A Midsummer Night's Dream

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania! - Oberon

After Romeo and Juliet, probably Shakespeare's most famous romance...related play.

Thoughts

I look at this play and I'm guessing it was meant as comedy, but since I don't find it very amusing, all that's left for me is a pile of weirdness mixed with some values dissonance and a lot of logic bombs.

Let's start with the core four. Lysander and Hermia are your stereotypical couple in luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurv. But evil guy Demetrius wants to marry Hermia, which her father supports. And given the setting, this is a classic (in every sense of the word) "arranged marriage" piece of drama. Yawn. Oh, and Helena wants Demetrius, but the dude won't even look at her.

Their stories eventually overlap with the fairies after Lysander/Hermia run away, and Puck (on command of Oberon) works a bunch of mischief, leading to some weird shit (Titania briefly going after that donkey guy) and eventually the "right" couplings happening, which convinces the duke to override Hermia's father's wishes...which I still find really iffy given the nature of arranged marriages and the time period. But more than that, given that Demetrius was given a love potion of sorts, a very weird sense of horror dawns upon you when you realize that his love for Helena is probably not "real" - oh, and did I mention that this is all appearance-related? No hint of Helena's charming personality (if you could call it that...) is given as a reason for why Demetrius would want her.

I'm sorry, but I really can't find anything interesting or enjoyable about this play.