Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most widely read comedies about love. This seems somewhat strange, however, in light of the fact that so few of his characters seem to display any sort of complete or true love. A careful examination of the actions and words of each of the players will reveal that only one of them, at the end of Act V, should be considered a "lover." For the purposes of this inquiry, we define “love” as “that which constantly desires and works to obtain the benefit of another.” I think this definition becomes very important when we study the uses and effects of the dew of thought (first mentioned in 2.1.166ff.) on the different characters on whom its charm is exerted, and by extension, on those with whom they interact. . Dew is used by Shakespeare as a means of demonstrating how fluid "love" is and how easily the affections of the so-called lover can be influenced. But the power of dew is not completely conquering. It is said to "induce a man or woman to madly worship the next living creature they see" (2.1.171-172), and to provoke "hateful fantasies" (2.1.258), but it does not t's not irresistible, and neither is he. it has always been said to suppress any feelings of love a person might have had before falling under their spell. So I believe that from our definition of love we can infer that what the dew affects and causes is not, in fact, love at all. Rather, it is about fantasy, another emotion of which Shakespeare makes considerable use. If a person constantly desired and worked to obtain the benefit of another, the charm of dew would not change anything. It would simply fill his head with “hateful fantasies” about the new object of affection – not desires for his benefit. Anyway, certainly someone who is really in the middle of paper...... of my examination of love in A Midsummer Night's Dream, to come to the conclusion that no of his actors showed the slightest love, and Shakespeare's aim was to prove that love is unreal; a creation of the human imagination. I was, however, delighted to discover that in the midst of the ugly scene he set up to most strongly emphasize this point, he left only one bastion of true, honest, pure love (for Hermia is not never charmed by the dew of thought). To me, Hermia is an example of what humanity could be, and how it could love, if it would forget some of the little questions in which it so often willingly gets entangled. Works Cited Shakespeare, William. The Shakespeare by the River. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. New York. 1997. Rhoades, Duane. Shakespeare's Defense of Love: “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1986.