Essay Sample: Love and Eyes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The earth is a place of great wonder, beauty, and power. As such, it is one of the finest resources from which the active mind produces ideas. Inventors observe the workings of natural processes and apply those concepts to their creations. The philosopher and poet does the same, taking natural entities and giving them spiritual analogies. The taking of natural facts and attaching concepts to them is a practice well used by great thinkers and storytellers, one of whom was William Shakespeare. Shakespeare consistently employed nature as a vessel by which to present his ideas, using vivid language to attach nonphysical concepts to specific natural bodies in his plays. In his comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the eyes analogize the relationships between the themes of illusion and reality and order and disorder. Shakespeare presents the eyes as both clear and cloudy in sight, which ties into his overarching message of love in the play. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the eyes further the themes of illusion versus reality and order versus chaos through their portrayal of concepts of desire and reason, and present the idea that love is influenced by one’s perception. 

The eyes advance the theme of illusion versus reality in A Midsummer Night’s Dream through their symbolism of clouded reasoning. In the play, Titania’s sight of Nick Bottom represents illusion, because the feelings she develops upon the sight of Bottom originate from magic, not her own desire. Titania is Oberon’s wife and a fairy queen. A quarrel between her husband and herself causes Oberon to have reason to enchant her, thus clouding her judgement through enchantment and causing her to fall in love with the first being she views. As follows, Titania soon sees Nick Bottom, and falls in love upon the sight of him, exclaiming:

...mine eye [is] enthralled to thy shape, 

And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me

On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee. (3.1.123-125).

In this scene, the eyes symbolize clouded reasoning, the cause for Titania’s love of Bottom, which aids to the development of illusion in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her eyes’ enchantment causes her to develop a false love, which tricks both Bottom and herself. The eyes’ symbolism of clouded reasoning aids the theme of illusion versus reality by clarifying the difference between true and simulated love. 

The eyes advance the theme of order versus chaos in A Midsummer Night’s Dream through their symbolism of balanced and imbalanced love. In Act One, Scene One, Helena is at an impasse. She deeply loves Demetrius, but he is in love with her best friend, Hermia. Because of this, she looks to Hermia for her advice on winning his love, entreating her, “O, teach me how you look and with what art/You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart” (1.1.192-193). In this example, the eyes symbolize desire, or lack thereof. Helena wishes to make Demetrius love her, but Hermia is the only one succeeding in that area. Because of this, Helena’s love of Demetrius, represents chaos, which is furthered by the eyes’ symbolism of desire, because her love is unbalanced and unreciprocated. Similarly, Hermia’s love for Lysander faces an imbalance when Lysander becomes infatuated with Helena due to an enchantment placed upon him. This greatly confuses Hermia, for she is used to being the object of both Lysander and Demetrius’ affections, and she remarks, “You speak not as you think; it cannot be” (3.2.191). As with Helena’s unreciprocated love for Demetrius, Hermia and Lysander’s relationship also experiences imbalance aided by the magical effect placed on the eyes. Through the chaos of the lover’s relationships, the eye is found to be misleading, and often faulty of perception, causing relationships to fall apart.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the eye’s role in the development of the character’s romances presents the idea that perception influences love. Throughout the play, as the sight of the lovers is either true or altered, the romantic relationships change, specifically the relationships of Lysander and Hermia and Helena and Demetrius, because of the power of perception. Lysander and Hermia’s relationship is in itself orderly, though it sometimes causes chaos. They view each other as desirable and wonderful and their speech and actions display such. Unfortunately, their love for each other is disrupted by Lysander’s mistaken enchantment. His eyes are enchanted to love whomever he sees upon his awakening. The altering of his love causes him to view Hermia with disgust and instead love Helena. In the end, Lysander is disenchanted, and he resumes his relationship with Hermia. Because Lysander’s perception was magically influenced, his love became inconstant, and he loved someone else. Hermia, whom he once saw and loved, became disgusting to him, all because he was enchanted to love another. Similarly, Helena and Demetrius’ relationship is defined by sight. In Act One, Scene One, Lysander reveals:

 Demetrius, I’ll avouch it to his head, 

Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena, 

And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dote,

Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,

Upon this spotted and inconstant man. (1.1.106-110).

Unfortunately, Demetrius and Helena’s relationship is short lived, for he soon becomes enchanted by Hermia’s beauty, specifically her eyes, and loves her instead of Helena. In Act One, Scene Two, Helena laments, remarking about the unfairness of her unreciprocated love for Demetrius:

And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes, 

So I, admiring of his qualities. 

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, 

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath love’s mind of any judgement taste;

Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste… (1.2. 230-237).

In this passage, the eyes aid the contrasting of order and disorder with their representation of love’s influence on human perception. Helena’s love of Demetrius actually clears her eyes (symbolizing the mind) to the reality of his lack of love for her. Nevertheless, she chooses to love him anyways, which happens to end up well. Overall, Shakespeare presents the idea that even though love is based on what the mind perceives and finds attractive, without the knowledge the eyes give the mind, love falls into chaos and becomes rash and not influenced by reason; therefore love requires sight. 

The eyes’ symbolism of concepts such as desire and reason further the themes of illusion versus reality and order versus chaos in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as advancing the idea that love is influenced by perception. The concepts of desire, romance, and reasoning that the eyes embody in the play advance the themes of illusion and reality and order versus chaos through their alteration of the lovers’ relationships. The eyes show that how people understand illusion and reality is closely related to their vision, which allows such understanding to be altered and influenced. Chaos and order prove to be linked to balance, specifically the balance of love in the play, which the eyes and sight can either create or destroy. Because of this, Shakespeare furthers the idea that perception influences love through the eyes' creation of understanding in the mind. Noting this, it should be observed that the world is not always as it seems, for vision can be faulted. Nevertheless, vision is vital, for it shapes understanding and allows people to create, just like William Shakespeare did.