What Is Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream
The complex, tangled webs of lovers in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is partly to blame for the “love-in-idleness.” (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 173) This flower, “before, milk-white, now purple with loves wound,” (Act 2, Scene 1, Line 174), has the power to make the person treated with its juice, across their eyelids, fall in love with the first person they see. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare teases the audience with this magic flower, almost dangling it in front of their faces. The audience knows the simple fix to the web of lovers, treating Demetrius with the flower, so to fall in love with Helena. When Robin mistakenly treats Lysander’s eyelids with the flower, he begins to fall in love with Helena, who is in love