Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay

A Midsummer Night’s Dream consists of the dominant theme of love. It emphasizes marriage as proper contentment of romantic love. The conflict throughout the play stems from romantic troubles involving a number of romantic elements. This play implicates people who have a tendency to fall in love with those who are outwardly beautiful. The overall meaning of it is that outward beauty can become unappealing if it is all the love is based on. The power and passion of love threatens to terminate friendships, turn women against women, and turn men against men. This play opens with the involuntary marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta which has no intention of love. This marriage exhibits inequality because he assumes a dominant role. Hippolyta is left with no reason to love Theseus who admits, “Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword, /And won thy love doing thee injuries….” (1.1.16-17). He pursues Hippolyta with sword and hot poetic language. This wedding does not express love. She is a warrior queen, an Amazon, who is forced to marry someone who is not

There is a power struggle between these two. They do not live in domestic wedded enjoyment. When readers meet them, they seem to be in the midst of a violent conflict over the custody of an orphaned boy. Titania says at the end of her monologues, describing the forcefulness of disturbances, “And this same progeny of evil comes /From our debate, from our dissention;” (2.1.115-116). Oberon sees a simple answer and states, “Do you amend it then; it lies in you. /Why should Titania cross her Oberon?(2.1.118-119). He secretly threatens Titania when she leaves by stating, “Well, go thy way. Thou shalt not from this grove /Till I torment thee for this injury.”(2.2.146-147). Oberon penalizes and hurts the woman he supposedly loves when he drops the juice in her eyes and tells her to wake when some vile thing is near. He basically wants her to awaken when he gets what he wants which is the