There are quite a number of actions in the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare that makes the characters look foolish. The foolishness to a huge extent can be attributed to their actions with regard to their love issues. The female characters can be seen to be acting foolish in the name of love. Hermia and Helena do so in their own free will but Titania does so because of the spell that she was put under, Demetrius and Lysander ore epitomes of foolish love when they keep playing around with these women.
The female characters are depicted as acting out of foolishness in their quest to chase after the people they ‘love.’ It is a foolish act to become cat fighters, in the case of Helena and Hermia for men who do not truly love them but rather who keep interchanging them in the name of love. All the four lovers get entangled in a love triangle that looks like a sick joke and by the fact that women are not supposed to immerse themselves in it, at least in the Shakespearean era; these two women are party to such foolish love.
In as much as Titania’s actions are out of the love spell that Oberon puts on her, it defeats logic that someone can fall in love with the donkey faced Bottom. This is a pure mockery of what love is really supposed to be and a mockery to womanhood. Seducing an ass is not only foolish but funny and fearful even when it happens in Titania’s circumstances.
The male characters through Lysander and Demetrius make a mockery of love when they keep changing and loving one woman after another. Theirs can be described as a game of cat and mouse because to them, love is just but a game. To some extent they act out of their own foolishness even when at some point they chase after one woman even if it is through the influence of the magic juice.
This kind of foolishness that is exhibited in the play is a pure commentary on how the two genders treated and handled issues love at the time. It does make sense that people can go to certain limits in the name of love but in the case of these three female characters, they go beyond the expected norms.
Work Cited
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Irvine: Saddleback. 2003
