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Jahnavi Gupta
B.A. English
ENG 241 Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
Professor Sambudha Sen
5th December 2020
The depiction of love in A Midsummer's Night's Dream.

What’s More Evasive, Love or the Memory of Dreams as We’re Waking?

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by William Shakespeare is a play that deals with love in

several of its myriad manifestations, with the basic premise being that ‘the course of true love

never did run smooth’. As one of the most basic and powerful emotions, love holds a deeply

destructive power, and this is reflected throughout the play by means of various characters

and circumstances. In the case of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the interpretations of love

have been dynamically changed from the conventional understanding of affection as a

transaction during the time of the writing of the play. Shakespeare even deviates from his

traditional format of ‘festive comedies’ to give us an insightful and surprisingly

contemporary interpretation of an all too familiar emotion. In this essay, I will attempt to

highlight how the many different forms of love shape the play and how the sultry haze of the

midsummer aids in that.

The title of the play suggests midsummer night or the summer solstice – a magical

night of the year when the veil between the visible and the invisible worlds are thin.

However, the events of the play actually take place on the eve of the Mayday festivities, as

evidenced by Theseus’ belief that the loves have come to the woods to observe the May day

rituals. “No doubt they rose up early to observe the rite of May, and, hearing our intent came

here in grace of our solemnity.” (Act IV, Scene I). Why then the misleading title? It can

perhaps be assumed that Shakespeare wanted the audience in the frame of mind that mirrors
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the summer solstice – the longest day and the shortest night in the northern hemisphere, and

the night for all sorts of witchcraft and magic in the ancient pagan traditions. This ties up

neatly with his plot which involves inhabitants of both human and non-human worlds and

brings together pagan and Christian worlds by maintaining a dual frame of reference (the Fae

and the humans).

The pagan world is of great importance with respect to the dominant theme of the

play, which is love because it allows Shakespeare to invoke the fertility rites associated with

the ancient pagan traditions and the concomitant concept of a bountiful harvest and verdant

earth as a result. Sterility is suggested when the King and Queen of the Fae, Oberon and

Titania, quarrel, and when their quarrel has ended, regeneration is promised.

The underlying concept seems to be that the human world mirrors the invisible one, and when

there is discord amongst the immortal lovers the visible world suffers. Harmony is restored

after ‘love’ regains its proper place. Pagan rites thus culminate in the very non-pagan

tradition of marriage, thereby tying together both worlds and both traditions.

The play depicts several ‘kinds’ of love. ‘True love’ is depicted in Lysander and

Hermia, love born out of mutual respect is shown in the relationship of Theseus and

Hippolyta, love ending in tragedy in the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Shakespeare wants his

audience to remember the tragic lovers and be mindful that love, no matter how true it may

be, comes to fruition only by happy coincidence, and more often than not, it falls subservient

to the power wielded by other agents. Young lovers in particular are like marionettes in the

hand of their parents and/or Kings and Queens. Lysander and Hermia’s relationship is at the

mercy of her father, in an age where daughters are literally considered the property of the

father, to trade to a husband, as and when he pleases. This is what leads Demetrius to
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consider Lysander’s claims of love as ‘crazed’ and he tells him to, “Yield thy craz’d title to

my certain right.” When the two are finally allowed to wed, it is only through a royal decree.

Shakespeare also shows love as fickle. The emphasis is on the ‘seeing’ of objects –

not with the mind as the case should be, but with the ‘eyes’ – seeing only what is external and

therefore superficial. Shakespeare clearly reminds his audience that “Love looks not with the

eyes, but the with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,” (Act I Scene I)

highlighting that love often does not subscribe to tangible reason, and is full of fancy. Here

we see the paradox of the play – lovers are enamoured by each other because their physical

sight is tampered with, and they have lost the ability to ‘see’ with the mind. Titania’s

obsession with Bottom, Lysander’s harsh rejection of Hermia – these are like a fevered

madness in which rationality and logic are all but absent. Shakespeare is hammering in the

fact that love makes fools of all of us, and unless common sense prevails, chaos is the only

result. The dreams of the summer are fevered and wild and quite ephemeral, and when the

cold light of day dawns, reason must overpower passion if there is to be any sense of order in

the world. When Puck exclaims, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” it is in effect a

denunciation of the notion of love. The fairy world is not prone to the sentimentality and

lovelornness that befalls the humans, and therefore it is up to the fairies to keep the order of

the world. Left to human devices, the system would collapse upon itself from a surfeit of

‘madness’.

Throughout the play, love assumes this dream like quality – meant to be taken exactly

what it is – a reverie born of midsummer madness. The analogy drawn between the lover, the

lunatic and the poet is particularly apt, because all three are adept at flights of fancy, leaving

logic and reason far behind. Shakespeare suggests that love is all very well, but it needs to be

accompanied by a sense of duty/propriety. Willing or not, lovers must often part, and accept
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that the summer of passion was rapturous while it lasted, but once it is over good sense had

better prevail.

Because ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is a comedy, all’s well that end’s well, but

the play could just as easily have turned into another ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Love is a force of

nature, unstoppable and destructive, precisely because it is irrational. But a dream is only a

dream, and the harsh light of day melts away the dream irrevocably, no matter how hard one

tries to hold on to it. So it is with love. It is but a ‘midsummer night’s dream’ and dreams

cannot go on forever. Just as surely as youth turns old and grey, and summer frosts into

autumn, the seasons of life march on, and reason must overpower the dreams of passion, if

there is to be any fertility in the world.

Citation

Shakespeare, William. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Entire Text)

Linley, Keith. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream' in Context: Magic, Madness and Mayhem”