Chreia's, Maxim's and the Persuasive Essay

Essay addressing Love in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

In Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the theme is prevalent. The play is not wanting when it comes to love. The play has a play inside of it that involves love, the characters are all in love, and love is everywhere. The audience watches characters destroy bridges and build them back again in circles of love and vexation. Shakespeare presents love to us in two stages: falling in love, and living in love, both at the same time as he forces his views upon the audience throughout the whole play.

The process of falling in love can induce a phase that looks like "madness." This madness can embolden, as seen when the audacious Hermia "oversteps the bounds of her sex" in Act 1; where she upbraids Theseus and argues the legitimacy of a relationship with Lysander as opposed to Lysander, and when she plans to run away shortly thereafter. This mad love can incite recklessness, again seen when Lysander and Hermia plan to elope; it's also seen when Helena decides that she will tell Demetrius of this plan, and recklessly forfeits friendships in the process. Love can also be blinding. Egeus cannot see Hermia's heart, and Hermia fails to see the reprehension that eloping will have on her father. With all of this it is seen that Love creates a veil, blinding one from reality by layering fantasy over the world, creating thus an altered reality.

At some point love requires rational thought. While falling in love is irrational, we cannot live our lives irrationally forever. This very fact is shown in the marriage of the fairy royals. Oberon and Titania need to achieve harmony and concord, because not only does it affect them when they argue, the natural world is in tatters because of their current enmity, and Oberon is driven to tricks that seep over into the lives of the young Athenians gallivanting in the woods. Additionally love deserves better than the example of Egeus and his relationship with Hermia. He has a beautiful paternal love for her, but it quickly and irrationally turns to a parlous jealousy when Lysander steals her heart. He forgets his love for her in his haste to eliminate the threat by forcing her to marry a man whom she doesn't love in order to secure his place in her heart. And Lysander is a whole problem by himself; in support of his change of heart, he says the change is due to reason, and that his reason has matured, when in fact he has no reason to love Helena, and every reason to love Hermia. He may be under a love spell, but he should have enough wits about him to realize that the very reasons he quotes as to his defense are the very reasons he should love Hermia instead. Love can and should be irrational at first, but if we don't leave the irrational fairyland of passion, find a solid ground of reality, and establish a foundation for the rest of our lives, our individual lives and worlds will spin out of control in a vortex of reckless abandon and untethered passion, a situation that will ruin us in all respects, and leave us destitute in a barren wasteland.

These instances of love that we see are all from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but how is it drawn from all this chaos that Shakespeare truly does believe in love? Such an idea seems absurd, that Shakespeare would encourage such a volatile beast, and it's inherent traits. But he does, from the first lines to the final bow; the play is centered on love and passion. No one writes such a work that centers on such an idea unless they encourage it. But don't just take that argument at its word. Shakespeare encourages love, and the joy found in love, through his characters: Theseus (5.1.29-30), and Oberon (5.1.385-88). This is complimented by Bottom's love for acting in Act 1 Scene 2, and by Theseus' anxiety for marriage in the first few lines. Shakespeare even emphasizes love in the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in Act 5. As this all shows, Shakespeare did not mean for his work to be read without provoking thought on the subject of love, and if he meant for this work to belittle love, he would have written it as a tragedy, more along the lines of Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare gives a happy ending so that the audience might apprehend that love is good, and should be sought and enjoyed, but controlled.

Overall Shakespeare paints a realistic, but encouraging portrait of the patterns of love. He shows it's vexing attitude, the surfeit dotage of obsession, and the dissension that love spreads among friends. He shows how love can and should be irrational, but at some point it needs to become grounded in reality, lest the result affect not only one person, but also their entire sphere of relationships.