Theseus and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Nights Dream

Theseus and Hippolyta are two characters from ancient Greek legends and their presence in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare serves to ground the action of the play in a certain time and place in history—or at least in myth, as Forey, Panoksky and Saxl show.

The myth aspect of these two characters also allows Shakespeare to play up the other myth quality of the play—that is, the woodland spirits and fairies who lead the four Athenian youths into so much trouble as they seek to engage in wooing and romance.

Theseus and Hippolyta may not be very active in the play, but they certainly do provide the comedy with sufficient backdrop to give it a playful, mythological, fun-filled dynamism that brings the action full-circle and caps it off with a few pleasant reminders for newlyweds (which is what Theseus and Hippolyta are at the end of the play).

Though they are not central characters, their characters are central to the ideas expressed in the play—i.e., the need for balance, proportion, respect and appreciation in all one’s dealings with other human beings. As Theseus himself says at the end of the play, “The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst / are no worse, if imagination amend them… / If we imagine no worse of them than they of / themselves, they may pass for excellent men” (5.1.2056-2060).

This line comes in response to the jests that are being made at the players’ expense. They are poor actors and deserve to be mocked, but Theseus patiently reminds his friends that the actors are trying and that in order for the viewers to be positive, they should try to see the actors as the actors see themselves.

This advice can be applied to everything in the play, from the four Athenian youths who are fighting over who loves whom and who is most lovely, to the fairy king and queen themselves who are fighting over a little page, to Bottom whose very appearance is altered so that he becomes something he is not.

In other words, Theseus delivers the moral of the story—that if people use their imaginations for good, that is, to see in others those good qualities that they want to see in themselves, a happier time can be had by all (Dent). This advice is certainly taken to heart by Hippolyta who marries Theseus and serves as his new bride, full of patience and love and respect for her new husband who conquered her on the battlefield.

They could be enemies—but instead she has given her mind to love and that allows her to see Theseus in a better light than that in which he might be cast were she still to think of him as an enemy combatant. With respect to her, Theseus is proven right: imagination amends that which might otherwise offend (Dent; Olson). So while the majority of the play focuses on the other characters, Theseus and Hippolyta are never far from the action.

The actors are preparing a play for their wedding after all. However, the fact that these two figures are largely absent from the main action does signify that their story is not as important as the story of the four Athenian youths, the players or the fairies. Theseus and Hippolyta are the authorities of the realm—and Shakespeare is not inclined to analyze their romance—after all, it is not the one that is troubled and in need of fixing.

On the contrary, the Athenian youths’ relationships are troubled as is the relationship between the king and queen of the fairy world. Shakespeare focuses on these troubled relationships because this is where the conflict is and where the rising and falling action occurs. By contrast, Theseus’ only trouble is that he must wait a few more nights before he can join his bride in the wedding chamber.

His big trial is that of patience and this is not a dramatic conflict worthy of a two hour play—thus, the absence of Theseus and Hippolyta from the main action suggests that there is nothing of dramatic value in their relationship.

They are at peace with themselves and with one another—and that peace they possess can be explained by Theseus’ wise words revealed towards the end of the play: he and his wife have used their imagination correctly with respect to one another—neither exaggerating one another’s faults nor exaggerating one another’s virtues but rather using their imaginations to see the good in one another and thus be happy in their relationship with each other (Garner).

Shakespeare doesn’t need to keep moving the action back to them, as their story serves sufficiently well to frame the action and conflict that the other characters must go through: after all, the youths from Athens and the fairy queen and king are the ones who are fighting with one another and not getting along.

They are the ones in need of a lesson in how to use the imagination properly—and they all get that lesson through the course of the play—as though Theseus and Hippolyta were teaching it to them from a distance, off stage, or in a spiritual manner. In conclusion, Theseus and Hippolyta may be giant characters because they are mythological but they are not central to the play’s action—rather they are central to the play’s moral.

And as the moral is not delivered until the end of the play, there is not much need for them to appear throughout the action. Instead, Shakespeare uses the bulk of the play to focus on the conflict, to show how the main characters fail to appropriately use their wits to build healthy relationships with one another, and how imagination can allow one to get carried away with feelings of.