Love is in the air...

Theseus loves Hippolyta.
Hermia loves Lysander.
Demetrius loves Hermia.
Helena loves Demetrius.

It is all very confusing.

Egeus, Hermia's father, disapproves of Lysander, and wants Hermia to marry Demetrius. He requests Theseus' counsel on the marriage situation. Theseus, the confident duke of Athens, is going to be married to the conquered warrior queen, Hippolyta, in four days. Theseus gives Hermia the choice to either marry Demetrius, as her father wants her to, or go live in a convent:

Either to die the death or to abjure
forever the society of men.
Therefore Hermia, question your desires,
know of you youth, examine well your blood (Act I, Scene I, 65-68).

At first I thought this advice was too severe and seemed out of place in a scene filled with characters in love, but as I continued to read the scene, Shakespeare's possible motive became clear.

Theseus, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena are all in love, and Shakespeare uses them to prove that love is not just a passing fancy, but has immense control on how people react and how they confront the realities of life. Hermia and Lysander love each other, and when confronted with the possibility of death or separation from each other forever, they decide to hide in a forest together. Whether such an action is rational or not, their actions show that love can render people blind to the future, and can cause them to only think short term. Stealing away to the forest can give the wrong impression to others, and can ruin their reputations, especially Hermia's reputation. However, they think they are irrevocably in love with each other, and so they do not allow themselves to think of a world without each other.

Shakespeare also may be criticizing his contemporary society's view on love, and how love was no longer a matter of the heart, but of status and family power. Egeus has a very strong desire to control his daughter, and initially wants her to die if she marries Lysander against his wishes. Even though Theseus advises to reduce the sentence to living in a convent, it is still obvious that Hermia’s opinion matters very little. In Shakespeare’s time, arranged marriages were not uncommon, and were tools to increase a family’s status in society. Love rarely mattered in such arrangements.

Based on the interaction between Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena, Shakespeare was quite aware of the complexities of love. The dilemmas that the characters endure are so real. Hermia and Lysander could be any couple that faces opposition, and Helena is the girl left out of it all. Poor Demetrius is just confused as to why Hermia loves Lysander and not him.

The workings of love are going to be very interesting tools for Shakespeare to use in this play.