Kelsey Nau

Midsummer Nights Dream

Friendship

Friendship is very valuable. It is something that you cannot buy but it should be protected. It is like treasure that you must keep very safe. It is very easy to lose friends and hard to recover a lost friendship. A good friend is someone who you get along well with and someone you would miss a lot if you lost him or her. A good friend is someone you can go to for advice when needed and stands by you when you have problems. True friends stick together through rough and smooth.

There are many attributes of a good friend. A good friend should be attentive and appreciative. They should appreciate what you have to say and the decisions others make and they should be attentive to others opinions and thoughts. In Midsummer Nights Dream, after they were fighting, they were all sitting around the dinner table and you could tell that they were appreciative of each other and that they took value and admired the good friends that they had.

A good friend should also be caring and dear to you as well as forgiving and helpful.  Helena and Hermia were caring of each other, they were best friends and they told each other everything. Helena even got mad at Hermia and reminded her of their childhood together.

Helena said,

“Injurious Hermia! Most ungrateful maid! Have you conspired, have you with these contrived to bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shared, the sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent, when we have chid the hasty-footed time. For parting us — O, is it all forgot? All school days’ friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, have with our needles created both one flower, both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, both warbling of one song, both in one key, as if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, had been incorporate. So we grow together, like to a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet an union in partition; Two lovely berries molded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart; Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, due but to one and crowned with one crest. And will you rent our ancient love asunder, to join with men in scorning your poor friend?”

But when Lysander and Hermia told Helena that they were leaving town, Helena betrayed them and told. This obviously wasn’t a good friend of Helena because she was not being helpful but Hermia was forgiving of Helena later on and a good friend should be able to forgive you if you make a bad choice or if you weren’t as good of a friend to them as they were to you.

A good friend can be intelligent, kind, loyal and open-minded. An open-minded friend would be easy to get along with because they would be receptive to new and different ideas or the opinions of others. All of the friends were intelligent and kind in their own way. Even if they would betray each other and lie, you could still tell that they were all friends, and in the end they did learn to forgive each other. You would never want a friend who was self conceited or didn’t think of others. Helena was self-conceited because she was only thinking of her love, Lysander.

A good friend can have all of these attributes but can betray you as well just like in Midsummer Nights Dream. Helena was originally a very loyal and trustworthy friend towards Hermia but then she became stubborn because she was deeply in love and that is what made her make the choices she did. Even though she wasn’t a good friend, in the end Hermia forgave her and the two love couples got married.