Which character says “The course of true love never did run smooth”? Lysander. He speaks the line in A Midsummer Night’s Dream while lamenting the obstacles separating him from Hermia.
At the start of the play, Hermia loves Lysander, but her father insists that she marry Demetrius. Because Athenian law supports her father’s authority, the couple plans to flee into the forest. Lysander’s observation captures the play’s comic pattern: love repeatedly encounters parental demands, social rules, mistaken identities, and magical interference.
The quotation appears in Act 1, Scene 1, during Lysander’s conversation with Hermia and her friend Helena. It is often quoted as a general proverb about romance, but in the play it is part of a specific argument about why lovers must expect difficulty. The forest later intensifies those difficulties when Oberon’s magic causes affections to shift unpredictably.
A common mistake is assigning the line to Puck or Oberon because they control much of the enchantment. Neither says it. Lysander is the speaker, and the remark belongs to the human lovers’ storyline before the supernatural confusion takes over.