As for the actors who go into the woods to prepare for their play before the king and queen of Athens -- they too show a side of love. Bottom shows what happens when one lacks imagination: he is the most unimaginative actor in the history of theater and thinks that the audience is as equally unimaginative as he is. He believes they will take everything literally and that, for example, when one of them behaves as a lion on stage, the audience will think it is a real lion and run for its life. He does not give the audience the benefit of the doubt (a form of love, charity) and therefore is a foolish actor.
However, Theseus wisely and kindly gives Bottom the benefit of the doubt and imagines that the players are as good as they themselves think themselves to...
Here too is another portrayal of love -- and the ultimate expression of the nature of love in the play: to love well, one must not judge, even when the other is foolish (as Bottom and the actors before the king clearly are). for, as the young lovers have shown, everyone can be foolish at times, and we are all in need of some sort of mercy. Theseus is merciful to the players who perform for him. He and the others joke about the performance but it is done with affection and with no ill will.
Thus, the nature of love, Shakespeare shows, depends on the proper ordering of the head and the heart (portrayed by Oberon and Titania), of the eye and the mind (as Lysander, Demetrius and Titania show), and of the will and the imagination (as Bottom and Theseus help to show).
