The play A Midsummer Night’s Dream written by William Shakespeare is a wonderfully woven tale that transports the mind to a dream world of fairies and manipulated love. Act 5 scene 1 of the play completely summarizes the plot of the tale by using language that uses depth to convey the characters, their situations and their viewpoints of love. In the act, Theseus was saying that “I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.” (Shakespeare, line 3-4). The characters Helena, Demetrius, Lysander and Hermia were being tricked by the fairies and the love potion, and the wants of their hearts were changed. The fairy king Oberon and his servant Puck were solely using the love potion as entertainment for themselves and the characters became his toys, the potion violating …show more content…
In addition, Theseus believes that “One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven” (Shakespeare, 10-14), and believes that they were all dreaming. The “madman”, would be Helena when she believed that Hermia was tricking her, and she saw the situation as far worse than it really was, the “devils” being her problems and her suspicion of Hermia tearing apart their bond of friendship. The lover, Demetrius, was constantly doting on Hermia before the potion, but now, he saw the beauty of Helena, who was constantly pursuing him for love. The “brow of Egypt” means that with love could mask the looks of the skin, because at that time, Egyptians and Gypsies were seen as unfit or unsuitable, yet they looked as beautiful as Helen of Troy, who started a great war in Greek Mythology because of her beauty, as of Helena in the perspective of