This Month's Midsummer Feature >>

Theseus is the most admirable character in the play. He is authoritative in his handling of Egeus' suit and gentle in bringing the old man around to the marriage between Hermia and Lysander. Theseus is an astute, but genial, critic of the "Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe," and, among the mortal characters at least, has the most refined understanding of how love, madness, and art inter-related through the process of the creative imagination. The Amazon queen Hippolyta holds her own against Theseus, but there is never any conflict between them and her role is therefore marginal when compared to that of her husband.