Midsummer Night’s Dream

Love

Robert Mahaffey

quotes 1.    “But earthlier happy is the rose distilled,Than that which withering on the virgin thorn.Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.”

2.O hell! to choose love with another’s eye.”

3.The course of true love never did run smooth.”

4.”Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.”

There were many varieties of love in Midsummer Night’s Dream. They include parent for child, male for female, female for male, and human for pet. This play has a perfect plot for love. Love is the only reason people want to read most of Shakespeare’s plays.

The parent for child love in this play is between Egeus and Hermia. Egeus doesn’t want Hermia to marry Lysander, but instead Demetrius. Egeus is thinking about giving Hermia the death penalty. Since in that time period fathers could do that to their daughters.

Another example of love in this play is male for female. At the beginning of the story Demetrius and Lysander both love Hermia. Hermia wanted to marry Lysander over Demetrius. At the end of the play though Demetrius is in love with Helena. Helena is happy because she has loved him the entire time. Also the Duke of Athens Theseus, marries Hopolata.

Female for Male is another love in this story. Helena is overly obsessed with Demetrius. So Demetrius hates her for this, until he receives a love poison to fall in love with Helena. The fairy queen Titania falls in love with Nick Bottom for awhile in this play too. Only for one night though, and that night nick Bottom was a Donkey or better known as an ass.

The last type of love in this book is human for pet. One of the fool’s named Moonshine. Moonshine loves his dog and goes everywhere with it. The dog came onto the stage whenever the fools were presenting their play to Theseus and Hopalata. Instead having a love relationship with a female, a relationship with a dog can be cancelled if the dog dies.

This was probably the best play I have ever read. The love was the only reason I liked it. My favorite love featured in this book is male for female. I liked Demetrius and Helena’s love. Considering at the beginning Helena loved Demetrius, and Demetrius despised of her. Then at the end they both loved each other.

I believe that parents should have a majority of a say in their child’s love life. Because they brought that child into the world, they should at least have a choice in who their sons and daughters marry. But I still think the child should have some say in it too, because it’s their life. I think Egeus could have learned to like Lysander but instead just wanted to pick Demetrius. Hermia just liked Lysander more and disagreed with her father. So the father wanted to have her killed but Theseus would not allow that.

In this play there was an extremely happy ending, and everyone likes to see that happen. The only person that might have not had a good ending was Egeus because of Hermia. Everyone else though fell in love.