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A Midsummer Night's Dream - Love, Lust and their Extremes
Hermia would be a woman who would put the name of her lover in a circle instead of a heart because hearts can break, but circles go on forever. She did not except the ridicule of a lover because she was not raised in a milieu that educated love to be one-sided.
Hermia knew exactly what she was doing when she flouted against Egeus. She knew what the repercussions would be if she were caught with Lysander in the forest; either death (according to the law of Athens) or she would have to become a nun.
“… I do beseech your grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case,
If I refuse to marry Demetrius…So will I grow, so live, so die my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.” (I.i.62-82)
In act two scene two, after Puck has placed the potion on Lysander, Hermia becomes bewildered at this brash change in his emotions. She does not understand why he had a whole new set of feelings for her best friend Helena. As well as Hermia, Helena is equally mystified at this abrupt demeanor of Lysander. These feelings of Hermia are much like the outlook an individual might have in this day and age. A person today might take his way of behaving one step further, and commit a crime of assault and battery on his lover or the one that changed the lovers’ feelings.
Between all of the lovers in the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Demetrius took his actions the furthest, when he was made aware of the fleeing of Lysander and “his” Hermia, he went into the woods in search of them so he could kill Lysander and bring Hermia back.
“Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?
The one I’ll slay, and the other slayeth me.
Thou told’st they were stol’n unto this wood.” (II.i.189-191)
When Cupids’ love concoction is positioned on Demetrius and is never removed from him it is an instantaneous love between him and Helena. Demetrius only loved Helena because of the potion that was situated on him by fault of Puck and Oberon. Helena, too amazed over the fact that Demetrius was in awe over her, was too shallow to notice that it was a fictitious emotion of love given from him.
As for Lysander, his love for Hermia was authentic. He loved her in such a way that only a immortal love liquid remedy could come between the love he felt for Hermia. In scene one, act one, Lysander was trying to sway to Egeus to believe that he would have made a better husband for Hermia.
“I am, my lord, as well derived as he,
As well possessed; my love is more than his;
My fortunes every way as fairly ranked
[If not with vantage] as Demetrius’ …
Upon this spotted and inconsistent man.” (I.i.99-110)