The Theme of Love in A Midsummer Night's Dream Essay Example

📌Category: Literature, Plays, William Shakespeare
📌Words: 1314
📌Pages: 5
📌Published: 10 June 2021

As Jourdane Erasquin once said, “It’s crazy what a heart blinded by love can lead you to believe.”Just as William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night’s Dream proves, everyone craves love, and many will do anything in their power to get it. A Midsummer Night's Dream is about four Athenian lovers, Hermia, Helena, Demetrius, and Lysander. Hermia is set to wed Demetrius, her father's orders, but she loves Lysander. Meantime, Helena, who is Hermia’s best friend, is in love with Demetrius. After Hermia hears her father's orders, she and Lysander sneak out to the woods to arrange an escape to run off together, while both Helena and Demetrius follow them. The woods are the home of magical fairies, where the rulers of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, are in a fight. Robin, who is a trickster who will perform anything to help Oberon, is asked to enact a scheme on Titania. This scheme involves casting a love spell to make her fall in love with a beast. While Oberon is in the woods, he also catches his eye on Demetrius and how he is treating Helena. He decides to cast the same love spell on Demetrius, hoping he would fall in love with Helena, but accidentally casts it on both Lysander and Demetrius, causing them to both fall in love with the lonely Helena. Being blinded by love, enough not to see the cruelty one is putting forth or going through, is shown throughout the play through the character's actions, and transcends into real life as well. 

Love can involve a great amount of cruelty and can blind one from it. Not only does love blind one from cruelty, but clouds one’s judgment. Being blinded by love inhibits one from seeing the flaws in relationships, both romantic and familiar. A Midsummer Night's Dream expresses this significant theme through the characters' actions towards their lovers and familiars throughout the play.

The theme of blind love is revealed through each character, but more particularly Helena. Helena is in love with a man who wants nothing to do with her. She is so blinded by her love for him, that she doesn’t see the way he treats her,  and doesn’t see the way her love for him has transformed her. “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form dignity. Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”(1.1.231-235) In translation, Helenia is saying that even though Demetrius is obsessing over Hermia, she is making the mistake of obsessing over Demetrius. Love can cause worthless things to look beautiful, so when we are in love, we don’t see with our eyes, but with our minds. Helena has lost herself in seeking the approval of Demetrius, and it causes her to look down upon herself. Regardless of what cruel things Demetrius tells Helena, it won’t ever change how Helena feels for Demetrius. She is unaware that even though she is falling in love with him more each day, he will never do the same. Lots of times when one is in love with someone, they only care about what the other person thinks about them. Their self-esteem lowers, and it causes one to doubt themselves and the people around them. Helena even references how much her love for Demetrius has clouded her judgment when she says, “No hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste.”(1.1.236) When a person’s love for someone is so strong, it's hard for them to recognize and understand their flaws because it means that the one they love isn’t perfect. When one is blinded by love, they possess the idea that they can never do anything wrong, and that they are perfect, when in reality, that's untrue. 

Shakespeare conveys the theme of blind love throughout the play by using a love potion. This love potion is created from a flower, whose nectar, when placed on the eyelids of any character, causes them to fall in love with the first person they wake up to. This means that it makes anyone they wake up to have no flaws or imperfections, and makes them the most beautiful person to whoever is under the spell. “What thou seest when thou dost wake, Do it for thy true-love take. Love and languish for his sake. Be it ounce or cat or bear. Par or boar with bristled hair, In thy eye that shall appear, when thou wakest, it is thy dear. Wake when some vile thing is near.”(2.2.15) Oberon places the nectar on Titania; it causes her to fall in love with a beast, showing that she can’t see her lover for whom he is, truly blinding her. Shakespeare used the love potion in the play to emphasize the theme of blinded love, and how each character who fell under the potion didn’t know who they were truly loving. They started loving them because they found them beautiful, with no flaws. Also, demonstrating the difference between genuine and fake love. Just like in A Midsummer Night's Dream, lots of times, people fall in love with the looks of someone. People get so mesmerized, that they don’t notice how they are being treated by that individual. Just like it did to Helena, it leads to one getting blinded by what they think is love.

Additionally, being blinded by love hides the cruel behavior one is putting forth or receiving. Almost all male characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream threatened their romantic partners with violence, or with humiliation. Titania, Oberon’s wife, had a love potion put on her to fall in love with an unpleasant creature, which humiliated her greatly, but she still went back to Oberon because of how great her love for him is. Demetrius, as mentioned before, has expressed no interest in Helena and has always been cruel to her. After he had the love potion put on him, and he fell in love with Helena, she accepted his love without a second thought, though she was a bit suspicious how his love came out of nowhere. The women in this play internalize and condone this behavior because of how blinded they are by love. Hermia and Helena particularly, end up ruining their strong friendship for love after they engage in a fight when Lysander claims he loves Helena and not Hermia. Instead of sticking together and recognizing what's going on, Hermia blames it on Helena, not on Lysander, proving that Hermia is blinded by love, and doesn’t think Lysander could ever do something like that to her. “You juggler! You canker-blossom! You thief of love! What, have you come by night And stolen my love’s heart from him?”(3.2.)When one is in any kind of relationship, they will habitually do anything for their partner because of how much they care and love for them, even if it's the wrong thing to do. Being blinded by love can cause you to do and say things you would have never dreamt of doing formerly. It can mask one’s true self and true identity. Sometimes it can make one feel as though they're the one with all the problems, not the other way around. 

A Midsummer Night's Dream shows that love won’t always be perfect, no matter how hard one tries. The characters' actions throughout the play have conveyed the theme of blind love, and how it masks the flaws and imperfections of those we are most drawn to. At the end of The Midsummer Nights Dream, Shakespeare also shows that both false and true love can prevail. Regardless of what type of love one has, it will always be unpredictable. Shakespeare displaying the theme of love blinding cruelty and one's judgment is still extremely relevant to the world we live in today. People get blinded by their such profound affection for someone that they lose a part of themselves; apart they never thought they’d lose. 

With Shakespeare employing this theme throughout the play, I think he was trying to help people understand that love is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful thing on this planet. It covers over weaknesses and imperfections, meaning it doesn’t allow one to see how flawed their relationship legitimately is. Before reading The Midsummer Nights Dream, one may not understand how love can blind another from recognizing the truths in one’s relationship. Now, I completely understand what love can do to one's mind. Even though love may be blind, I have learned the power of love can conquer anything in its path.

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