An Analysis of Love in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream Essay

A Midsummer Nights Dream is one of Shakespeares some wide read comedies about fill in. This seems somewhat strange, however, in light of the fact that so few of its characters seem to display any kind of full or square love. A close testing of the actions and words of each of the players will reveal that only one of them, by the end of Act V, should be considered a lover. For the purposes of this inquiry, we are defining love as that which steadily desires and works to attain the benefit of another. I think this definition becomes very important when we study the uses and effect of the dew of the pansy (first mentioned in 2.1.166ff.) on the various characters on whom its charm is worked, and by extension, on those with whom they interact. The dew is employed by Shakespeare as a device to demonstrate how legato a thing love is, and how easily the affections of the so-called lover can be swayed. But the dews power is not all-conquering. It is said to make man or woman madly dote / upon the next live creature that it sees (2.1.171-172), and to induce hateful fantasies (2.1.258), but it is not irresistible, nor is it ever said to repress any feelings of love a person might have had prior to falling under its charm. Thus I believe that from our definition of love we can reason that what the dew affects and causes is not, in fact, love at all. Rather, it is fancy, another emotion of which Shakespeare makes considerable use. If a person steadily desired and worked to attain the benefit of another, the charm of the dew would not change that. It would provided fill his or her head with hateful fantasies about the new object of affection -- and not desires for its benefit. In any event, certainly someone genuinely in... ... of my examination of love in A Midsummer Nights Dream, to arrive at the conclusion that none of its players exhibited any love at all, and Shakespeares point was to prove that love is worthless a fabrication of human imagination. I was excit ed to discover, however, that in the midst of the ugly scene he set up to emphasize this argument most strongly, he left a single bastion of true, honest, unadulterated (for Hermia is never charmed by the pansys dew) love. To me, Hermia is an example of what humanity could be, and how it could love, were it to forget some of the smaller matters in which it so often becomes willingly entangled.Works Cited Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. New York. 1997. Rhoades, Duane. Shakespeares Defense of Love A Midsummer Nights Dream. Westport, CT Greenwood Press,1986.