A Midsummer's Night Dream Essay

Deep in the enchanted, Athenian forest, lies four star-crossed lovers, mystical fairies, and a group of misfit mechanicals who cross paths in a scramble to ultimately achieve true love. At first glance, this Shakespearean comedy is packed full of small stories of romanticism and love, but with further analyzation, the reader can determine that most relationships are in fact a hoax. The comicality of this play is merely based upon the road to true love being rocky and difficult. With reading and studying A Midsummer’s Night Dream, one can come to the conclusion that Shakespeare has mostly skeptical views of romance. Whether it be through the practical joke played on Titania and Nick Bottom, the insincere and bogus love of Helena and

Titania is queen of the fairies and Oberon, her husband, is the king. The two have a foolish argument over a small Changeling belonging to Titania which Oberon wants for himself. This ultimately results in Oberon playing a practical joke on Titania by putting a potion on her eyes, causing her to fall in love with the first living thing she sees. Unfortunately a prank is also played on the weaver, Nick Bottom, by Oberon's right-hand-man, Puck. Bottom is given the head of a donkey. The two problems tie together because when Titania awakes, Bottom is the one she sees and she then falls in love with what seems to be a donkey. The skepticism is displayed by Shakespeare in this scenario because the relationship between the two is designed to be comical. Bottom has no idea of his animalistic circumstances, and Titania is under a spell, forcing her love upon him. Bottom will forever remember Titania and the impact she had on him romantically, but she will merely have distant memories of the relationship. “Methought I was enamoured by an ass” (4.1.60). If Shakespeare was not skeptic of romance, he would not have produced a fake relationship from magic, for comical reasons. Romance is not meant to be fake and laughed at, is it meant to be