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In bed asleep, while they do dream things true
By the time Shakespeare composed A Midsummer Night’s Dream he had achieved
mastery of his craft. Scholars estimate that he completed his other great successes, Romeo and
Juliet and Hamlet in the same year. Either as a result of this chronology, or because of the
parallels between the two, many critics view A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet
as complimentary works. “In a way we could say that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Romeo
and Juliet turned inside out, Romeo and Juliet transformed into a comedy.” (Garber 213) Gordon
Teskey has even called Dream a perfecting of the famous tragedy, one where the carefully spun
action of the play doesn’t snag on lyrical yet inefficient monologues delivered by secondary
characters. (Teskey)
The similarities between the two works are irrefutable: a pair of lovers, Hermia and
Lysander, barred from union by an authoritarian father, Egeus; Hermia’s defiance and the lovers’
escape. In the case that we should miss these likenesses, Shakespeare also includes the infamous
performance of “The Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe,” the story which even more
closely echoes Romeo and Juliet. Clearly he means to place the star-crossed lovers on our minds.
In the meantime, he uses Hippolyta and Theseus, real persons pulled from history books, as the
featured couple in the most fantastical of his plays and establishes unexpected parallels between
the characters of Hippolyta and Juliet and Theseus and Paris to explore what would have
happened if Juliet had married Paris; it would have ended in tragedy all the same. Furthermore
by relating Hippolyta and Theseus to Titania and Oberon who are constantly occupied with
children and procreation, Shakespeare effectively hints again that the tragedy of Juliet and Paris
would lie in their future exemplified by children, just as Hippolyta and Theseus’ does. Finally by
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also establishing a parallel between reality and fiction, Shakespeare probes the audience to
debate what is real and what isn’t, therefore inviting them to transcend into the world of his
fiction like Theseus and Hippolyta do to explore what they would have done if placed in the
same position. Is it smarter to go to the Capulet ball like Romeo does despite his premonition, or
reject dreams the way Theseus does? Is it more beneficial to die for love like Juliet does, or give
in to a marriage for life like Hyppolita does? Shakespeare turns the critical lens from the
characters to the audience themselves.
Shakespeare’s inclusion of real people in a comedy is most unusual. Scholars, including
Anne Barton and Marjorie Garber, agree that he must have used Thomas North’s 1579
translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives as his source for information about both Hippolyta and
Theseus. Plutarch gives even less information regarding Hippolyta’s character than Shakespeare
does as he at one point admits that it’s unclear whether Hippolyta or Antiope had a son,
Hippolytus, with Theseus. It makes much more sense for Hippolyta to be the mother however, as
Hippolytus is clearly named after her. Either way, the confusion has led to using the two women
interchangeably as one was bound to have been married to Theseus, seemingly against her will
as in one version of the story recounted by Plutarch she is kidnapped after boarding his ship.
Shakespeare has incorporated much of these true-life details in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, including Hippolyta’s status as an Amazon queen, and Theseus’ previous love conquests
which Oberon recounts to Titania: “Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night / From
Perigenia whom he ravished? / And make him with fair [Aegles] break his faith, / With Ariadne,
and Antiopa?” (2.1.77-80) Even the circumstances under which Theseus and Hippolyta “met”
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before their marriage, “Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword, / And won thy love doing thee
injuries” remain constant, as Theseus accurately wins Hippolyta by force.
Although it’s well established that the union between Hippolyta and Theseus is a result of
a military conquest, it’s uncertain how Hippolyta dies -- Plutarch suggests that either Hercules
kills her in battle or she dies when Theseus casts her off to marry Phaedra -- after her
disappearance, Phaedra becomes Hippolytus’ stepmother. According to the play Hippolytus by
Euripides, and Phaedra, alternately also known as Hippolytus by Seneca the Younger,
Hippolytus hates his stepmother, who very inconveniently falls in love with him. He’s repulsed
by her confession, and his rejection causes her to accuse him of rape for which Theseus punishes
him by wishing death upon him. Consequently, Hippolytus’ horses either crash him against rocks
or drag his body into pieces, depending on the version of the story.
Because Hippolyta and Theseus’ marriage ultimately results in the death of Hippolyta and
a tragic death of their son, it’s odd that Shakespeare would choose to revolve a comedy around
their wedding. We’ve seen him use tragedy, or death, to frame what ultimately ends up adding up
to a comedy before. In Comedy of Errors, he opens the play with a death sentence upon Egeon,
“Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall, / And by the doom of death end woes and all.” (1.1.1-2);
and in Merchant of Venice the very first line expresses a mysterious sorrow hanging over
Antonio’s shoulders, “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad,” he says. Inevitably however, these
plays have a definite ending which ties up all the loose ends and sends the characters into the
land of everlasting love. There is no lifting the curtain to see what happens afterwards like one
sometimes can with the histories in which Shakespeare dramatizes real people, and therefore
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must conform to the reality of events in some respect. The characters of his fiction simply cease
to exist after the curtain falls.
