The potion Puck left in all these people eyelids draws the readers' attention into another important aspect, love can weaken the ability of reasoning. People, when under the influence of love, can act in many foolish ways and do things they would not normally do. As Sigmund Freud once said, "You are always insane when you are in love", and this explains why Helena chases Demetrius declaring: “I am your spaniel, and Demetrius/ the more you beat me I will fawn on you.” To understand this we must remember that when we are in love we are capable of doing anything in order to get what we want, including behaving as complete morons. Another example of twisted judgment when in love is Hermia and Lysander's desperate decision to run away into the forest, despite the fact that both can suffer a death punishment if they are caught. This is love again, making them take risks they wouldn't normally take.
Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare uses Puck as an instrument to provoke extremes in human emotion, proving “…what fool these mortals be”. The reader is constantly reminded how love, sometimes, is “intoxicating to the point of stupidity.”
Without Puck causing confusions, A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be neither exciting nor funny. In fact, there would be no story because things would stay the way they started. Puck gives humor to the story, because he is different from all the other characters in many ways. He is mischievous, naughty and even jealous. By his mischief we understand human behavior under love’s effects and by being jealous he is challenging, as when he replies to Oberon he could “put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes”. Puck is a unique character, and so are the others, but without him there would be no play.
On the other hand, Demetrius cannot figure out whom he really loves. Throughout the play Demetrius’ feelings change and he is unaware of all these changes. He first loves Helena, but then she introduces him to her friend Hermia and suddenly he falls in love with her. Though ridiculous, it happens. It is in human nature to become attracted to new gorgeous people and things. The most annoying part is that all this happens without the love potion’s effect.
At the beginning of the play, Demetrius treats Helena with disrespect and hatred, as when he told her “I love thee not, therefore pursue me not”, but after being juices, Demetrius begins to love her again. The question here is what is the metaphor trying to tell us. Is this true love or not?
Human nature is very complicated. It is in human nature to desire what is not ours and “admire the greener grass that our cute neighbor seems to have growing”. That is exactly what Shakespeare tries to tell us. Demetrius was never in love with Hermia, but obsessed. Deep inside he still loved her. He just realized or admitted how much he loved her as soon as Lysander starts to flirt with her.
As we can see, there are two very different characters in this play. Puck, who represents magic in the play and luck or destiny and Demetrius, who represents a common teenager [I wouldn’t use this word teen here. In Shakespeare’s time, your teen years were the not like today, and you take away from the significance declaring him a teenage lover.] lover who doesn’t understand the real significance of love until he starts to love Helena again.
Shakespeare uses Demetrius and the other three lovers to make us understand the complicated nature of human love among each other. Having them to pass through questionable and foolish actions which makes us agree with Theseus when he states that; “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,/Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend/ More than cool reason ever comprehends.”
