermia and Lysander run to elope, but they followed by Demetrius, who wants to win the heart of Hermia, and Helena, who wants to win the heart of Demetrius by helping him find Hermia. In the same forest, there is a conflict between Oberon and Titania, who roles are the king and queen of the fairies. They are funding over the human boy that is currently in the care of Titania, but Oberon, on the other hand, wants to turn the boy into one of his knights instead. This causes the couple to argue even more and go separate ways. After this event takes place, Oberon instructs Robin Goodfellow, better know as Puck, to obtain a special love potion from a flower that causes the person it affects to fall in love with the next thing they see in order to distract Titania. With Puck being the trickster that he his, he goes and has his own little fun with this potion and the four young Athenians of this play. Even though each character has their own happy ending, their course of action shows that love can shape their views of reality and cloud their judgment. The characters in this play show that love places people in a dream or fantasy, which can cause a restriction on reality, and it is easy to fall in love much like it is to fall asleep, and falling out of love is like waking up because it easy for some but hard for others. The love Helena and Hippolyta have for their significant others, Demetrius and Theseus, clearly shows that they do not have a good grip on what is truly in front of them. In Helena’s case, the love she has for Demetrius causes her to ignore the fact the he will never love her at this point of the play. This is evident in Act II, scene i. In this scene, Demetrius starts off by saying, “I love thee not; therefore pursue me not.”(II,i,188) This line shows that he is clearly telling her that he does not love her, but she follows him into the forest because of the love she has for him. Demetrius also says things like “I cannot love you?”(II,i,201), “For I am sick when I do look on thee”(II,i,212), and “I’ll run from thee, and me in the brakes, And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts” (II,i,227-228). The love she has for him puts her in the fantasy world where these words mean nothing. This love leads her to believe that he will love her if he sees that Hermia is with Lysander. Helena refuses to face fact that Demetrius has eyes for the fair Hermia. She lives in a dreamland where Demetrius will love her
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C. Goddard even calls the play in itself a dream. Henry Goddard states:
It is characteristic of its author that he should have chosen this fanciful dream-play through which to announce for the first time in overt and unmistakable fashion the conviction that underlies every one of his supreme Tragedies: that this world of sense in which we live is but the surface of a vaster unseen world by which the actions of men are affected or overruled.
Goddard also cited a conversation between Hippolyta and Theseus, and as he analyzed this, he says that the characters go through periods of confusion throughout the play and questions how the four lovers can find a happy(75-77). He also describes Hippolyta’s character in a way that shows that she holds love at a high standard and that the miracle of love leads her to believe that things emerge from an “airy nothing” (Goddard 76). Just like Hippolyta, love is a very important part of the lives of these characters. It causes them to make decisions that were not the best and see things in people that were never
C. Goddard even calls the play in itself a dream. Henry Goddard states:
It is characteristic of its author that he should have chosen this fanciful dream-play through which to announce for the first time in overt and unmistakable fashion the conviction that underlies every one of his supreme Tragedies: that this world of sense in which we live is but the surface of a vaster unseen world by which the actions of men are affected or overruled.
Goddard also cited a conversation between Hippolyta and Theseus, and as he analyzed this, he says that the characters go through periods of confusion throughout the play and questions how the four lovers can find a happy(75-77). He also describes Hippolyta’s character in a way that shows that she holds love at a high standard and that the miracle of love leads her to believe that things emerge from an “airy nothing” (Goddard 76). Just like Hippolyta, love is a very important part of the lives of these characters. It causes them to make decisions that were not the best and see things in people that were never