Applying to different people, happiness has various definitions. In the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy which ends with three marriages between Duke Theseus and Hippolyta, between Lysander and Hermia, and between Demetrius and Helena. The traditional meaning of happiness includes love and marriage, however, Demetrius is the person experiences love and marriage but does not end in happiness. Even though, by the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Demetrius gets married to Helena, as an individual, he neither gets true love nor has perfect happiness. Demetrius received no love from Hermia who he wanted to pursue, therefore he does not have perfect happiness. At the time when Demetrius can still make rational choices of who he loves, he loves Hermia instead of Helena. In order to pursue Hermia, Demetrius requested Hermia’s father Egeus to marry to her, but she never take Demetrius as a consideration. With all of Demetrius’ efforts, Hermia totally ignores him. Compare to Lysander and Hermia’s inseparable relationship, Demetrius is unhappy by staying alone. The person he loves does not love him, and the person he does not love loves him. Demetrius is a person who knows what he wants. Throughout the play, he loves Hermia consistently until the fairy put a spell on his eyelid. Demetrius’ love to Helena is under a force of spell, in addition, the mistaken love which is …show more content…
He received love not from who he loves but from the mistaken person. He is forced to madly love with Helena because of the magic love juice. If one day the magic fades away, Demetrius’ whole life would collapse, and he would find out his life is uncovered with lies. Not only he does not love the person he is married to, but also the person he loves is already married with another man. Demetrius is hurt by the love without self cognition, which brings him neither true love nor
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a Shakespearian comedy where Shakespeare shows many forms of passion. There are many passions shown many times in this play that would change the whole story if they were taken out. It is a trait that can reveal a person’s strong inner emotions such as in this story, friendship, love and jealousy. Helena shows a deep passion for friendship with Hermia when she thinks she has been betrayed, Titania passionately loves Bottom, and Oberon genuinely shows jealousy towards the Indian boy Titania tended to.
Love, lust and infatuation all beguile the senses of the characters in this dreamy and whimsical work of Shakespeare, and leads them to act in outlandish ways, which throughly amuses the reader. True love does prevail in the end for Hermia and Lysander, and the initial charm of infatuation ends up proving to have happy consequence for Helena and Demetrius as well. Even when at first the reader thinks that, in theory, the effects the potion will wear off and Lysander will once again reject Helena, Oberon places a blessings on all the couples that they should live happily ever after.
“The course of true love never did run smooth” ~William Shakespeare. In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus and Hippolyta plan their wedding, which includes a play by the craftsman. While the other characters are trying to figure out their love for one another, the fairies interfere. Throughout the play the characters alternate lovers often. Although they bicker at one another, everyone finds their way to their true soul mate. The characters in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are successful, after many trials and tribulations, in acquiring their desired relationships.
Four lovers each with his or her own challenge in love, Lysander and Hermia who love each other but may never be together, and Demetrius who loves Hermia and rejects Helena’s truthful devotion. Shakespeare’s writing style is the essence that brings forth the emotions within his works. Throughout a Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, commonplace literary devices are used to emphasize his style of writing. , Shakespeare depicts the theme of love’s difficulty, especially with the use of figurative language, such as metaphor and personification, to show that though complications arise in complex situations, the ability to overcome becomes the true meaning of love. wise
Infatuation causes Helena to lose all sense of dignity, as can be seen when in the woods, she desperately pleads with Demetrius to ?but treat me as your spaniel?. Here, Helena also becomes irrational, obsessed with pursuing Demetrius, though it is obvious that Demetrius is fixated on winning Hermia?s hand in marriage. Helena?s infatuation also causes her to see things from a skewed perspective, for she falsely believes that when she divulges Hermia?s plans for eloping with Lysander, Demetrius? love for Helena will rekindle. As the audience, we know that the most probable course of action for Demetrius upon hearing such news is to pursue Lysander and Hermia, or to report them to Theseus or Egeus. Clearly, infatuation has clouded Helena?s ability to think clearly, and she sees things in her own idealistic way.
“Magic” has an effect on all the complications and collisions. Magic is misused and then used to correct situations. There is drama caused between the young lovers initially, when Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Demetrius loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius, but no one loves Helena. Through this short, complicated ‘love story’, arguments and fights occur.
