A Midsummer Night's Dream Title Significance

A Midsummer Night's Dream depicts the lunacy in love by warping tensions and the dream-like quality of love beneath the eyes of the dreamer to produce "rare visions" in which to learn from. The title of the play holds tremendous weight, as it depicts the passions of love through dreams, while emphasizing the relationship between the two. Dreams and love then become intertwined with one another and the similarities begin to become more apparent. Shakespeare brilliantly weaves the lives of the four young lovers and creates disarray within a magical world of fairies and love juice. The characters within the play take hold of the trite and conventional words of love and declare them with the sincerity of true love. However, these words are a mockery of love when Lysander and Demetrius, two of the male characters, reverse their declarations of love from Hermia to Helena. Although the tensions arise most poignantly among the lovers, it is Bottom who emerges from the dream state with the desire to learn from his unconscious moment and the ability to see the mingling of the dream versus reality. Love and dreams both become foggy, unclear, passionate states in which the individuals involved become delusional victims. The title emphasizes the importance of each of the character's dream, and highlights the irrational, impersonal and under valued qualities of love.
Lysander's words that "the course of true love never did run smooth" (I, i, 54) seems to mimic the faulty passions of love within the play. Like dreams, love is foolish, crazy and driven by desires. Shakespeare highlights the absurdity of love by showing the dispensable and interchangeable emotions within the dreams. The male characters claim each love as being the greatest love, yet their shallow and conventional words show the true nature of the men. For instance, just before falling asleep, Lysander says to Hermia, "I mean that my heart unto your is knit, / So that but one heart we can make of it" (II, ii, 161),