No one ever said love was easy, they just said it was worth it. If someone did say it was easy, they were lying. You can be sure of that. Love is probably the hardest thing you will ever go through in your life. Sure, love can be fun and silly, but there are times when you have to make sacrifices and let go of things you want to keep. Love is not gratuitous. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander says, “The course of true love never did run smooth,” which has many meanings.
First of all, this line in A Midsummer Night’s Dream can mean that you have to work hard for love. Amorousness doesn’t just fall out of the sky and land right in your lap. It takes patience, determination, and hard work! Helena says, “If I have thanks, it is a dear expense/But herein mean I to enrich my pain/To have his sight thither, and back again.” (Act I, Scene i, line 252, page 36). This means that she is going through a ton of pain just to be with Demetrius, she is working exorbitantly hard for her affection. Love takes a huge amount of hard work because you must prove to that person that you really do love...
Every action made in A Midsummer Night’s Dream revolves around the idea of love. It is a concept which few people can understand because of the extremity a person can go through to go after their love. “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends.” Lovers see the world in a way which everyday people cannot comprehend. The idea of love leads to them making irrational choices which may seem
The hilarious play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare, tells the twisted love story of four Athenians who are caught between love and lust. The main characters: Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius are in a ‘love square’. Hermia and Lysander are true love enthusiasts, and love each other greatly. Demetrius is in love with Hermia, and Helena, Hermia’s best friend, is deeply and madly in love with Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander try to elope in the woods because Egeus, Hermia’s father, disapproves of Lysander.
It shows that during those harsh times, their love was strong enough to even risk the anger of their parents. In my opinion, unrequited love is the most painful type of love there is in this play. The main example of this is the sad situation of Helena and Demetrius during the early stages of the play. Helena is madly in love with Demetrius and would give her life for just one kind word from him. In this play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, true love plays a huge role in the play.
Some of the most prominent themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are the omnipresence of love and desire and the tendencies of characters to manifest their defining traits. Helena and Hermia are two perfect examples of this. Hermia is the lover, and Helena the desirer, and both thrive off of their obsessions. In fact, both women are so tied to these traits that when they are taken away, their characters deflate and fall static.
(2.1.238-239, 243-244) This clearly proves that Helena was threatened by her “love” Demetrius and her being desperate had gotten the best of her. She was told that if she keeps irritating, the result will end in her getting sexually assaulted. Nonetheless, Helena’s desperateness took a negative toll. As long as Helena had Demetrius’s presence, she didn’t care about the atrocious remarks Demetrius had said. Based on the behaviour of Helena, the quote “love is blind” can accurately be used to describe her love. People will mistake the meaning of true love for lust. Finding true love can sometimes be very difficult. Foolishness is a trait that either entertains or aggravates. Acting foolish can get you stuck in a bad
Love is a powerful emotion, capable of turning reasonable people into fools. Out of love, ridiculous emotions arise, like jealousy and desperation. Love can shield us from the truth, narrowing a perspective to solely what the lover wants to see. Though beautiful and inspiring when requited, a love unreturned can be devastating and maddening. In his play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare comically explores the flaws and suffering of lovers. Four young Athenians: Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia, and Helena, are confronted by love’s challenge, one that becomes increasingly difficult with the interference of the fairy world. Through specific word choice and word order, a struggle between lovers is revealed throughout the play. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses descriptive diction to emphasize the impact love has on reality and one’s own rationality, and how society’s desperate pursuit to find love can turn even strong individuals into fools.
“Love looks not with eyes but with the mind,” laments Helena (23). In this quote, Helena explains that true love isn’t about a person’s looks, but about a person’s disposition; all in all, love is blind. This especially evident in the play that this quote is found, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the play, Titania is tricked by Oberon and Robin to fall in love with Bottom who had a donkey head, but she still loved Bottom, even though he was hideous. Also, Helena, the character mentioned before, is madly in love with Demetrius who doesn’t love her back but she tries constantly to get him to love her. So, Helena’s comment is definitely correct especially in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because of the romantics between the characters of Bottom and Titania, and the characters of Helena and Demetrius.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the main conflict is between love and social relations. The play revolves around the magical power of love which transforms many lives. As a result of this, it gets the reader’s emotionally involved through ways of reminding us of love’s foolishness and capabilities, as well as violence often followed alongside of lust. This play shows passion’s conflict with reason. For example, the father presented in the play Egeus, represents tradition and reason while Hermia represents passion for love and freedom. Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius and accuses Lysander of “bewitching” Hermia with love charms and songs. This is one way love’s difficulties are presented in the play between father and daughter. Additionally, Helena recognizes love’s difficulties when Demetrius falls in love with her best friend Hermia. Helena argues that strong emotions such as love can make extremely unpleasant things beautiful. This is another way the play presents love’s difficulties between lovers and capricious emotions.
