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A Midsummer Night's Dream Love Analysis

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Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream dealt with the theme of love and its four types, including loves many complications such as disappointment and confusion. The play rotates around different forms of love, two of them being friendship love (Phileo) and romantic (Eros) or true love. Love is the most important theme of the play and the asymmetrical love seen in the play between the four Athenians and romantic encounters cause conflict within the play. There is a strong friendship love between two characters, Hermia and Helena. However, their friendship love is tested throughout the play by their pursuit of true love which, in the end, ultimately prevails. The power of true love is evident in the play, the depiction of love reveals its true nature as in its pursuit it causes the characters to become irrational. True love in this play stems conflict from the troubles of romance by the actions of the lovers. The friendship between Hermia and Helena is at stake because of the romantic love that exists between the different parties in the play. Helena mistakes her obsession with Demetrius with love even though he is very rude to her. On the other hand, Demetrius loves Helena’s friend, Hermia, and wants to marry her. However, Helena is still in love …show more content…

Although Helena had a strong Philia love for Hermia she betrayed her by telling Demetrius their plans to elope. Helena thought that by betraying her friend through telling Demetrius their plans, he would once again love her which was not the case. In the play when Hermia address her friend as fair, we see Helena agitated and responds by telling her, “Call you me fair? That fair again unsay, Demetrius loves your fair, O happy fair” (1.1.181-182). This shows how Helena is angry at her friend because the man she loves is in love with Hermia. This conflict shows again how romantic love is stronger than friendship

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