Teen Themes: Frustrated Love

This post is the first of two about themes in A Midsummer Night's Dream that appeal to teenagers.

When adapting Shakespeare, it's important to consider what themes the target audience will appreciate. This means that authors who adapt Shakespeare for a teen audience need to find themes in the original texts that apply to teen experience. The themes that the authors of YA Shakespeare spinoffs choose to explore may or may not be the main themes of the original plays. For example, Ariel by Grace Tiffany (see my book review) explores the ideas that imagination is powerful, that the search for power can ruin people's lives, and that friendly love trumps spontaneous romance. Some of these themes align with The Tempest but others do not.

As I read A Midsummer Night's Dream, I looked for themes that would appeal to teen readers, especially themes that I would capitalize on if I were writing a YA adaptation. One theme I thought would translate well is frustrated love.



In the play, Lysander and Hermia are in love, but Hermia is engaged to Demetrius, who Helena is in love with. (So everyone loves Hermia and no one loves Helena.) Then, due to fairy shenanigans, Demetrius and Lysander both abandon Hermia in favor of Helena. Then we've got Theseus and Hippolyta, who may or may not be metaphorically represented by Titania and Oberon, who are having serious marital issues because Titania keeps this fine Indian boy around and Oberon's jealous, so to solve this problem he makes her fall in love with a peasant who, due to more fairy shenanigans, has the head of a donkey. This play is the ultimate Love Dodecahedron.

Less complicated versions of this scenario happen in YA lit all the time. Love triangles are inescapable: think Hunger Games, think Twilight. Even where love triangles don't exist, readers like to create them--tons of Harry Potter fans paired up Harry and Hermione even once it was clear that Hermione would end up with Ron.

So why is this trope so popular? Short answer: feelings are complicated and communication is hard. Longer answer: Most people spend their teenage years figuring out who they are, what they want, and how they want to act upon the world. Part of this discovery process involves finding another person to fall in love with. But teenagers, already super self-conscious, often can't come out and say how they really feel about other people, especially when it comes to The One and Only. (Some grownups also have trouble with this.)

One of the most important functions that YA lit serves is holding up a mirror to the teenage experience, and love triangles are usually a simplification of what actually goes on in high school. Complicated love stories help the reader relate to and sympathize with the characters. And, frankly, complications are interesting!  Readers don't want characters to get everything they want right away; they want a struggle so that the characters deserve their happy ending. As Hermia points out, "For aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth" (I.i.134-6). Teen readers will enjoy and understand the complications of love found in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and any YA lit adaptation should take advantage of this theme from the original text.