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The Theme Of Free Will And Love In A Midsummer Night's Dream

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In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” by William Shakespeare, the fairies meddle with sets of lovers. Their meddling calls into question the free will of the characters and generally erases it. While in the context of the play, the flower is seemingly written off as an interesting prank that Oberon and Puck have pulled, it has a deeper meaning about free will and love. By examining the use of the flower in the play we can see how the fairies' actions affect the lovers and their emotions about the other characters. When the fairies use the flower in order to meddle with the two sets of human lovers they erase Lysander and Demetrius’s free will, and choice in their love lives. In the first scenario of Lysander and Hermia’s relationship, the potion …show more content…

Demetrius's love is described by Oberon as false, “instead of this man’s false love being turned into a true love.” (Shakespeare 3.2.93-94). His love being false ties into the fairies' meddling because, in Oberon’s talks with Robin, it seems like they are ok to meddle if it makes a false love true. This type of meddling affects love by implying that there can be made a distinction between true and false love, and by showing that, at the very least, Oberon can tell the difference. It is also interesting that the fairies never explicitly remove the effects of the flower from Demetrius thus keeping his free will in most aspects of love from him, only explicitly freeing Lysander from the effects, “I’ll apply To your eye. Gentle lover, remedy. (squeezes flower juice into LYSANDER ’s eyes)” (Shakespeare 3.2.463-466). This idea that true love is good can only be seen, without any fairy help, with Lysander and Hermia, and the fairies keeping Demetrius under the effects of the flower shows that love and free will are not always compatible. They took Demetrius’s free will in order to make his love true, and this is supposed to be a good thing while Demetrius is left without any agency in his own love life. The fairies' meddling implies that the idea of love has a good side and that some couples can have nothing wrong with their love, while others

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