Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ features many aspects of love which connects the three worlds presented in the play; court, workers and fairies. This causes love to be an important theme in the play and it involves several of the characters. Shakespeare orchestrates a situation where love is complicated and this means that the lovers have to face many obstacles in the course of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. The main obstacles which they face are the conventions of marriage which are set out in the play, that the characters follow their heats and not their heads which leads to confusion and causes complications and the other main obstacle is the external magical forces which interfere with the lovers. The three worlds which Shakespeare presents us
Egeus is what was seen as a good father of the time in which it was written and the arranged betrothal seen in the play was not all that strange when put in comparison with other marriages in Elizabethan England. Egeus is controlling, forceful and dominant. An example of this is shown by his continuous use of possessive words such as ‘my’ and ‘mine’. At this time it was the norm for suitors to first ask the fathers permission before securing the daughters hand in marriage. As Demetrius first got Egeus’ favour, ‘This man hath my consent to marry her.’, he was the one whom Egeus wanted Hermia to marry, despite her being in love with Lysander. At the beginning of the play Egeus accused Lysander of turning Hermia’s obedience ‘which is due to me to stubborn harshness', he also accuses Lysander of ‘bewitching’ Hermia. Another rule
A Shakespearian comedy would consist of everything we see in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’; conflict and resolution, confusion which in turn creates humour, misunderstandings, chaos, and farcical moments. The confusion, misunderstandings and chaos are main components in this comedy as they bring out the humorous qualities of the characters even if they are not apparently a character of humour. Farcical moments are also a large component of this Shakespearian comedy with Act Three as a pivotal point with the lovers’ quarrel. A Shakespearian comedy was not necessarily all humour but did have some serious themes and a happy resolution at the end of the play was expected. The comedic aspect of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is greatly contributed to in the production I saw by the lovers’ quarrel in Act Three Scene Two, this production made use of a large mud pool central to the argument. This adds to the comedy of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by altering the appearance of the lovers and also by slightly changing the way the characters act. In their argument, Helena attempts to escape from Hermia and the two men, by using the bike saying ‘Which death or absence soon shall remedy’, however, Lysander and Demetrius lift the bike off the ground to prevent her from escaping them. This adds more comedy to the play and also to their quarrel. Yet another way which the lovers’ quarrel adds comedy to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is by the