Transparent Helena! Nature shows art, That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart."(2.2.103). This is what Demetrius says to Helena when he sees her. He has fallen in love with her. This is where the comedy of this love mix up begins.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play of conflicted love. Thus semi-comedy displays the notion of, the spiritual and natural world working together. The play begins with a noble family discussing a planned marriage. Hermia is arranged to marry a man she does not love. In rebellion she and her lover (Lysander) flees to the woods so they can avoid Athenian law. Before leaving Hermia tells her sister about her plans to run away. In desire to gain revenge and find love herself Helena (Hermia’s sister) chases Hermia and her intended mate into the woods. The forest is where the spirits live, the fairy king, Oberon, is desperate to gain the affection of the fairy queen. He saw cupid shoot his love arrow, which landed on a flower. He is determined that,
Love plays a very significant role in this Shakespearian comedy, as it is the driving force of the play: Hermia and Lysander’s forbidden love and their choice to flee Athens is what sets the plot into motion. Love is also what drives many of the characters, and through readers’ perspectives, their actions may seem strange, even comical to us: from Helena pursuing Demetrius and risking her reputation, to fairy queen Titania falling in love with Bottom. However, all these things are done out of love. In conclusion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream displays the blindness of love and how it greatly contradicts with reason.
Demetrius are both in love with Helena due to the magic flower. Helena does not understand
William Shakespeare’s writings are famous for containing timeless, universal themes. A particular theme that is explored frequently in his writings is the relationship between men and women. A Midsummer Night’s Dream contains a multitude of couplings, which are often attributed to the fairies in the play. Each of these pairings has positive and negative aspects, however, some relationships are more ideal than others. From A Midsummer Night’s Dream the optimal pairings are Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, and Oberon and Titania; while the less desirable pairings are Theseus and Hippolyta, Hermia and Demetrius, Lysander and Helena, and Titania and Bottom. Throughout A Midsummer
Love and Marriage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream There is something to be said for the passionate love of young people, and Shakespeare said it in Romeo and Juliet. The belief that any action can be excused if one follows one's feelings is a sentimental notion that is not endorsed by Shakespeare. Thus, Theseus' suggestion in 1.1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, that Hermia marry a man she does not love rather than "live a barren sister" all her life would seem perfectly sensible to Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Shakespeare writes for a public who views marriage unsentimentally. At all levels of society, from king to commoner, marriage is entered into for commercial and dynastic reasons.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the main conflict is between love and social relations. The play revolves around the magical power of love which transforms many lives. As a result of this, it gets the reader’s emotionally involved through ways of reminding us of love’s foolishness and capabilities, as well as violence often followed alongside of lust. This play shows passion’s conflict with reason. For example, the father presented in the play Egeus, represents tradition and reason while Hermia represents passion for love and freedom. Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius and accuses Lysander of “bewitching” Hermia with love charms and songs. This is one way love’s difficulties are presented in the play between father and daughter. Additionally, Helena recognizes love’s difficulties when Demetrius falls in love with her best friend Hermia. Helena argues that strong emotions such as love can make extremely unpleasant things beautiful. This is another way the play presents love’s difficulties between lovers and capricious emotions.
Demetrius, Helena, Lysander, and Hermia are the for young teens of the story. At the beginning of the play it is Lysander and Helena who are madly in love, and are planning to to escape from Athens to elope. Helena is in love with Demetrius, and Demetrius cared for Helena and liked her a lot but was not in love with her. As soon as Demetrius sees Hermia he immediately stops having any feelings for Helena whatsoever and is deeply in love with Hermia. Demetrius thought that he had fallen in love at first sight, but Helena was determined to show him differently. Demetrius: ³ Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,/ For I am sick when I do look on thee.² Helena: ³And I am sick when I look not on you.² (Act II, sc. i, lines 218-220) This piece of dialogue shows how much Demetrius is now in love with Hermia from just seeing her, and how disgusted he feels when he looks upon Helena who he used to care about. Helena is simply just expressing how much she is love with Demetrius and how bad she feels that he is treating her in such a manner of hatred.
A common theme in literature is love. Love can take hold in an instant and can make you do things you never would have done otherwise. Love appears in several different ways in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hermia and Lysander show true love, while Helena demonstrates unrequited love. Titania and Bottom presents us with magic love. In the play, love is also the cause of a few broken hearts. While there is no one common definition of love that suits all of the characters, the romantic relationship in the play all leans to one simple rule laid out by Lysander, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”