¶ … 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...

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…