A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Never risk your heart to a fool, for if you do you will surely become one. Love can be found in many different ways, but the idea of true love is one’s opinion. Love can be foolish or amazing depending on who you are. Love is a dark and intangible feeling that often exposes its targets to danger, pain and suffering. Love is set out to be full of happiness, yet it works to weaken us, and drives us to depend on and to be sensitive of others. Love is built on a foundation of trust which can be broken at any time, a thin barrier between formality and chaos. Foolishness is defined as lack of good sense or judgment, putting yourself through all that seems foolish, doesn’t it? True love doesn’t exist in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. 3 major relationships that are perceived to be true love, that are just plain foolish are Oberon and Titania, Theseus and Hippolyta, Demetrius and Helena.

First off, the world of fairies also provides an environment where true love is foolish. The relationship between Oberon and Titania provides a perfect example of a marriage of two leaders where the male feels he is in authority, which is also the case in Theseus and Hippolyta`s relationship. Titania and Oberon share a common mistrust with one another which is displayed multiple times in different situations, which appears in the form of jealousy:

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigenia, whom he ravished? (2.1.74-78)

The lack of trust displayed by both clearly destroys any argument of existing true love between the fairies, but it is Oberon's actions in playing a trick on his wife ...

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...t they are playing a trick on her. This shows that even when Demetrius tries to confess love to Helena, she continues to push him away.

In conclusion, A Midsummer Night’s Dream a play where love is found to be foolish. The play shows that what is considered true love is often not love at all. It shows that love in the play is more than likely selfishness and obsession. It is displayed by the amount of challenges true love faces with the characters' relationships that some emotion may exist but counting it as love is just foolish. Remaining constantly in love is the true challenge that these characters face and fail in small or big ways in the end. Although the play may look like a happy ending, Oberon has to live with the guilt of playing a trick on Titania, Even when it seems to be a happy ending, where all seems well in order, it was all just an illusion.