Meanwhile, since Hippolyta and Theseus did exist the audience could reasonably have
been familiar with what happened to them beyond the scope of the play. Why would Shakespeare
choose to frame his most fantastical of fictions in a story of real people then, if not meaning for
the audience to realize that their happy end is only temporary? He didn’t sugar-coat their story by
trying to rewrite history and make it appear as if Hippolyta yielded to Theseus by some
interference of Aphrodite; he tells us frankly that Theseus conquered Hippolyta in battle with his
sword, not his love. And while to Theseus, the day of their nuptials cannot arrive quickly enough,
“but O, methinks, how slow / this old moon [wanes]!” (1.1.3) To Hippolyta, the grains of time
slip through the neck of the hourglass far too quickly:
Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
[New] bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.
(1.1.7-11)
Only four days remain, she says. The moon does not change slowly as it does in Theseus’ eyes,
but quickly transforms itself into a taut bow ready to shoot an arrow as swift as time itself.
Instead of resembling the attitude of Juliet, the other young bride imploring time to bring her
wedding night to Romeo on faster, “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, / Towards Phoebus’
lodging; such a waggoner / As Phaeton would whip you to the west, / And bring in cloudy night
immediately,” (Romeo and Juliet 3.2.1-4) Hippolyta’s attitude sounds more like Juliet’s towards
her hasty marriage to Paris, “Delay this month, a week, / Or if you do not, make the bridal bed /
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In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.” (3.5.199-201) Both women view the wedding night in
rather grave terms when it’s to a man they do not wish to marry.
Apart from being completely oblivious to Hippolyta’s not wanting to marry him, just how
Paris is ignorant of Juliet’s antipathy towards him, Theseus also uses his position of power to
force his will on the affairs of others. His words to Hermia when Egeus brings his suit against
her and Lysander before him are not sympathetic ones:
What say you, Hermia? Be advis’d, fair maid.
To you your father should be as a god;
One that compos’d your beauties; yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax,
By him imprinted, and within his power,
To leave the figure, or disfigure it. (1.1.46-51)
He asks Hermia to explain herself, but immediately reminds her that her will in the matter is of
no consequence when as her father’s daughter, his word should be as holy scripture to her.
Theseus even goes a step further to remind her that her father made her, as if out of wax, and
therefore possesses the freedom to do with her as he will, including “disfigure” her, a dangerous
word on its own, but especially when considering Hermia as made of wax. Theseus consistently
believes in the male’s right to rule everywhere, including the household and the relationship.
Theseus’ misogynist attitude is not only confined to him, but a tradition, or state of mind,
that prevails throughout Athens, as we learn from Egeus:
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:
As she is mine, I may dispose of her;
Which shall be either to this gentleman,
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case. (1.1.41-45)
In Athens, a woman belongs to a man as a piece of property does, and is treated accordingly.
Considering that such is the law throughout the land it may therefore be reasonable to expect
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most men there -- including Lysander and Demetrius, the latter we know certainly more than
willing to have Hermia against her will if her father would deem it well -- to share the antiquated
views of Egeus and Theseus and to treat their wives in a similar fashion. And so we have another
shadow, aside from the fate of the offspring of Hippolyta and Theseus, faring unfavorably over
the marriages in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The reason why we should concern ourselves with thinking about the future of the
couples is because the play is crawling with hints at procreation, which according to Barton is a
way to “extend the comedy into the future, counteracting the artificial finality which always
threatens to diminish happy endings.” (Barton 254) We have the changeling child causing
marital discord between Oberon and Titania, as well as Oberon’s concern for the issue of the
newly united couples, “To the best bride-bed will we, / Which by us shall blessed be; / And the
issue, there create, / Ever shall be fortunate.” (5.1.403-406) But his prediction is not true in this
case, as we know Hippolytus’ fate is the opposite of fortunate. And the following line, “So shall
all the couples three / Ever true in loving be” is also not true since we know Hippolyta and
Theseus’ marriage ends and he marries Phaedra. Since these prophecies do not prove true for the
main marriage that the entire play revolves around, they can’t hold true for the remaining
couples.
Without a happy ending, A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins to look less and less like a
comedy serving as an “inversion” of Romeo and Juliet, and more and more like a parallel
universe where Juliet takes the Nurse’s advice and marries the County Paris, a kinsman to the
Prince, the ruler of Verona, whose title “County” suggests a position of count possibly similar to
that of Theseus. Despite the age difference between Hippolyta and Juliet, the latter image of
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sweet young love often compared with her mature and experienced counterpart in Shakespeare’s
later tragedy Antony and Cleopatra, does not lack in judgment when compared to either of the
older ladies. In fact, Juliet and Hippolyta have a lot in common in being wooed by force.
