Analyse Shakespeare

The pursuit of love

Stories often introduce the theme of love in weird ways. They have different varieties of love from good to bad and they generally always make the characters do things that they wouldn’t normally do if love wasn’t introduced in their story. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream written by famous British poet William Shakespeare, the theme of irrational love is widely used to seek the reader’s attention. In this text, I’ll demonstrate how Shakespeare develops thetheme of loveby showing the readers how love can be dangerous by making the characters do foolish actions like running after each other through the woods and getting splashed with magic by fairies causing them to fall in love with each other because of jealousy.

To begin, the story starts by showing irrational behavior from the lovers Hermia and Lysander. Unfortunately for Hermia, her frustrated father “Full of vexation come I, with complaint/ Against my child, my daughter Hermia”(Shakespeare 1.1.23-24) decides that she will have to marry Demetrius and forget about Lysander by arranging a forced marriage “Stand forth, Demetrius.-My noble lord,/ This man hath my consent to marry her.-/ Stand forth, Lysander.-And my gracious duke,/ This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child.-/ Thou,Thou, Lysander,”(Shakespeare 1.1.25-29). Hermia, who isn’t too keen with her father’s decision, asks the Duke what would happen if she refuses which he responds by telling her that her father would have the right to send her to her death. As dangerous as their situation is, the lovers decide that they will go see Hermia’s aunt to get married away from everybody. Not very convenient, her auntie’s house is outside the reach of Athenian law, so they decide to meet in forest at night. Through all these obstacles, even with the possibility of death, we see that the decisions made by the lovers are clearly not from the head but from the heart. Shakespeare shows that love disregards any hardships if passion is involved. Lysander on the other hand, has a different opinion on this matter by feeling like obstacles can make a relationship “Momentary as a sound,/ Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night”(Shakespeare 1.1.145-147). Even though love can be tense, it can also end up being unstable “So quick bright things come to confusion.” (Shakespeare 1.1.151)

Second, one of the biggest factors that comes into play when irrational decisions are being made is jealousy. Jealousy is very powerful, and Shakespeare decided to put it in the play to demonstrate how strong it can shift the story into absurdity. In the story, Hermia decides to tell her good friend Helena that she’d run away with Lysander so they can get married at her aunt’s house. Helena, who is in love with Demetrius because they were previously lovers until Demetrius decided to leave her for Hermia, decides to betray her friend and tell Demetrius about the couple’s plans to run away in hopes that Demetrius will change his mind and fall back in love with her. Unfortunately for her, Helena’s plan to get Demetrius to love her didn’t work as he decides that he’ll stalk Hermia and Lysander in the forest. Here we can see that even though Hermia and Helena are friends, because Helena is so jealous of Demetrius’s love for Hermia, Jealousy makes her betray her friend and risk the couple’s marriage because

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