William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream is a whimsical study of the difficulties and struggles that accompany love and courtship. Virtually all of the play's characters are affected by the complications brought about by romance, as they struggle to find happiness with the objects of their affections or are witness to the fickle, seemingly illogical patterns of love. Indeed, Shakespeare continually demonstrates that love refuses to submit to the laws and rigid order that society attempts to impose upon it. His characters, thus, all serve to illustrate various truths about love, providing both insight and comedy. Hippolyta and Theseus may be secondary characters, but their characterizations are quite significant within the play, as they not only demonstrate some of love's darker qualities, but also the struggles that women face in the battle between the sexes within the context of the play as well as the time in which Shakespeare wrote. The events surrounding Hippolyta's impending marriage to Theseus bookend the narrative's main action, and set a tone that Shakespeare carries out throughout the play, making Hippolyta and Theseus less visible characters but ones who underscore the play's main themes.

In examining the characters of Hippolyta and Theseus, it is important to consider the genre from which Shakespeare borrows the warrior queen and the Duke of Athens. Both Hippolyta and Theseus are characters drawn from Greek mythology, and as A Midsummer Nig

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the penalty that she may face if she does not abide her father's wishes: death or a celibate life in a convent. Therefore, it may be argued that Theseus and Hippolyta both represent a kind of order and structure that would even attempt to impose itself on love itself (O'Connell 227). By the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare demonstrates how foolish such a notion truly is. Yet, in the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta, Shakespeare also attempts to explore the notion of love and courtship itself, just as he does with the play's more visible characters. As A Midsummer Night's Dream begins, Theseus reminds Hippolyta of the path that their romance has taken. He states, "Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,/And won they love, doing thee injuries" (I.I.17-18). Here, Shakespeare suggests that love is violent and aggressive in nature, not kind and gentle as one might expect. Certainly it would seem that Theseus does not truly understand what love is. Indeed, one might argue that "The dangerous hints of force and law brought to mind by the troublesome concept of wooing with a sword reveal something about Theseus and the limits of his understanding, limits that will become more evident as the play goes on" (Garbe

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