5 February 2013
Blind Love in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream
How do you define blind
love? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary,
the word blind means, “unable or unwilling to discern or judge.” From the same source, the word love means, “a
strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.” Those two definitions put together create the
definition for the term blind love.
Blind love means having a strong affection for someone, but not being
able to see the person’s flaws. William
Shakespeare uses the idea of blind love in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, in order to create humor throughout the play.
Shakespeare
exhibits blind love by creating a flower whose nectar blinds the characters’
eyes to the flaws of the object of his or her affection. In A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, an example of blind love is when Robin Goodfellow
places the nectar of the flower on Titania’s eyes. When Titania awakens by the sound of Bottom’s
song, she sees him and proclaims, “So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape, /
and thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me/ On the first view to say, to
swear, I love thee” (3.1. 141-143). This
creates humor for the reader because the nectar causes Titania to immediately
fall in love with Bottom. She becomes oblivious
to the fact that Bottom has been transformed into an ass and she thinks he is
the most beautiful creature on the earth.
Another example of the humor created by blind love is when the nectar
causes Lysander to tell Helena that he loves her and that he no longer loves
Hermia. Lysander states, “Look when I
vow, I weep; and vows so born,/ In their nativity all truth appears./ How can
these things in me seem scorn to you,/ Bearing the badge of faith to prove them
true?” (3.2 126-129). This is humorous
because Helena thinks that Lysander is playing a trick on her. The reader finds humor in her reaction to
Lysander’s proclamation of his love for her.
In today’s world, there
are many examples of blind love. During
Super Bowl XLVII, GoDaddy.com aired a
commercial featuring a beautiful woman kissing an unattractive man. This demonstrates blind love because she
kisses him even though it would seem that his unattractive looks would not
attract her. The company uses the idea
of blind love to create humor and to catch the attention of their audience in
order to sell their product. Despite
what people may have thought of the commercial, it is successful because it is
memorable to the viewer. In many movies,
blind love is used to create humor. It
is commonly found in animated film. In the movie Shrek, the odd pairing of Donkey and the dragon creates humor. The same thing is true in Madagascar 3 when the lemur and the bear
are victims of love at first sight. In
the movie, There’s Something About Mary, staring
Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, and Matt Dillon, several men see Mary as the ideal
woman and fall in love with her without any relationship with her. They do anything they can to try and get her
to choose one of them. Another example
of blind love creating humor is in the movie My Best Friend’s Wedding. The
main character, played by Julia Roberts, has convinced herself that she is in
love with her best friend. She is so
blinded by her perceived love for him that she goes to extreme measures to try
to break up the couple.
The
plot of William Shakespeare’s play, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, is based upon blind love. Shakespeare uses the concept of blind love to
create humor throughout the play. The
whole story takes place because Robin puts the nectar on the wrong Athenian’s
eyes, which causes a lot of chaos. The play
would not have been funny if blind love was not an element used within the play. The use of the concept of blind love
continues to be used even today as writers develop concepts and story lines
that create humor because of the addition of characters that blindly fall in
love. It’s funny to think that blind
love can actually exist. Unless, of course,
you have the special flower!
Works Cited
Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d.
Web. 05 Feb. 2013.
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer
Night’s Dream. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square P, 2003.
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