Passion In A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Significance of Passion 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. An important passion shown in this story is the passion of friendship from Helena. Lysander and demetrius were both deeply in love with Hermia, but suddenly they became slaves for Helena, under the spell of a love potion. This antagonises Helena and she blames it all on Hermia and her cruel joke. She says to Hermia, “The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent, when we have chid the hasty-footed time for parting us,-o is all forgot” (III.II.199-201)? Helena asks her if she has forgotten about their friendship, about the vows they took to be like sisters and never leave each other. This shows that although Hermia may have forgotten their friendship, Helena will always remember because friendship is really important to her. Friendship is a bond Helena feels really passionate about and takes very seriously. Another quote that shows Helena’s passion for friendship is “ Both warbling of one song, both in one key, as if our hands, our sides, voices and minds have been incorporated”(III. II. 207-208). This represents that Helena took their friendship sincerely and she believed in them and nothing could break their bond. Her last bit of her anger com... ... middle of paper ... ...evenge on her for giving more importance to the Indian boy rather than him, which shows jealousy. This passion is one of the most significant because if it had not been for Oberon’s jealousy he wouldn’t have used the love potion, and if he didn’t do that, then Lysander and Demetrius would both still be fighting over Hermia and Demetrius would never fall for Helena. Therefore the play would have never gotten its happy ending, or maybe the problem wouldn’t even have occurred. As you can see Shakespeare uses passion very strongly in his play. He shows Helena showing passion for friendship, Titania showing passion for love and Oberon showing passion for jealousy. Passion plays a huge role in the story of this play, and without any one of these the play would have gone differently. The story would not have been as great of an experience as it is now without passion.

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