Juliet is issued a “decree” by her father, as he himself puts it, to marry Paris. Old Capulet
refers to his decision as such before even hearing Juliet’s refusal, establishing from the beginning
the unyielding finality of his word. Old Capulet echoes Egeus in his right to own and dispose of
Juliet as he wishes when he says “And you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend.” (Romeo and
Juliet 3.5.191) Paris obviously shares this mindset as his entire courtship of Juliet occurs through
the filter of her parents; he doesn’t even personally speak with Juliet until they meet in Friar
Laurence’s cell in Act 4. He refers to his marriage proposal as a “suit” he’s posting to Old
Capulet in Act 1. Although this term does refer to a marriage proposal, it gives it the cold
language of legality rather than the warm words of a lover; it reduces it to jargon one would
discuss the exchange of property in. But this is characteristic of Paris, as in his first meeting with
Juliet he addresses her as his possession before they’d even officially met, “Happily met, my
lady and my wife!” (4.1.18) He even claims her own face when he says, “Thy face is mine, and
thou hast sland’red it,” to which Juliet replies, “It may be so, for it is not mine own.” (4.1.35-36)
He does not allow her to speak about her own face in terms that contradict his own, as she is his
according to her father’s word. Though jarring within the context of a tragedy when spoken by
the villains, such words are even more unsettling between Hippolyta and Theseus as they’re
supposed to have the benefit of a happy ending.
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Since Juliet expresses a strong animosity towards Paris, it’s hardly believable that their
marriage would be a happy one, at least in the terms Barton uses to describes Hippolyta and
Theseus’ marriage:
His relationship with Hippolyta in the comedy presents an image of passion steadied by
the relative maturity of the people involved. There are ages of love as well as of human
life and Theseus and Hippolyta represent summer as opposed to the giddy spring fancies
of the couples lost in the wood. Theseus is a wise ruler and a good man... (Barton 253)
Perhaps Barton read a different A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because the couple in question
here hardly interacts, apart from exchanging opposite views in regards to their marriage hour;
and Hippolyta’s fond recollection in Act 4 of a hunt she attended while still free to roam with
whom she chose, to which Theseus’ responds by bragging about his own dogs. Theseus shows
himself an incompetent ruler who enforces the ancient laws without giving them much thought,
for while he chose his own bride against her will, he won’t allow Hermia to choose a husband
who returns her affections. And if their relationship represents the same kind of summer that
Oberon and Titania’s schizophrenic weather changes reflect, since many critics agree that the two
couples are meant to reflect two sides of the same coin, then their summer is as frigid as the
fiercest January.
Like Theseus, Oberon who is the Theseus of the fairy world, too, wishes to rule his queen
with an iron fist, “Tarry, rash wanton! Am I not thy lord?” (2.1.63) But Titania refuses to yield to
him. Their dispute revolves once again around children, or the little changeling boy in particular,
“And jealous Oberon would have the child / Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild; / But
she, perforce, withholds the loved boy, / Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her
joy.” (2.1.23-27) The fairy King and Queen do not appear to have any children apart from the
changeling boy, and since Titania has abandoned Oberon’s bed and shunned his company there
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will be no more children unless they reconcile. Oberon’s infuriated with Titania for a number of
reasons; first we learn that he’s jealous, whether of Titania’s affection or of the child’s it’s
unclear. He also wants the boy to grow up and not spend all his time showered in flowers by his
mother’s fairies; it’s time that he became a fairy man among other fairy men. Finally, he’s upset
by Titania’s abandonment of himself.
So Oberon’s trickery is not just fun and games. Though he enchants Titania to obtain the
boy, through making her love a beast he wants to punish her for abandoning his bed. “Wake
when some vile thing is near,” Oberon wishes while applying the serum onto her eyes. And he
gets exactly that, “My mistress with a monster is in love” Puck reports in the following act. He
describes Bottom as “that shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort.” (3.2.13) Since Titania’s
desire is born of her body -- her mind being enchanted through her eyes therefore resulting in a
love of the basest kind -- the term “barren” brings to light a dangerous point. Titania’s artificial
infatuation could lead to her fornicating with a mortal beast and have serious implications for her
relationship with Oberon, as well as the fairy succession line. Curiously, this situation rings true
in the parallel world of Theseus as well since Phaedra’s mother, Pasiphae, falls in love with a
bull and gives birth to the Minotaur. So when Puck describes Bottom as “barren” it’s the added
bonus of a safety net, “This falls out better than I could devise,” Oberon says. Now no serious
damage can be done other than embarrassing Titania.
