Inconstancy of Love in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

In the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare, inconstancy of love is one of the play’s main themes. This paper uses the case of constant love between Lysander and Hermia as an example of a complete opposite of inconstancy of love as a main theme in the play. With regard to this contradiction, the paper explains how and why it is regarded as the opposite of the theme, inconstancy of love in the play. Typically, inconstancy of love comes out through most frequent sights within the play, A Midsummer Night Dream. Forces leading to inconstancy of love play a significant role in the play and form the basis of the play. The achievement of these aspects is seen through the provision of twists, hard laughs, as well as developing characters. Although inconsistency of love is a main theme in the play, the love for Lysander by Hermidia is constant and remains strong and loyal throughout the play. This incident contradicts inconsistency of love, which is the play’s main theme.

Inconstancy of love among young lovers provides a constant progression in the play, in which the reader gets to know about it through inconstant happenings within the play. This case suggests that some subjects remain true and vivid throughout the duration of the play. Hermia’s strong and loyal love for Lysander remains constant despite many chaoses that are observable in the play. This comes in despite the fact that Lysander is from a lower class and can hardly show the confidence to go against the existing forces against their romantic relationship by loving her back. The course of true love seems not to be running smoothly especially due to their class differences. Through the situation facing Lysander and Hermia, it comes out that love runs in the presence of many obstacles. The love between Lysander and Hermia has been faced with many difficulties since the start of the play. Conversely, their romantic relationship has remained strong and loyal. Hermia is deeply in love with Lysander, but her father does not approve the relationship because he wants her to marry Demetrius. The father is so serious that he swears to have his daughter face death or become a nun if she fails to comply with his decision. The conditions provided are based on the Athenian law further providing an extended force against the strong/loyal love joining the two young lovers. According to Egeus, Hermia’s father, Hermia should marry Demetrius at all cost (Shakespeare, 2013 ).

Since Lysander loves Hermia as much and he finds it difficult to love her especially given his class and family background, he finds running away into the forest as the best option. On their way to the forest, they come across Helena. Helena was the Demetrius’ former fiancée. Demetrius had abandoned her with a view of wooing Hermia. They were in their hind out, but Hermia’s explanation to Helena that she and her love, Lysander, will be hiding in the forest becomes a further problem to their love. After Helena informs Demetrious about it thinking that he would fall back for her, he instead heads for the forest to look for Hermia and Lysander in the accompaniment of Helena (Shakespeare, 2013 ).

In conclusion, the love between Lysander and Hermia is appear to be perpetual until Oberon, the Fairy King who is invisible to humans, uses his magic to blind Demetrious to fall back for Helena with a view of neutralizing everything. This magic is meant to solve the problems that are trying to end the constant love between Lysander and Hermia. Oberon however, makes a mistake by reversing their love such that the two men falls for Hermia. This confusion however happens for a while after which Oberon performs another magic for each pair to love accordingly. Demetrious thus finds himself in love with only Helena while Lysander is now in loves only Hermia the four lovers are now ready to support their love for each of their partners. Lysander and Hermia have thus maintained a constant love despite the troubles they face. Egeus’ objection of their marriage is overruled by the declaration of Demetrious that he would marry Helena. Similarly, Hermia clarifies that she would only marry Lysander despite the risk of facing the Athenian law (Shakespeare, 2013 ). The case of consistency is thus clear in this case. It brings out the opposite of the inconstancy of love as the play’s main theme.

References
Shakespeare, W. (2013 ). A Midsummer Nights Dream: Edited by David Bevington, David Scott Kastan. New York: Random House Publishing Group.