To what extent does 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' present love as a kind of madness?

In Shakespeare's famous comedy, A Midsummer Night's Dream, love is an important concept. The different characters have different views on love that they express, and throughout the play, Shakespeare portrays a general attitude about it. He did not portray love as a serious theme but rather treated it as a light-hearted matter, and even something to joke about. Shakespeare seemed to have written this comical play about love as to present is as a kind …

…as you try to read between the lines as if he had entwined it through each and every word in the play. However, in the midst of the scene he had set up to show his point, Shakespeare left a single stronghold for true, honest and 'untampered' love and that is an example of what humanity and love could be if you were to forget some of the smaller matters which often becomes unwillingly entangled.