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6/14/14 05

A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Love can be known to be crazy and complicated. love has many different aspects to it and it can be understood to be magical and a beautiful thing, as well as vise versa. love is known to have many powers and Shakespeare is very interested in both magic itself and love. These two things in A Midsummer Night's Dream are greatly connected. This is why I think that the magical and surreal world Shakespeare creates in his play, reflects the almost supernatural power of love. The things that he creates within his text to embody this are the love potion, the "dreams", the double worlds, and the forests.

the love potion and magic itself that are woven within the play makes some characters feel love drunk, confused, or under the influence. the first example of this is when Demetrius thinks he's in love with Helena while under the potions powers, when you can tell from the beginning of the play he really is not. "O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what my love shall I compare thine eyne." (3.2.137-138) This piece of text evidence shows exactly the powers of this plant. The potion on Demetrius makes him think that he is in love with Helena, but he doesn't realize that he is under the influence of this potion, leaving him confused and not sure of his real feelings for Hermia. Another thing that involves the love potion and reflects the actions of being drunk is when Oberon orders puck to put the love potion onto Tatania's eyes. "Ill watch Tatania when she is asleep, and drop the liquor of it in her eyes. The next thing then she waking looks upon, be it on a lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, on a meddling monkey or on a busy ape, she shall pursue it with the soul of love." (2.1.177-182) Here Oberon is trying to use the power to create problems like alcohol usually does and it does exactly what he wants it to in the

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