What Is The Representation Of Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love can bring happiness and love can bring sorrow. In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, love brought both. The play is about many lovers who have ups and downs in their relationships. Hernia is the daughter of egeus who wants to marry Lysander, but is being directed to marry Demetrius. Hermia and Lysander run away to the woods. Demetrius and Helena follow. In the woods, they all get mixed up with fairies and love potions. This leads to broken relationships where Shakespeare is able to express his views on love. In the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare communicates his views on love by showing that it is chaotic blinding through the main characters of the play.
In the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare

For example, When Theseus is speaking with Hippolyta on the topic of love he says, “The lunatic, the lover, and the poet. Are of imagination all compact”(5.1.7-8). This is blinding because what is expected is not always what’s given. A true love may be a lunatic in the end. Lovers can be just as crazy as lunatics then be charismatic like a poet to prove their love for someone. Another situation where Shakespeare exemplifies his view that love is blinding is when after the potion is administered unto Titania, she says to Nick Bottom, “Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful”(3.1.75). This is blinding because Titania, due to a love potion thinks Nick Bottom is beautiful with the head of an ass. This is clearly untrue. Bottom should be seen as a hideous animal.Due to the potion blinding Titania’s perception on love, she finds bottom attractive even with the head of an ass. On the occassion before all of the love potions are administered, Hermiais speaking to Lysander about running away. She says to Lysander, “Take comfort: he no more shall see my face; Lysander and myself will fly this place. Before the I did Lysander see, Seem’d Athens as a paradise to me: O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn’d a heaven unto a hell!”(1.1.202-207). Lysander and Hermia, will do anything in their power to be together. This is blinding. Without knowing the risk of their actions can be consequential. They can not understand fully what they are about to do because of them being blinded by their own love. Their love has no limits, and consquences are not thought of. One of the other lovers ,Helena, speaks on love and says, “Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind”(1.1.234-235). She is saying that love is blind because it is something that is not seen, but only felt. It only is known when love is in your presence. It is an emotion that is