"A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Romeo and Juliet" both show how powerful love can be. Love is a very serious matter during the era Shakespeare existed. You can tell this by, not only seeing that the root of both these plays is falling in love, but also by some of the comments the characters make. Egeus wants his daughter, Hermia, to marry Demetrius and if she chooses not to, he states that she will then be "chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon." (73) Hermia does not want to be married to her father's choice and understands that if she goes against his word, she will either live a lonely life for the rest of eternity or face death. Can you imagine falling in love with someone and knowing that if you want to live your life, for the decisions you want to make, you would be punished? .
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a play about magic, transformations, and how love fits into this type of world. Puck goes around putting "potion" in people's eyes so that when they wake up, they immediately fall in love with the first person they see. It's ironic how this notion of love at first sight is literally depicted in "Romeo and Juliet" as well. But isn't love at first sight a fantasy a lot of people have today? It feels as if Shakespeare had this dream, or fantasy, of his own that he intertwined into his style and method of writing. .
The most obvious transformation I observed was the fact that everyone kept falling in love with the people they were not supposed to. Take for instance when Lysander awoke to see Helena. Right then and there his love for Hermia was replaced with this new face. In his eyes, it was like Helena "transformed" into Hermia. This same situation happened a multiple of times during the play. .
Noted throughout the whole play was the transformation of the moon. When the moon changed, something significant happened to either one of the characters or a turning point of the play occurred.
