Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream By William Shakespeare

Love is a universal concept. It’s a historic motif, having been used in literature for centuries in both positive and negative lights. One writer that is particularly renowned for his legendary writings on love, perhaps more so than any other Western author, is William Shakespeare. His transcendent reputation especially revolves around his incorporation of the theme of love into his work – though, unlike many tend to believe, Shakespeare parodies love rather than romanticizes it. Many of his plays are full of satire against love, one example being his comedic play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which follows the adventures in love between a group of young Athenians, a foolish man-turned-animal, and a fairy queen. It is in Midsummer that Shakespeare
The scandal begins when Robin Goodfellow, a hobgoblin working in the Fairy King Oberon's service, places love juice in the eyes of Lysander, partner to Hermia, causing him to immediately fall in love with the maiden Helena upon seeing her. Lysander’s romantic fancies are quickly swayed upon being afflicted by the magical “love nectar,” which demonstrates Shakespeare's idea that love is fleeting. When Helena tells him to be with Hermia, Lysander insistently rejects the very idea, scowling, "Content with Hermia? No, I do repent the tedious minutes I with her have spent. Not Hermia, but Helena I love" (61). He says "tedious minutes," but one can assume that Lysander was with Hermia for much longer, and given his attitude in Act One when they eagerly plotted to run away together, he certainly didn't view their relationship as "tedious" at the time. And in his sentence, “Not Hermia, but Helena I love,” the two names are so
(Specifically, foolish for having her fall in love with someone as terrible to her as Demetrius.) She makes the comparison of Love to a young, mischievous (“waggish”) boy to point out its almost childlike tendency to make false or transparent oaths (“forswear” and “perjure”), and so perjuries among those infatuated are often. And, as previously mentioned, there is no other character who represents this better than Queen Titania, whose love for Bottom spawns from “the mind” (or, in this case, the effects of a magical flower which symbolizes the infatuated mind) rather than innate attraction. To Shakespeare, “blindness” is just another reason love is so