A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay: Aspects of Love

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Love in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love is a very inaccurate word, as it can be used in many different ways. It can be used to describe an object which one particularly likes, or to describe ones feelings towards a person. However it does not rest at just these two points. Love for someone can be in a material sense (sexual), or in a more moral sense for example.

Some of the various aspects of love are mentioned In William Shakespeare's, Midsummer Night's Dream. Here we are presented with the various characters, and their conflicts, which all have something to do with love.

The most important relationship in the play is that between Titania, the queen of the fairies, and Oberon, who is the king of the fairies. Oberon seems to love Titania in the sense that he wishes to dominate her, and also be her king. Their relationship is about authority and dominance.

After a quarrel Titania does not wish to have anything to do with Oberon anymore. Oberon is angry at this, and takes out his anger on Titania, by placing a spell on her. He squeezes a drop from a special flower onto her eyes, which will make her love the ugliest beast she is to come across. This then happens to be Bottom the weaver, whose head is turned to that of an donkey. Through Oberon and Titania's little dispute, the entire world seems to be tipped upside down. Oberon is generous when it comes to dishing out his love potion, which confuses everything for the "real people" (in other words not meaning the fairies).

Amongst the people, there are also some disputes, that can be directly related to love. Lysander and Demetrius are both in love with Hermia, who only loves...

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...for who he was, but for what she saw. Their relationship had nothing to do with a romantic and passionate love, but mainly consisted out of lust and desire. Titania desired Bottom, and was obsessed over him as a result of the magic potion.

So by A Midsummer Nights Dream we can see some of the many aspects of love, and are familiarised with them. The various relationships between the "real" characters, and the fairies (king and queen). Of course there are a few more aspects one might mention, however many are very similar. Love basically consists out of many different factors. There should be the love of a person that comes from the heart, but there is also a side of you that desires the other person in a physical way. Love is not just a simply definable word, but love is a highly complicated act of expressing ones feelings towards another person.

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