Tragedy in a Comedy: A Life Without Love is No Life at All

Love is general and complex, an idiom of life. It transforms us. We are but children and fools, vulnerable to the arrows of Cupid, who mercilessly shoots, almost blindly; and, in a whir of golden dust, we stumble about grasping for the truth. It is like a baited hook--a white light; we are drawn to it, inexplicably or irrationally, only to come to an end foreseen by all but those involved in the imbalance of perception. Out of imbalance, conflicts arise, and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream illustrates these conflicts with a touch of humour and light-heartedness, though the subject is quite serious.

Love is ever growing and ever changing, as we are with time, but it is always true that all love beauty. But what beauty is is only to the one who asks, as one's view of beauty may differ significantly from another's, and perception is lost in the furore of time for each. Beauty is the aesthetics in life--the aesthetics of the material world and the aesthetics of the heart: We see with our eyes and like a pretty face, often confusing material for immaterial. Our hearts see hearts. The imbalance and mistakes of the material and immaterial eye, the priority of each, and the constant need to have and be committed make love this complex entanglement of concrete and abstract pathways running into and away from each other, mating to conceive children such as kindness, jealousy, honestly, and lies, which, if unbalanced, may lead anyone astray.

Demetrius is one such person. Hermia's father wished her to marry this man, Demetrius, but she loved another: Lysander. And Lysander loved her, and said of Demetrius, who claimed to love Hermia, "Demetrius [...] / Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena, / And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, / Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, / Upon this spotted and inconsistent man" (I.i.106--110). Helena appeared later on saying she wished she could look like Hermia so that Demetrius would love her instead (I.i.182--101). Who can tell whom Demetrius truly loved? Helena claimed she was fair as Hermia to all others in Athens, only not to Demetrius (I.i.227--228). If that was true, then why did Demetrius make love to Helena? It could be that Hermia was more beautiful, and that Demetrius, after being with Helena, decided he loved Hermia's physical beauty more, confusing it with love of her personality. Or it could be the other way around: Demetrius made love to Helena because she was beautiful, but he then came to his senses and knew he loved Hermia for real. Demetrius and the conflicts he presents show the inconsistencies in love and the battle between the material and immaterial. The conflicts that arose from Demetrius's fickle love bore jealousy and hurt in Helena, and caused the night's events: Oberon King of Fairies ordered his mischievous servant Puck to use "love juice" on Demetrius's eyes so he would love Helena in return, though Puck mistook Lysander for Demetrius, and soon both Lysander and Demetrius thought they loved Helena, who thought they were mocking her, and Hermia was left alone.

And so, quite bluntly, they all looked like asses. It is as explained by Charlotte Lucas in Joe Wright's 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice: "We are all fools in love." It is like reaching out for something quite plainly out of our reach or walking in a minefield. The infamous cliché of an excuse to reason our actions is "Love is blind"--used, reused, watered-down, and warn out--yes--but, simply: It is true--true to human nature, at least. And don't the characters walk around the forest, in the dark, looking ridiculous in their sordid affairs; fools arguing passionately for a forced, blinded lie of love? The overwhelming passion love imbeds in hearts has lovers scrambling blindfolded on unfamiliar territory. Were they to think and remove the blindfold, they would see where they were going. Fortunately for the lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck cleaned Lysander's eyes restoring balance to the group, and they did not end in the same way Pyramus and Thisbe did.

The story of Pyramus and Thisbe parallels that of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the play Pyramus and Thisbe, there are three important aspects that had to be rearranged so they could be performed indoors: The wall, the lion, and the Moon. The wall represents all that needs to be overcome for the lovers to be together, such as prearranged marriage and law. The lion represents the obstacles in love, supposedly though not necessarily truly, tearing lovers apart. And the Moon showed the lovers where they were going in the dark, though the Moon is a symbol of inconsistency and is two-faced (V.i.231--232: Demetrius: "He should have worn the horns on his head." Theseus: "He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible / within the circumference."), so it showed Pyramus Thisbe's "death" and he, without logic, killed himself on the spot. This play was made comical by the "rude mechanicals" (III.ii.9), like Shakespeare made his own play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, though both are quite serious, and Shakespeare made his humourous on purpose. Also, those watching the play of Pyramus and Thisbe could see the mistakes by the characters and had a running commentary. e.g. Theseus: "I wonder if the lion be to speak." Demetrius: "No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do" (V.i.51--52).

Lovers are transformed and translated--and sometimes mistranslated--into fools, children. Oberon and his Queen Titania became jealous and blind in love: Oberon made a childish decision to trick his lover and Titania was made an ass by loving an ass. Lysander and Hermia risked death, some might say foolishly, in order to be together, and Helena pursued Demetrius who claimed he hated her and was even willing to leave her to the wild beasts in the forest. For the part of mistranslation, Helena thought Hermia to be against her, because as much as love, if not more, jealousy is blinding. She also thought Demetrius and Lysander were mocking her and Hermia did not know what she meant, confusing both herself, Hermia, and Helena.

The lovers with the juice over their eyes could not hold in their love for the object of their desire, and all was out of control. Demetrius and Lysander were made to fall in love with Helena, and Titania had fallen in love with Bottom with the head of an ass, due to the work of the "love juice" from the flower "[b]efore milk-white, now purple with love's wound" (II.i.166), which became a symbol of the fickle, uncontrollable, passionate, and powerful nature of love.

As Leonardo da Vinci said in Andy Tennant's 1998 film "Ever After: A Cinderella Story," "A Midsummer Night's Dream, we can with time look back on our own lives and laugh at what asses we've been as if it were a dream. Caught in the moment, however, we are unlikely to realise how foolish we look and how childishly we are acting. The power of love is strong, for good and for bad; like a child, it can be lead astray, but with a balance of passion and wisdom, all can end well.