I envision the point of the first three acts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to give readers an understanding of how fast happiness can disappear. This is portrayed through the initial love between Hermia and Lysander being quickly lost. In this transaction, Demetrius and Helena also end up less contented than they were in the beginning in the way that Demetrius isn’t even able to settle for Helena because she is so irritated by him and Lysander. Although the potion is used in order to make this happen, I believe the point of this section of the play is still this method of expressing the way that happiness can vanish at any moment.
One character in particular who goes through transformations in her character development in Hermia. At the commencement of the play, Hermia faces the dilemma of her father’s wishes for her versus her own personal desires. She knows the consequences that will ensue if she goes against her father’s intentions of marrying her to Demetrius. While this is the case, she displays strength when she tells Lysander that she will go away with him to be married at his aunt’s house. Hermia originally possesses the love of multiple suitors with the disappointment of her father being her only concern. However, by the end of the play, she has lost it all when both of her suitors have been infected by inescapable love for Helena. She even loses her friendship with Helena because of her misunderstanding of their love which evolves into jealousy.
Hermia’s overlap with the point of the play is almost spot on. She goes from living a life of little concern to one where she loses the love of her life over something that is out of her control. She is an integral character in this play so her contribution to the point of the play is quite large. While I have not read the entirety of the play yet, I cannot say for certain that my view of the point of the play is truthful for the full story and therefore how much Hermia maintains or diverges from this point. In terms of this first half and my estimated point of the drama, she doesn’t diverge at all. She spontaneously loses the positive aspects of her life with no signs of having them returned (at least not at this point).
“Help me, Lysander, help me!
do thy best
To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast!
Ay me, for pity! what a dream was here!
Lysander, look how I do quake with fear.
Methought a serpent eat my heart away,
And you sate smiling at his cruel prey.
Lysander! what remov’d? Lysander! lord!
What, out of hearing gone? No sound, no word?
Alack, where are you? Speak, and if you hear;
Speak, of all loves! I swoon almost with fear.
No? then I well perceive you are not nigh:
Either death, or you, I’ll find immediately.
This quote is Hermia’s initial shock to losing the love of Lysander. She is in awe and Shakespeare displays her breakdown from this point on. It is tragic that the accidents of Puck were to affect her in this negative way. The breakdown of her character, however, is crucial to expressing the point that I stated above.
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