Midsummer Analysis: Friendship
Written By: Riley de Leon
“Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who
cares enough to break them down.”
– Jeanette Winterson

What does friendship mean? Does it mean to help one another out in time of hardship? To be there for one another? To have a strong spiritual relationship with one another? To have somebody to confide in? Many of us no what the term friendship means when we hear it, but can we really comprehend the basis of a true friend? The play by William Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Nights Dream,” expresses friendship in ways that the 20th century cannot even begin to appreciate.
In my opinion,the best way to describe friendship is, a friend who is someone that understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are. In a Midsummer Nights Dream, I saw a lot based off that theory. The attributes that make a good friends include loyalty, compassion, companionship, affection, esteem, devotion, fondness, among much much more. These qualities make up a good friend, but more importantly a friendship, that will last forever. Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius express a lot of this throughout the play as far as I read. You can find several examples of friendships between women that appear to be built upon more doubtful relationships, but which abandon their loyalty to men when tested. Then, friendships built upon more solid foundations collapse when attacked by the force of petty jealousies or when undetermined by misunderstandings.

The friendships are important to the plot and the general structure of the play as a whole. I think that one of the most interesting and overlooked friendships/relationships in the play would be that seen between Titania and her husband Oberon, because both the wife and the husband want to reclaim possession of a young boy who has been placed in Titania’s care. This just kind of sticks out to me as a strong spiritual relationship/ friendship. Although it does not seem that Titania had the time or social commonalities to develop a deep friendship with the boy’s mother, what Titania is telling Oberon is that the loyalty among women are stronger and more intelligent than marital ties, and she will keep the boy with her because her friendship with his mother obliges her to do so.
Hermia and Helena, who had once been close friends, are divided by petty and irrational jealousies. While both Hermia and Helena have unique qualities, they come to envy one another because of conflicts regarding men. Although this friendship seems to have a firmer foundation than that between Titania and the unnamed Indian woman, Shakespeare shows that friendships are always “vulnerable to intrusions and misunderstandings.” In this time period, I feel like it must have been very hard to really describe friendship, specifically because everyone was your friend, or you had a couple enemies here and there. In this play love seems to conflict with friendship in a way that only Shakespeare could understand. Is friendship stronger than love?
When it comes down to the four lovers, specifically, I believe that in actuality they are all friends, but like always love will get in the way. Clearly like in our lives today, if you grew up together, and you shared new experiences with one another for practically your entire life, I feel that bond never goes away no matter how far away you may be, or how much you dislike one another. You will always think back on the times you had spent with that person, and nothing can break that ethereal relationship. When you are young, sometime you base friendships off of your parents friendships. You become friends with the children of your parents friends. I believe that if “A Midsummer Nights Dream,” had a preface, friendship between the four children would be the main focus. It would show that they’re parents are friends, how they met, how they grow up, and lead to what today we see as one of the most dramatic and complicated relationships between the four ever. These ethics play a key role in life as we know it. The world would be suicidal without the bonds shared between two people, whether it be love or friendship.
Hermia and Helena’s relationship had changed greatly after the intervention of Puck with the love potion. Once best friends, they have become each others enemies at the beginning of the play, sourced from the love of Lysander and Demetrius. The relationship between the women (Hermia/Helena) in the play seems to be the most critical next to the men (Demetrius/Lysander) basically because it’s more complex considering the fact that women are more emotionally attached to each other than men are. Therefore this makes for a great story and great characters in any given situation constructed upon a friendship of girls broken by love. Basically the point that I am trying to make here is that women are more prone, to getting their feelings hurt or being more petty in situations such as that in the play. We saw Hermia and Helena as enemies at the beginning of the play but, the knowledge of their background, paints the picture that they were great friends in their childhood.
In conclusion, this seems to be all that can be written about the strong bond of friendship from the historical background of the play and my personal opinions. Today, it seems difficult to comprehend true friendship with all of the fraudulent people in the world, but hopefully what still remains of a powerful relationship we can spread to others, to keep in friendship in tact all around the world.