A Midsummer Night’s Dream concerns the arbitrariness of love and desire; the play lightly satirizes “the pangs of romantic love,” championing a reasoning akin to the proverb, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Played as a light joke, Dream asserts that, simply, one loves who they love. For example, Lysander and Demetrius are characterized as having no distinguishing qualities from the other (as opposed to the tall, fair, gentle, Helena and the short, “raven”-like, hot-tempered Hermia), as Lysander explains: 

I am, my lord, as well derived as he,

As well possessed. My love is more than his;

My fortunes every way as fairly ranked

(If not with vantage) as Demetrius’;

And (which is more than all these boasts can be)

I am beloved of beauteous Hermia. (1.1.101-106)

They are equal in wealth and social status; yet still, Hermia loves Lysander, not Demetrius, wishing her father saw the same desire she did, “I would my father looked but with my eyes” (1.1.68). (The arbitrariness of desire is paralleled in Egeus’s preference in son-in-law; Egeus prefers Demetrius, not Lysander—a testament to the unreasonability of patriarchal authority, and also perhaps suggesting affection on Egeus’s part for Demetrius, as some critics assert.) 

Similarly, Titania’s love for Bottom does not have her imagine a beautiful being, but has her love the ass-like qualities in front of her; “Titania was ‘enamoured of an ass’, and knew it, but her selective imagination found beauty in its ‘fair large ears’, ‘sleek smooth head’, even in its voice.” The play asserts an irrationality or lunacy around one’s choice in love. According to R. W. Dent, “imagination follows and encourages the mysterious dictates of the heart.” 

Additionally, the “tragical mirth” of Pyramus and Thisbe invites us to further satirize the trials of the four young lovers, as the comedy in the play-within-a-play parallels the events of the first four acts of the play.