Question2: Worlds Collide:
A Midsummers Night’s Dream focuses on explaining how crazy and illogical love really is. To convey these themes Shakespeare uses two different settings in the play to show the contrasts. One is Athens, the rational world, and the other is the forest, the irrational world. The play takes place on midsummer’s night’s eve, a time of mayhem and chaos. A Midsummer’s night’s dream has a convoluted plot of intricate characters and a spider web of relationships. Shakespeare believes that love is irrational and this is one of the strong themes of the play. Fairy king Oberon is jealous of his wife, Titania, and thus he orders Puck to fetch him love juice. This starts all sorts of mayhem because he places the juice on Lysander’s eyes. Lysander then awakens and falls in love with Helena. Helena takes this as mockery and runs away. This conveys the craziness of love because Lysander awoke and instantly fell in love with someone who, the night before, would have had no intention of loving.
Puck also places love juice on Titania’s eyes, resulting in her falling in love with the idiotic Bottom, who has an ass on his head. This shows the craziness of love because of Bottom’s unappealing presence yet Titania still feels love towards him. This is of course not true love and Bottom is sceptical towards her declaration of love. “Reason and love keep little company together now-adays”- Bottom. This quote basically means that loving someone is not based on our rational thoughts and more so our desire to find someone to love. Bottom comes off as a fool but in fact has moments where he appears to be wise and knowledgeable.
The relationship between Fairy King and Queen Oberon and Titania is also a perfect example of the craziness of love. As a married couple true love is clearly not shown and between the two. Oberon plays tricks on his wife and makes her fall in love with Bottom. Oberon is similar to Cupid, in that he has the ability to change and create people perceptions of love, once again demonstrating that love is often illogical and