“Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream” they say “in order to expose the follies of

love. Lovers are akin to lunatics.” He entertains us with an amusing comedy of errors, with a confused
quartets of lovers, with the pranks of the fairy Puck and the well meant but ignorant acting of the
Athenian workmen.

Helena speak ironically when she thinks that all the others teasing her, and that Lysander and Demetrius
are only pretending to love her. She says to them bitterly:

Ay, do, persever, counterfeit sad looks,

Make mouths upon me when I turn my back;
Wink at each other: hold the sweet jest up:
This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled.

She doesn’t, of course, really want them to do what she says. She is just trying to shame them out of
what she thinks is their unkind pretence.

Since this play is a comedy the irony is mostly playful and lighthearted. There is a contradictor outcome
of events when Lysander lies down to sleep affirming his deep love of Hermia and wakes up a few
minutes later declare his love Helena. His last words are (Act II, scene ii, line 63):

And then end life when I end loyalty.

At line 103 he wakes up, and seeing Helena he says

And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake.

Lysander doesn’t know that what he speaks is because of the juice of magic flower that Puck squeezed
on his eyes and neither does Helena. But the audience knows and can enjoy the ensuing confusion and
misunderstanding, knowing that Puck is in control of the situation and that though he is mischievous he
is not malicious.