The course of true love never did run smooth.

The line is spoken in Act I, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Egeus has brought his daughter Hermia before Theseus, Duke of Athens, because she refuses to marry Demetrius and loves Lysander. She must obey her father, die, or take “a vow of single life”. Left alone with her, Lysander consoles her with this line: in all he has read or heard “by tale or history”, true love has always met obstacles.

The lovers list them in a quick exchange: difference of rank (“O cross!”), of age (“O spite!”), the choice of friends (“O hell! to choose love by another’s eyes”), or war, death and sickness, which make love “Swift as a shadow, short as any dream”. Their answer is to flee Athens that night, into a wood where fairies will make matters worse before they get better.

Shakespeare wrote the comedy in the mid-1590s. The line has become a proverb for lovers in difficulty, often quoted with a smile, since the play ends with three weddings.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, scene 1 (Lysander), 1595

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