In Valentine’s week a look at a few potent love potions that unleashed romance and more

From the Spanish Fly to Viagra, love potions have taken many forms. As Valentine’s Day approaches, let us take a look at some of the most famous ones. Unfortunately love potions (like love itself?) seem to work best only when they are fictional!

• Night’s Dream

In Shakespeare’s magical play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck, a mischievous sprite, gives Oberon, the fairy king, a flower with a love potion. The unlikeliest people fall in love with each other under its effect. Among other things, Titania, queen of the fairies, wakes up, besotted with Bottom, who has a donkey’s head. Love is bewildering. It is also blind.

• Tristan and Isolde

The story of Tristan and Isolde, based on a Celtic legend, has been around since the 12th century. Tristan is a Cornish knight and Isolde, an Irish princess. Tristan comes to Ireland to take Isolde to Cornwall for marriage with his uncle, the king. On their way they drink a love potion. And they have to love each other for the rest of their lives, for better or for worse.

• Batman and Robin

In this film, Uma Thurman’s Poison Ivy has “Love Dust”, a solid version of a love potion, to be blown on people. It has a crippling effect on men around her, who turn vegetable-like – Poison Ivy is also a botanist – and crave for her love.

• Harry Potter

In Harry Potter’s world, Amortentia is a powerful love potion. It smells different for different persons, of the thing that attracts a person. For Harry it smelt of treacle tart, the woody scent of broomstick handle, and “something flowery that he thought he might have smelled at the Burrow”, which he later realised was the smell of Ginny Weasley, whom he would marry.