Human Nature in Hamlet and a Midsummer Night's Dream
“It is the nature of people to love, then destroy, then love again that which they value the most.” –Unknown. Countless authors have tried to display love as human nature, but no author does this better than the famous playwright, William Shakespeare. In both Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare exhibits how love can control a person. To understand how love controls a person, one must understand that human nature is the sum of qualities and traits shared by all humans. All humans have exhibit love in one way or another, which explains how human nature relates to the controlling aspect of love. In Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, conflicts between loyalty to family and friends, lack of trustworthiness towards others, and jealousy towards others prevent characters from showing how they truly feel about their love. However, the character’s inability to show their true love does not prevent them from exhibiting their human nature of love, despite conflict and obstacles. In Hamlet, one can see that Hamlet obviously loves his father. Because Hamlet loves his father, he wishes to retain the loyalty he has for his father. Part of Hamlet’s desire to remain loyal to his father stems from the marriage of Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, and Claudius, Hamlet’s father’s brother. Hamlet highly disapproves of this marriage and wants to make it known. Hamlet feels that he can avenge his father’s death by killing Claudius. Hamlet contributes to the death of Claudius, but in the end, Claudius kills himself. The death of Claudius shows that Hamlet remains loyal to his father and shows the love he has for him. While a conflict between love and loyalty do control Hamlet’s actions in Hamlet, a more obvious conflict between love and loyalty occurs in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia faces the conflict of remaining loyal to her father or following her heart and marrying Lysander, without her father’s approval. In the time