Throughout time, love has been important in many literary works. Shakespeare is one author whose works showed love’s importance and influence in people’s lives. Some of his plays revealed love as being a destructive force in the lives of the characters, and some did the opposite. Love can be seen as a source of pain in the two plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Hamlet. However, in Hamlet the positive side of love is never seen; it brings about only pain. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love is powerful, and in the end, all the characters see happiness.
In Hamlet, love can be seen between Hamlet and King Hamlet (Ghost), Hamlet and Ophelia, and between the King, Claudius, and the Queen, Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet’s love for his murdered father causes revengeful feelings toward Claudius, Hamlet Sr.’s brother and murderer. “The love of Hamlet for his father [drives] this young man…to seek revenge” (Barker 12). Because of Hamlet’s devotion and love for his deceased father, he feels the need to avenge his father’s murder. “Haste me to know’t [about his murder], that I with wings as swift/As meditation or the thoughts of love/May sweep to my revenge” (1.5.33), Hamlet says while speaking to the ghost of his father as he
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“…Upon [the] day [of the next new moon] either prepare to die/For disobedience to your father’s will, /Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would, /or on Diana’s alter to protest/For aye, austerity and single life” (1. Helena assumes he is just mocking her, becomes furious, and is off running again. All the while she is tagging along behind him he is insulting her and taunting her. “Take thou some of it [the potion], and seek through this grove: / A sweet Athenian lady is in love/With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes…” (2. He answers that Helena has his heart and she was the one that led him away. The Queen then dies as Hamlet yells for the doors to be locked and the King to be caught. learns of his murder and has an immediate desire to avenge his father’s death. Lysander, after being led astray by the conniving Puck, tires and lies down to sleep until morning. The two men begin fighting over Helena, trying to find causes why one deserves her more than the other, which confuses her even the more. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, pain is surely experienced due to love, but it is all righted and love’s positive aspects overcome the negative ones. Helena, still running frantically after Demetrius, gives up and Demetrius escapes from her sight. Hamlet gives Ophelia this plague and tells her to get herself to a convent because she delivers the blow to his pride. The Queen was already dead by that point as well.
Approximate Word count =
3526
Approximate Pages =
14 (250 words per page double spaced)
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