Fetch Me That Flower

“Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once: The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid will make or man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees” Says Oberon to Puck as he describes the effect the love potion has on mortals. This sounds strikingly similar to the sensation of “Love at first sight”. Although most of the conflict in the Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream arises from true love rather than the magical idea of Love that Oberon describes here, this statement shows us just one of the kinds of love that Shakespeare brings to the Play. The multifaceted nature of love is shown consistently throughout the play as the audience witness the paternal love of Egius and Helena, The forbidden love of Hermia and Lysander, Unrequited love which Helena and Demetrius are victims of, the vengeful love of Oberon and Titania, The exaggerated romantic love that the lovers experience as a result of the potion and lastly the abstract companionship of the Mechanicals which some critics may interpret as being love of some kind.
The fate of the love that the entire characters share in A Midsummer Night’s dream is already predetermined from the beginning of the play provided the audience understand that a Shakespearean comedy it always ends in marriage. Although it is not clear as to who loves who or which characters will end up marrying one another to the audience in the first act, they are reassured by the fact that order will be restored through marriage. The idea that order is restored through marriage seems to already be a theme in the first act as Egeus demands that his daughter Hermia marries Demetrius in order to please him. In the time of the first production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream a woman’s role was to obey the men in her life. In this case Hermia’s love for Lysander is so strong that she chooses to ignore the wishes of her Father who she belongs to In order to pursue a relationship with Lysander. It is then evident that paternal