Similarly to the fairy King and Queen, Theseus and Hippolyta also have but one boy,
Hippolytus. And considering Hippolyta’s eventually being supplanted by Phaedra, in a way
Hippolytus is taken from her like the changeling boy is taken from Titania. It would be an insult
to Shakespeare to write these repeated incidents and parallels off as merely coincidental when we
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so willingly give him credit for designing a tragedy and comedy which complete each other like
most quintessential puzzle pieces. Though for a moment, it seems like even Shakespeare himself
tries to dismiss the occurrences of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as mere illusions:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumb’red here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream.
(5.1.423-429)
We know his mastery of language and drama too well at this point to fall for this tall tale of false
modesty. While the suggestion to consider all occurrences as simple dreams is innocent enough
to overlook, the reference to shadows sounds almost like a disclaimer that any resemblance of
characters to real persons living or dead, like Theseus and Hippolyta for example, is strictly
coincidental and no humans or fairies were harmed in this production. Like Bottom, Shakespeare
seems to want to diffuse people’s inclination to take the performance too much to heart. But what
about the weak and idle theme that we’re too consider just as dream-like?
According to Garber, the usual case with Shakespeare is that he’s trying to teach his
characters and the audience something. The obvious lesson in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and
Romeo and Juliet as well, is that forcing love’s hand results in bloody tragedy. Garber suggests
that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare epitomizes this concept in the character of
Theseus and the limits of his understanding. This is true enough as we see Theseus misconstrue
time and again what has happened in the forest the night before his wedding. “Lovers and
madmen have such seething brains, / Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend / More than cool
reason ever comprehends.” (5.1.4-6) He sounds a lot like Mercutio, the latter reflecting upon his
own story of Queen Mab:
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True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thing of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind. (Romeo and Juliet 1.4.96-100)
Both are trying to discredit the validity of dreams in reality. They try to write it off as a mind of a
lover inclined to dream of love, or the mind lacking things to think on and inventing fables out of
thin air. But Hippolyta disarms Theseus’ theory with simple logic:
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur’d so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images,
And grows to something of great constancy. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1.23-26)
She recognizes that the probability of four separate persons having the same exact dream at the
same exact time is far from credulous. Likewise, in Romeo and Juliet Romeo argues for the
sincerity of dreamers’ visions, “In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.” (1.4.53) And
seals his word with his life:
I fear, too early, for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels, and expire the term
Of a despised life clos’d in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
(Romeo and Juliet 1.4.106-111)
Romeo foresees his own death and senses it has to do with his attending the Capulet ball; he feels
that whatever ill-fate awaits him, the circumstances of the evil will be triggered by the night’s
festivities. Another parallel with Hippolyta’s fate, as her own as well as Hippolytus’ demise
result from her marriage to Theseus.
Between Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare has proved
and disproved the reality of dreams, and blurred the lines between imagination and reality so
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many times that it’s hard to tell which is which. As an audience we find ourselves once at once
watching a play, then an audience watching an audience watching a play, and consequently
suspect that we too are being watched by somebody. We witness what we think are dreams of
others, just to have it be suggested that perhaps it’s us who are asleep and have invented the
whole thing.
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare helps us dream up a happy ending
for lovers who are otherwise doomed, but also consider what would have happened if Juliet
didn’t die by her Romeo’s side and went on to marry Paris. Her happy ending would have been
only temporary before it inevitably turned into an even more unfaithful a tragedy, like that of
Hippolyta and Theseus. Hippolyta and Theseus meanwhile are real people caught up in a world
of fantasy, and therefore cannot commit to a once-for-all happy ending because it’s not real. The
only ending in actual life really is death.
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Works Cited
Barton, Anne. “Introduction to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The Riverside Shakespeare.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. 251-255. Print.
Garber, Marjorie. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Shakespeare After All. New York: Pantheon
Books, 2004. 213-237. Print.
Plutarch. Lives. Trans. Thomas North. London: Richard Field for Iohn Norton, 1603. 15-16.
EEBO Early English Books Online. Web. 29 July 2011. <http://
gateway.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/‌openurl?
ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:99848114>.
Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. Herschel
Baker, et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. 256-281. Print.
- - -. Romeo and Juliet. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. Herschel Baker, et al. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1997. 1104-1139. Print.
Teskey, Gordon. “Lecture on Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Harvard
Summer School. Sever Hall 202. 11 July 2011. Lecture.
Wikipedia contributors. “Hippolytus (mythology).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 16 July 2011. Web. 29 July 2011. <http://
en.wikipedia.org/‌w/‌index.php?title=Hippolytus_(mythology)&oldid=439856201>.
- - -. “Phaedra (Seneca).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
25 July 2011. Web. 29 July 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/‌w/‌index.php?
title=Phaedra_(Seneca)&oldid=441339583>.
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- - -. “Seneca the Younger.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia, 28 July 2011. Web. 29 July 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/‌w/‌index.php?
title=Seneca_the_Younger&oldid=441839116>.