Tuesday, July 28, 2015

How does Shakespeare portray love in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"?

As Lysander says, "The course of true love never did run smooth."  Love in A Midsummer Night's Dream is portrayed as complicated and difficult, yet Shakespeare does it in a way that is humorous and lighthearted.  In this play love often brings out the worst in people, yet in the end it's what brings everyone back together.  Love has the ability to spellbind people as Shakespeare represents symbolically through Puck's actions, and we see how intensely complicated it can be when it nearly tears apart Hermia's family and causes argument between the four main human characters.  Love permeates all aspects of life in this play and we see the awesome power it has over human emotion, psychology, and behavior.  Of course, no matter what happens, love prevails in the end validating Lysander's quotation at the beginning of the play.

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