In the concluding act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus refers to the madness of love through his discussion of the relationship between lovers, poets, and madmen. Love’s virtue is defined through a common image of sight, which tries to make a distinction between what is rational and what is not in love. Theseus is stressing the

point that love is of the imagination; it makes a person see things that are not really there. The passage is extremely visual, allowing the reader to understand Theseus’ point clearly.

Various forms of the same words are used by Theseus to build on his point that love is misinterpreted by our emotions. The line referring to lovers’ and madmen’s fantasies “apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends” parallels two words with very similar meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary defines apprehend as “to feel emotionally, be sensible of, and to perceive the existence of something,” while comprehend is defined as to grasp something with the mind and thereby conceive it fully.” The minute but significant difference between the two words is that emotions are used in apprehension, while the mind is used in comprehension. When Theseus says “apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends” he is proving his point that Lovers and madmen believe in their fantasies due to their emotions involved in them, more than an actual justification for these fantasies with the mind. Love is entirely imaginative and causes people to believe in what might actually not exist. In love, what is of the imagination, is truth.

In Theseus' speech, Shakespeare is commenting not only on the similarities and differences of how the lunatic, the lover and the poet view the world,

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