Love, lust and infatuation all beguile the senses of the characters in this dreamy and whimsical work of Shakespeare, and leads them to act in outlandish ways, which throughly amuses the reader. True love does prevail in the end for Hermia and Lysander, and the initial charm of infatuation ends up proving to have happy consequence for Helena and Demetrius as well. Even when at first the reader thinks that, in theory, the effects the potion will wear off and Lysander will once again reject Helena, Oberon places a blessings on all the couples that they should live happily ever after.
In "A midsummer nights dream" Helena, is rather cynical about love. Because she has always been turned from, especially by her own love, Demetrius, she is sceptical when she is loved. Helena subsequently sees Lysander on the ground and shakes him awake; unwittingly becoming the first woman he sees when he opens his eyes. Lysander immediately falls in love with Helena, and tells her that he deeply loves her.
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream shows that the results of people trying to control someone else’s actions are short lasting.In act 3 scene 2 Demetrius gets a love spell put on him to love Helena, after they run into the woods
Throughout the events which unfold in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare delivers several messages on love. Through this play, one of the significant ideas he suggests is that love is blind, often defying logic and overriding other emotions and priorities. Helena loves Demetrius unconditionally and pursues him despite knowing that he loathes her; conflict arises between Helena and Hermia, childhood best friends, over Demetrius and Lysander; and because she is in love, Queen Titania is able to see beauty and virtue in the ass-headed Nick Bottom.
Demetrius, Helena, Lysander, and Hermia are the for young teens of the story. At the beginning of the play it is Lysander and Helena who are madly in love, and are planning to to escape from Athens to elope. Helena is in love with Demetrius, and Demetrius cared for Helena and liked her a lot but was not in love with her. As soon as Demetrius sees Hermia he immediately stops having any feelings for Helena whatsoever and is deeply in love with Hermia. Demetrius thought that he had fallen in love at first sight, but Helena was determined to show him differently. Demetrius: ³ Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit,/ For I am sick when I do look on thee.² Helena: ³And I am sick when I look not on you.² (Act II, sc. i, lines 218-220) This piece of dialogue shows how much Demetrius is now in love with Hermia from just seeing her, and how disgusted he feels when he looks upon Helena who he used to care about. Helena is simply just expressing how much she is love with Demetrius and how bad she feels that he is treating her in such a manner of hatred.
In his A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare contrasts the love existing in the relationships of friends and of lovers. Love here does not refer to romantic emotion exclusively; “love” means connection and empathy with another being. The female relationships in the poem, between Hermia and Helena, and Titania and her fairies, exist with a love based on connections between the females. However, the lovers’ relationships arise from a love produced by desire for another’s differences. The females produce a strong bond with each other that exists to provide the other person with a better version of themselves and protection from destruction. Love can only exist in this relationship because it exists away from outside forces, such as sight. True love does not originate from desire but connection. This connection cannot exist romantically because lust and perception interfere. Shakespeare contrasts the love existing between the same sex versus opposite sexes to reveal the female friendship’s importance in love and virginity: the love between two females in friendship exists independent of outside forces, without domination or penetration, therefore providing the sole form of true love.
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," William Shakespeare explains the difficulties of the nature of love. Both false love and true love prevail in the end, leading the reader to come to the conclusion that all types of love can triumph. Hermia and Lysander represent the existence of a "true love", while Helena and Demertrius represent the opposite extreme. Shakespeare presents the idea that love is unpredictable and can cause great confusion. Love is something that cannot be explained, it can only be experienced. Shakespeare challenges us to develop our own idea of what love truly is.