Shakespeare Essay
While Shakespeare is showing different types of love throughout divergent lovers and authority, I believe he uses a variety of characters to exhibit different sentiment. I think that Shakespeare was trying to tell people that you can love whoever you would like, even if that person doesn’t love you back. There are many different types of love such as, blind love, philia love, forced love, parental love, romantic love, and complicated love. Shakespeare shows blind love by creating a flower whose nectar blinds the characters’ eyes to the flaws of the object to his or her affection. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Robin Goodfellow places the nectar on Titania’s eyes. When Titania is awakened by the sound of Bottom’s song, she sees him and declares, “So is my eye 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.” This generates humor for the reader because the nectar causes Titania to directly fall in love with Bottom. She becomes oblivious to the fact that Bottom has been transformed into an ass and she thinks he is the most beautiful creature on the earth. Another example of the humor created by blind love is when the nectar causes Lysander to notify Helena of the fact that he loves her and that he no longer loves Hermia. Lysander states, “Look when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, in their nativity all truth appears. How can these things in me seem scorn to you, bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?” This is comical because Helena thinks that Lysander is playing a trick on her. The reader finds Helena’s reaction to Lysander’s statement of his love for her, rather funny. Love is a part of life that has the ability to change you. Shakespeare bespeaks that love is not always persistent, and can change in very unforeseeable patterns. At the beginning of the play, Lysander, Hermia, and Demetrius create a love triangle, with Hermia at the apex, and Helena being almost non-existent. Both Lysander and Demetrius adore Hermia, begging for her acceptance, and to acquire her father’s trust. As the play goes on, the triangle shifts “magically” in an unexpected way. Lysander, who is madly in love with Hermia, awakes to find himself obsessed with Helena. Demetrius has also fallen in love with Helena because Robin Goodfellow put the juice in both of their eyes and they both woke up to be in love with Helena. After falling in love with Helena, Lysander awakes from this “dream” to find that he truly loves Hermia. Shakespeare parades forced love at the beginning of the play between Theseus and Hippolyta. Theseus states in act 1, “I wooed thee with my sword, to portray that he won her with his sword as in the battle to win her love.” In act 5, Hippolyta says, “My Theseus,” this shows us that she is minded to marry him. We are not necessarily sure that they actually want to marry each other. Throughout the story it looks as though his love for Hippolyta has increased, and leading both of them being married, since he understood the love between Helena, Lysander, Hermia, and Demetrius with one another. This probably made him impotent to the result of love people had for each other. Another type of love he shows is parental love, Egeus and Hermia. Egeus seems like a very dominant and stern. His character represents that he has the right of way and the boss. Even though Hermia is crazy in love with Lysander, Egeus insists that she marry Demetrius. In my opinion, I think the reason Egeus does not want his daughter to marry Lysander is because he knows Demetrius and not him. Every Father wants the best for their daughter and for them to be a happy as they can be. He might trust that Demetrius will bring more happiness to Hermia than Lysander can, because Egeus actually knows Demetrius personally. Even though every father wants their daughter to be happy, they should listen to what their daughter feels. Complicated love is also shown in this play/ story, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the story, four young adults are madly in love with each other but there is a shortcoming of the love each one has for each other. Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Hermia, Helena loves Demetrius, and Demetrius loves Hermia instead of Helena. This is a very difficult love because there is the romantic couple who are madly in love, Lysander and Hermia but, yet Helena is madly in love with Demetrius and he doesn’t have eyes for her. These love affiliations between one another become even more problematic between these lovers because Puck accidently applies the love potion to Lysander’s eyelids which once he awakes he sees Helena and falls in love with her. The same love potion was applied to Demetrius’ eyelids who also falls in love with Helena once he awakes. Both of them being in love with Helena baffles Hermia.. Yet towards the end, all four lovers get what they wanted. Hermia is with Lysander and Demetrius is in love with Helena. I think Shakespeare is endeavoring to show the audience that love can come and go and it can become even more complicated but if you try, you can succeed at love. Shakespeare shows so many different types of love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “The course of true love never did run smooth.” is one of Shakespeare’s most famous quotes. He is trying to tell us that love has it’s ups and downs. Shakespeare shows his audience that in a way, love is joined to life because life is unpredictable. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, or in ten years. In the play, no one knew if Hermia was going to be able to marry Lysander, and no one knew if Demetrius would eventually fall in love with Helena. He used Theseus and Hippolyta, Egeus and Hermia, Lysander and Hermia, Oberon and Titania, and Demetrius and Hermia to show all of these different types of love. SMART GOAL
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