Midsummer Night's Dream Plot Analysis

Lysander’s Quest for Happiness

These days, it seems everyone is on a quest to find happiness, and the only way to do so is by finding true love. However, it is not as easy as the movies make it out to be. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream gives a comedic view of al of our hopes; the characters run into one complication after another. In this comedy, the plot takes the characters on crazy twists and turns as they search for true love. There are multiple plots throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream; however the Athenian lovers tend to drive the overall action of the play. The four lovers, Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena, find themselves in the mysterious wood with fairies who cause all kinds of mischief. While the lovers have their own problems with love triangles to solve and angry fathers to please, Robin’s foolish mistakes only make things harder. Lysander could be argued as the protagonist for this play because his relationship with Hermia is the source of all problems. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Lysander is on a quest for true love, and happiness which drives the action in the play.

When the play begins, Hermia’s father, Egeus, brings the Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius to Theseus. From context clues, the reader can gather that Lysander must have done something to lose Egeus’ trust. Egeus does not approve of Lysander and wants Theseus to threaten Hermia to death if she does not marry Demetrius. This threat from her father drives Hermia and Lysander to plan their escape and is the inciting incident. Lysander persuades Hermia to meet him in the woods that night so the two of them can run away together. He knows that if he is with Hermia, he will be with his true love forever.

Lysander now believes that he is on his way to happiness. All he has to do is meet Hermia in the forest that night and together they will run away to his aunt’s house. Many complications begin to arise when the couples plan goes into action. Helena discovers this...