The play presents several different couples: Theseus and Hippolyta ; Hermia and Lysander , Helena and Demetrius , Titania and Bottom , and Titania and Oberon. What aspects of love are explored in each of these relationships?

Theseus and Hippolyta represent mature love. In this play, they are the one that regard marriage as a holy ceremony and thus the way they choose their lovers are also being chosen aptly. The evidence is that Hippolyta accepted Theseus proposal because Hippolyta feel that Theseus is worthy of her as Theseus has managed to defeat Hippolyta who is the queen of the Amazon. “Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword” suggests that mature love can just be obtained by efforts and the sincere feelings that both party have towards each other. They also showed the quality of mature love which is very sincere and also based on reason. This can be seen that even though Theseus desired to own Hippolyta so badly, he chose to be patient as shown in “She lingers my desires, like to a stepdame or a dowager”. This love represents stability and harmony as it is based on a dignified and restrained combination of thought and feeling.

Oberon and Titania are supposed to represent mature love. However, there are also conflict between them due to Oberon desires to have the Indian boy as one of his attendants. Just because of this, they called each other “Jealous Oberon” and “proud Titania”. Besides that, they also accused each other for liking human characters like Theseus and Hippolyta as shown in “your buskined mistress and your warrior love” as well as “Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?” This showed their jealousy towards each other. It is ironic in a sense that both Titania and Oberon are supposed to “give” Theseus and Hippolyta “their bed of joy and prosperity” and yet they are now quarelling. Moreover, Oberon and Titania are also “their parents and original” but yet they are setting a bad example, that is, just because of their selfishness, the world is at stake of disaster that they may caused. If the fairies were unable to maintain the harmony, there will be no guarantee as to what might happen in the human world. Shakespeare wanted to show us that even mature love also sometimes can get unstable as Lysander did say that “the course of true love never did run smooth”

As for the four lovers as well as Titania and Bottom, they all represent the irrational, self-indulgent and obsessive love. In Hermia and Lysander case, they are very irrational with the action that they took. They never thought of the consequences of their thoughtless action which represent immature love. This can be seen that they decided to leave Athens and worse, they planned to do it furtively as shown in “…Steal forth thy father’s house to-morrow night”. The idea of “steal” suggests that Lysander urged Hermia to follow him even though he knew that her father will not give her consent to leave Athens. Hermia also act very impulsive as we can see when Hermia accused Demetrius for killing Lysander as shown in “ … cannot be but thou hast murdered him “. Hermia was “blinded” with her own love and thus was unable to think properly.

As for Helena and Demetrius, although it is an unrequited love, Helena kept pursue Demetrius to the point that she lost her self-control. She also risked her own dignity when she said, “..to be used as you used your dog?”. Helena regards herself as low as a dog. This shows her doting towards Demetrius as she did not care what Demetrius think of her, what she wanted was to be able to captured his heart. As for Titania and Bottom, it is clearly that Titania’s obsession towards Bottom showed infatuation where reason is totally subdued by animal instinct as shown in “While thy amiable cheeks do coy”. This also suggests that Titania was having fun while caressing his hair even though donkey’s hair is supposed to be coarse. Thus, all of these pair of lovers showed the qualities of immature love due to their irrational and unrestrained infatuation.

Posted by carissa.perlin.rae :: 4:29 PM :: 0 comments

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