Explore Shakespeare's presentation of love in a midsummer nights dream.

        Shakespeare shows the emotions and social standing of the characters by the language he gives them to use in their speeches. He uses a mixture of blank verse, prose and poetic verse throughout the play. He does so in all his plays. When the characters speak to each other in poetic verse it indicates that they share a type of love between them. Poetic verse is usually associated with lovers writing poetry to each other.  This changes between certain characters as that confusion is misleading them or false emotions are shown. When Helena and Hermia argue the way they speak to each other changes when they both think the other has betrayed the other. When the workmen are trying to speak in verse, but it is very poor quality, it shows that they are trying to act on being someone else, but they are not doing a good job. The language of the workmen is that of the lower classes in Shakespeare’s time. They speak in prose usually. They try to speak in verse so the parts of Pyramus and Thisbe, who are meant to be truly in love, sound realistic. With the parts of Pyramus and Thisbe Shakespeare shows that love cannot be interpreted and if it is faked it will not work and be obvious when it is fake. The workmen are tying to imitate love, but are doing a bad job. Showing that you cannot pretend to be in love if you’re not.

        The title ‘A midsummer nights dream’ relates to the settings, influences and the imagery used in the play. For example, midnight is a very romantic time of night and summer is related to passion. Also the word ‘dream’ relates to the confusion in the woods when the lovers are ticked into loving someone else with the love potion in their eyes. The Latin word for moon was ‘Luna’ and this relates to the word ‘lunatic’ that means people who act strangely on full moons or times when the moon is visible; which is what happened in the woods: people acting differently (strangely) towards each other and people acting irrationally. Also references are made regularly towards nature and stars. Disorder within the two worlds, the fairy and human world, caused by argument, jealousy and blindness from reality. The fairy world having problems would affect the human world causing disorder and confusion. A lot of the images created are linked to Greek mythology for example Cupid is blind like the types of love in the play, if cupid is blind then the love that he causes will also be blind, like the loves in the play. He used what we traditionally associate with love to create images: roses, gift, stars, nature, poetry, etc. Shakespeare talks about beauty and how true love always had some problems involved. There is a lot of symbolism in the play. For example, when you are blind, you cannot see with your eyes and when the fairy Puk puts a drop of potion into the lovers eye their love changes to a blind love.

        When Shakespeare uses all these ideas and images in this play, it creates a very structured and complex play. Also it creates a very complex and structured perception of love Shakespeare has. The images he uses all have something to do with love and its different factors. Using imagery he shows how love can affect your behavior, thinking and perception. He uses the images to make a point about his opinion on love. This play was written for a wedding but was not performed for that purpose. This could be because of the ideas he shows that could have gone wrong and how it could be false even if you think its true. Shakespeare also makes a point of how quickly situations where you think you are in love, or where here you are good friends, can changes around and prove otherwise. It would for the reasons that he shows how complicated and how false love can be, be an inappropriate theme for the play to be performed at a weeding. He could of upset the couple with his imagery and references to what trouble love can lead to.  

        Shakespeare shows how he feels about love. The play demonstrates his perception of love by using imagery and language. He presents love as being irrational, blinding and obsessive. He shows that it can be very misleading.