Midsummer Night\'s Dream the Difficulty of Love

¶ … Midsummer Night's Dream

The difficulty of love is one of the predominant themes in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. While love itself is not a theme of the play, Shakespeare uses romantic elements, and troubles stemming from romance throughout the play. Shakespeare's characters successfully distance themselves from the emotional side of love to keep the play lighthearted and funny. There is much more fun in poking fun, apparently.

There are internal elements that interfere with the romances in the play - most notably inequalities in the relationship. The prime example of such an imbalance is in the situation between four of the main characters - Hermia who loves Lysander; Lysander who loves Hermia; Helena who loves Demetrius, and Demetrius who loves Hermia. One woman has too few suitors, and one woman has too many. Emotions, and feelings are a predominant source of imbalance, and can be seen in another relationship - between Titania and Oberon. Oberon does love Titania, but his want for her beautiful Indian prince far outweighs that love. He is too consumed with his desire for the Indian boy (not sexual at all) to realize how he has ruined the potentially lasting relationship.

Externally, Puck (at the command of Oberon) wreaks havoc on the affections of Lysander and Demetrius. Lysander, who truly loves Hermia, falls victim to the potion from Puck, which makes him fall in love with Helena. Demetrius then falls back into love with Helena, and the two men are again fighting over the same woman, just a different one. And that isn't even mentioning the fact that Titania falls in love with the man whose head is shaped like a bottom, who is fittingly called Bottom. These quirky matches would have never occurred had it not been for some external force - this one happening to be a potion.

Obviously, the external factors, not internal emotions, were the source of the majority of the problems facing the lovers in the play. Their confused emotions were caused directly by the potions, and the potions then caused them to fall in love with someone. Their fates were completely controlled by the potion, and not by themselves. The confusion came directly from these messed up unions, and the most ludicrous pair, the beautiful Titania and the ugly Bottom was because of the potion as well. Oberon finally got what he wanted, though, which was his reasoning behind sending Puck out to do his magical works to begin with.