Making Sense of Love in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

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Love in humans is a powerful element that makes life meaningful. Love with its’ presence, cause, and effect, has our four main couples in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” trying to make sense of love. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” we find four couple: Helena/Demetrius, Tatiana/Oberon, Theseus/Hippolyta, and Lysander/Hermia who find love after trials and errors for love can be irrational in nature.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity.
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks, not with the eyes, but with the mind.
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste.
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear:
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere. (1.1.234-245)
Helena is frustrated with herself for she is trying to figure out how love is. Love can be different to each individual. They all have their own conclusion of what love is to them. As for Helena, she thinks love is erratic and irrational for it can make someone having bad qualities, and characteristics seem perfect and without fault. Helena knows Hermia from school; “O when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd” (3.2.323) very “vile” in temper; however, Demetrius does not see that. He loves Hermia, and his love for her “…transpose to form and dignity” (1.1.235). He does not care his beloved Hermia has a bad behavior; he loves her as she is. He demonstrates by his choice: “Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste / Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste” (1.1.242-243) he has no rational judgment and is being hasty on his decision towards Hermia. Demetrius does not correspond to Helena’s love and...

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... love’s mistakes and squeeze the love-juice into Demetrius and Lysander eyelids so; “…That every man should take his own / In your waking shall be shown / …The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well” (3.2.453-463) again.
Love is not easy to find or sustain in real life. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare, did exceptionally well to present love as erratic, inexplicable, and exceptionally powerful for his audiences to grasp an idea of what love is really all about. Love is full of wonder, fantasy, and ecstasy a human cannot really explain in words. In conclusion, love when possible for love can disappear in a dream.

Works Cited

Shakespeare, W. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Ed. Alice Griffin. Literature: An Introduction to Reading And Writing: Ed. Edgar v. Roberts and Robert Zweig. 5th Compact ed. Boston: Longman, 2012. 1129-1180. Print

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