Shakespeare in his drama “ A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” has tried to show that the course of romantic love never runs smooth. He has made the readers and the viewers realize that this world doesn’t receive the lovers with garlands, rather it try to litter the path, where lovers tread, with thorns.
try their level best to keep the lovers away from tying the nuptial knots. The final consummation of lovers’ passion into marriage depends solely on their commitments to their passions and their steadfastness in achieving theirgoals. In this essay we will try to prove the assertion `the course of true love never did run smooth’. Shakespeare 1. 1. 134, supporting our viewpoints by instances taken from the drama, “ A Midsummer-Night’s Dream”.
Fathers and mothers-the universal, eternal and traditional enemies of innocent lovers:
It happens in real life as well as Shakespeare made us see it in the drama too that fathers, mothers or both try to spoil the love-broth, that their sons and daughters cook with such warm feelings and passion. In this dram Egeus played this despicable role. He proved himself an adamant and unyielding father.
He wishes his daughter to be slave to his iron will. He comes to complain to the duke against his child’s behavior who refuses to marry Demetrius . He, therefore, requests the Duke that the time-honored law of Athens, which gives full authority to a parent to dispose of his child on any way he like, should be place din his hand. He was blind to the fact that “ Love obeys no law”. Though Hermia wanted her father to agree with her views but he, on the other hand, cried,
“ I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,/As she is mine, I may dispose of her:/Which shell be either to this gentleman/Or to her death, according to our law/Immediately provided in that case.
If the passion of love is true and intense, it will get itself realized no matter how heavy the odds are:
Shakespeare made the viewers and the readers realize that if the passion of love is true it will definitely be precipitate into marriage in spite of all the dangers that threaten it. Hermia’s devotedness to her love was so strong enough that she chooses to live ‘ a barren sister all her life’ than to dessert her lover and marry the other man of her father’s choice.
She run away with her lover, under the spell of her passion, and succeeded in marrying the man of her choice in the end and lived happily ever after. Like wise the case with Helena who is in love with Demetrius. Such is the intensity of her passion for her lover that she said to him,
“ And I am sick when I look not on you.” Shakespeare 2. 1. 214.
She knew that Demetrius wanted to marry Hermia but she believed in the truth of her love and thus at last succeeded in winning him over to her side. Shakespeare here suggests that true love is immensely powerful.
