Importance of Marriage in ” A Midsummer Night’s Dream” The exact date of the creation of the comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful and lyrical of Shakespeares plays, is not known. And it does not really matter, because this charming play has been living on the stages of the world theatres for more than four centuries. Many historians suggest that it was written in the year of 1595 and was devoted to the marriage of some aristocrats. Thus the main theme of this play is the importance of love and marriage. In Athens where the action of the play takes place there existed a very strict law according to which fathers could choose husbands for their daughters. If a daughter did not obey her father and tried to protest she should be condemned to death. So Egeus comes to the Duke Theseus complaining of his daughter Hermia who refuses to marry Demetrius. Hermia can not marry this young man, because not so long ago he told her best friend Helena about his love.
Helena also adores Demetrius and Hermia is in love with Lysander. The Duke who is impatiently awaiting his wedding to Hippolyta advises the girl to obey her fathers will otherwise she must either die or become a nun. Hermia says she will choose the latter option rather than marry a man she does not want. Theseus gives her time until his own wedding to think over her future. The cruel Athenian law is effective only in the city, so Lysander suggests his darling eloping to his aunt to get married against her fathers will. They should meet in the wood outside of Athens the following night. Hermia tells her friend Helena about this plan and the latter trying to return her lover tells Demetrius about everything.
So four lovers find themselves in a mysterious wood. In the moonlight the mischievous spirit Puck takes a lot of pleasure in the confusion he brings to young people. The lovers fall in love with those whom they hated and hate those whom they adored. Being radiant, fascinating and sincere this nocturnal play is woven of dream and reality, day and night, light and darkness, life and death, love and hate. In A Midsummer Nights Dream Shakespeare shows many different kinds of love and marriage. There is the mature love of Theseus and Hippolyta, the power struggle between Oberon and Titania, and the passionate and rather unstable love of the young people.
The characters often meditate on the nature of love trying to understand this strange and mysterious phenomenon. Lysander speaking to Hermia in the first scene of Act 1 exclaims, The course of true love never did run smooth. He understands that it is not easy to preserve the real passionate and romantic love of the first days through the whole life in the marriage. Helena soliloquizing about love in the first scene of Act 1 touches on its impulsive and imaginative nature, comparing it to the innocent, but not always reasoned, desires of a child. Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d This young woman has realized how capricious love can be when her lover Demetrius in the course of the play changed his mind several times.
But such his behavior taught the girl to be patient, which will help her never betray her true feelings and remain always sincere in the marriage. The Pyramus and Thisbe play-in-the-play is of great importance for understanding of the value of true love. It shows all the couples that love can also have tragic outcomes. Pyramus and Thisbe both die, like Romeo and Juliet, because of a misunderstanding. Perhaps as the main characters watch Pyramus and Thisbe, the lovers might draw right conclusions and feel particularly grateful that the misunderstandings they had to experience in the wood ended favorably for them all. The final scene of the play underlies the magic nature of love and marriage.
The fact that Oberon and the fairies have the last word in the play, as they come into the palace to bless the inhabitants, proves that love and marriage are sacred and can not be outlawed by people..