Love In The Play A Midsummer Night's Dream

In Act three of the play A midsummer night’s dream, Shakespeare explores how love creates confusions. In the forest, Puck’s magic brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play. When this Act opens, Oberon orders Puck to put love potion on Titania’s eyes when she falls asleep. After she wakes up, she sees Bottom, who is practicing the play, and falls in love with him simultaneously. She says to Bottom, “What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?” (3.1.113). Because of the love potion, the fairy queen turned the once-feisty and intelligent queen into a silly. She even called Bottom an angel even though he has transformed into an ass. When Bottom sings, Titania says that “[Her] ear is much enamoured of thy note/So is

Puck, however, mistook his task by anointing the potion on the eyes of the Lysander, and creates a chaos among four young Athenians. Lysander fell in love with Helena. When Helena asks whether he loves Hermia or not, he says, “I had no Judgment when to her I swore” (3.2.134). Under the power of the love potion, Lysander totally changes his mind and hates Hermia. When Hermia wakes up and see Lysander wooing Helena, she says to Lysander, “Am I not Hermia? Are you not Lysander?” (3.2.273). She is shocked by the sudden change that Lysander doesn’t love her anymore. Puck, realizing his mistake, tries to remedy this situation by putting love potion on Demetrius, and Demetrius falls in love with Helena too. Contrarily, Helena says, “Now I perceive that they have conjion’d all three/ To fashion this false sport in spite of me”. She thinks three of them is fooling and mocking her. Lysander and Demetrius, on the other hand, want to fight one another over who gets Helena. Seeing such a confusion, Oberon decided to let puck to separate Lysander and Demetrius, and put magic juice on the eyes of the four young athenians to restore the order. The power of love could make people suddenly change the person whom they love and thus create a bizarre and chaotic situation.

The magic and power of love is explicit in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dreams that shows love is irrational and blind.Shakespeare makes use of the romantic