Theme Of Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

In the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1594-1599) by William Shakespeare, he uses love and marriage as a tool to show the defiance in children standing up against their parents, he does this by making the characters go against their parents wishes and show that they have rights and are not controlled by their parents and the struggle of forbidden love. During A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare proves how irrational unrequited and whimsical love can be, not only does a flower change who marries who and set things right. Love is a tricky thing to get right and many things can go wrong.

The theme of love is dominant in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare suggests that love is like life, it is highly unpredictable,

‘The course of true love did never run smooth’ (Act 1, Scene 1, Page 5, 135) therefore so is love, this suggests why people tend to fall in love with people that we find attractive, that is very shallow and so is the result from the magic love potion ‘Love-in-idleness’ the only reason why they think they are in love is because of the potion. Shakespeare plays with the fact that love is easily changeable and uses the love potion as a play tool in the play. He uses this topic very cleverly and to change the course of the play. This is shown when Demetrious had no interest in Helena until Puck pours the love potion into his eyes, until that time Demetrious had been in love with Hermia while Helena loved him and Hermia loved Lysander. Love makes people irrational and foolish, and love can be seen as a game.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the children deny their parents of control over who they marry, this was unheard of in that time period and so it was taken very seriously by their parents, although during this t...

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...even after leaving the forest the affects are still working, Hermia marries Lysander after Puck correctly applies the love potion. Even after Bottom has the head of an ass removed and he is returned from the fairy world he still remembers being with Titania, but whenever the love potions effects have been lifted the characters just imagine it being a dream, the whole play is based on it being a dream. Shakespeare uses the fact that love is like dreams, dreams never last forever.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare explored the theme of love and marriage by using the fairies to mess around with the humans, at the same time the fairies are helping the humans to set things right after Puck manages to get the people confused. Shakespeare effectively compared fake love to real life with arranged marriages, and also with the fact that love can be purely artificial.