True Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

True love is impossible to define. It is a feeling, a rush of emotions. It is a force of nature. No matter how hard anyone tries, they cannot predict it, control it, or demand it. For this reason, the path to true love is a very difficult one. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare explores the difficult world of true love, past the common unrealistic fantasy of it. While the play itself is a comedy and ends on a cheerful note, the characters go through many hardships to reach their happily ever after. When Lysander says “The road to true love never did run smooth” at the beginning of the story, he is introducing the problem that is dealt with by and between Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, and Oberon and Titania.

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Helena follows a very rough road toward her true love as she persists in her pursuit of Demetrius, despite her love not being reciprocated. Demetrius loves Hermia, not Helena, and Helena would do anything to trade places with Hermia. All she wants is for him to so much as glance at her, but Demetrius’ eyes are fixated on Hermia’s dark beauty. She even expresses this feeling of desperation to Hermia, saying “Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, / The rest I’d give to you to be translated. / O, teach me how you look and with what art / You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart!” (I.i.194-197). Helena feels absolutely hopeless and is just begging for an ounce of affection from the man she adores. She thinks the way to gain that affection is to act and look exactly the same as Hermia, but even that would not sway his feelings. She is not Hermia and she cannot get his attention by becoming exactly like Hermia because that is not the way love works. Helena is not Hermia so Demetrius is not interested in her. In fact, he is completely disgusted by her. When Demetrius decides to follow Hermia and Lysander into the woods and Helena follows him, he snaps at her, telling her, “Tempt not the hatred of my spirit, / For I am sick when I do look on thee” (II.i.218-219). Demetrius does not love Helena and is getting tired of her constantly trailing behind him. He sees her as an overly obsessive admirer that

It seems like a couple’s wedding day should be their happy ending, but strains and difficulties in relationships continue long after marriage. At the start of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania and Oberon are in the middle of a rough patch in their marriage. Jealousy seems to be a huge drive for their problems. They even fight over their crushes on the humans they watch over, with Oberon saying to Titania, “How canst thou thus for shame, Titania / Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, / Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?” (II.i.76-78). Fairies can fall to the hands of jealousy just as easily as mortals. Titania and Oberon want each other’s undivided attention and cannot stand the fact that they do not have it. When Titania starts to give her attention to the Indian boy, Oberon can no longer take the neglect from his wife. He goes to desperate measures to take the Indian boy away from her, deciding to “watch Titania when she is asleep / And drop the liquor of [the magical flower] in her eyes. / The next thing then she, waking, looks upon / … She shall pursue it with the soul of love. / And ere [Oberon] take[s] this charm from off her sight / (As [he] can take it with another herb), / [Oberon will] make her render her page to [him]” (II.i.183-186,189-192). His jealousy is driving him to go as far as to distract her by making her fall in love with another man so he can take the child she cares so much for away from her.