Finding Your Soul Mate?
Harder than you might think.
By: Bill Engvall
The lovers subplot is part of how we are introduced to the story. The main characters in this plot are: Lysander, loves Hermia. Hermia, loves Lysander. Demetrius loves Hermia but slept with Helena in the past. And Helena who loves Demetrius.
The plot starts off with Egeus (Hermia’s father), Hermia, Lysander, and Demetrius all coming into Theseus’ palace. The conflict is that Egeus wants Hermia to marry Demetrius even though she loves Lysander. So they go to Theseus to sort this all out. Theseus gives Hermia three choices: One, she can marry Demetrius. Two, she can become a nun. Three, she will be put to death. Getting no help from Theseus Lysander comes up with an idea. He has an Aunt that lives far away from Athens and they can run away together, elope, and live there. Hermia agrees and they decide to meet in the woods outside of Athens. Well, Helena over hears there plan and decides to tell Demetrius of their plan to elope in an effort to win his love. When he hears of this Demetrius runs off after Hermia and Lysander and Helena follows Demetrius like a puppy dog.
Lysander and Hermia continue on with their plan unaware of their followers. But the real problems start as Oberon the King of the Fairies over hears Demetrius and Helena arguing as Helena is throwing herself at Demetrius. Oberon trying to help tells Puck to wait till they are asleep and put drops on their eyes that will make them fall in love with the first person they see. Well, Puck does just that. The only problem is that Puck put the drops on the wrong people. Instead of putting them on Helena and Demetrius. He put them on Demetrius and Lysander. Now when those two woke the first person they saw was Helena. So now Helena is over joyed that Demetrius is in love with her now, she is not too crazy about Lysander being in love with her. Well, now Hermia walks in and all of a sudden Lysander is not in love with her anymore and she does not understand why.
So now Hermia and Helena get into a fight because Hermia thinks she tricked Lysander into liking her [Helena]. None of them knew this was all the fairies fault. So a bunch of fighting and confusion takes place until Puck is able to fix the drops so that Lysander is now back in love with Hermia, and Demetrius is in love with Helena. With Demetrius now in love with another women, Egeus now has no choice but to let Lysander and Hermia marry. So both of the couples get married at Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding.