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 learns of his murder and has an immediate desire to avenge his father's death. Because of Hamlet's need for revenge, his entire focus is now on how he can seek it and reveal Claudius's guilt. "All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past/That youth and observation copied there,And thy commandment all alone shall live/Within the book and volume of my brain,Unmixed with baser matter" (1.5.105). Hamlet states that his new purpose in life is to avenge his father's murder. He declares that he will not let anyone or anything get in the way of this goal. Ophelia, daughter of Polonius (a Councilor of State) ...