A Midsummer Night’s Dream Marriage Quotes

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon. But, oh, methinks how slow
This old moon wanes. She lingers my desires,
Like to a stepdame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. The Duke of Athens Theseus comments to Hippolya about their approaching wedding day in these opening lines of the play. He is impatient for their "nuptial hour" to arrive, complaining that time is passing too slowly. He uses the moon as a metaphor for his frustrated desires. He compares the slowly waning moon to a greedy aging stepmother or widow spending her husband’s fortune before her son can inherit it (examples of similes).

Go, Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments.
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth.
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Theseus instructs his Master of the Revels Philostrate to organize a celebratory atmosphere among the young people of Athens. He charges him with awakening the spirit of merriment for his marriage. He personifies both mirth and melancholy in this passage and says that sadness is for funerals and not the friend of a wedding celebration.

Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries,
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Theseus defeated and conquered Amazon Queen Hippolyta in battle and she is now betrothed to him. The Amazons were a mythical nation of warrior women, who were courageous and independent and the archenemies of the ancient Greeks. But in Theseus’ world it is the men who take charge and women are property and prizes to be won in battle. He uses verbal irony when he says that he won Hippolyta’s love by causing her injury, as hurting someone does not normally endear them to you. Theseus has now been transformed from warrior king and Hippolyta’s enemy to her lover. He employs a musical metaphor when he talks of wooing her with his sword and now wedding her "in another key" – with pomp and festivities and celebration instead of war. There is a subtle foreshadowing in this passage that love in the play has to be fought for and won. The uneasy union of Theseus and Hippolyta, brought about by enslavement, is also foreshadowing of the dispute between Oberon and Titania, their counterparts in the fairy world.

Full of vexation come I, with complaint
Against my child, my daughter Hermia. –
Stand forth, Demetrius. – My noble lord,
This man hath my consent to marry her. –
Stand forth, Lysander. – And my gracious duke,
This man hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child. –
Thou, thou, Lysander.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. An angry Egeus complaints to Duke Theseus that his daughter Hermia is disobeying his wish that she marry Demetrius and she wants to wed Lysander instead. He effectively accuses Lysander of witchcraft: putting a spell on his daughter’s heart.

I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.
I know not by what power I am made bold,
Nor how it may concern my modesty
In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;
But I beseech your Grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. A defiant Hermia, whose heart is set on Lysander, asks the Duke of Athens Theseus what her fate will be if she refuses to marry Demetrius. Tell me the worst that will happen me, she demands. Hermia is an outspoken and self-assertive young Athenian woman and has the courage to speak up for herself to the highest authority figure in the city.

Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill’d
Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,
Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Theseus tells Hermia that she should marry Demetrius. He says that those who master their passions and remain virgins are three times blessed. But, using a flower metaphor, he suggests that a woman who is married and deflowered ("the rose distill’d") is happier than one who remains a virgin. The virgin simply grows, lives and withers on the stem.

So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will yield my virgin patent up
Unto his Lordship, whose unwishèd yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Hermia shows herself to be one of Shakespeare’s strong women as she defies the wishes of her father Egeus and Duke Theseus. They have commanded that she marry Demetrius instead of Lysander. In a powerful expression of women’s autonomy, she declares that she will not give up the ownership of her virginity to her father. Nor will her soul give her father sovereignty to command her to enter an unwanted marriage. Using a metaphor, she compares marriage to Demetrius to an "unwishèd yoke" – a pair of oxen harnessed togeher under the yoke of enforced marriage. She says that she would rather die or become a nun than marry Demetrius.

Take time to pause; and, by the next new moon
(The sealing day betwixt my love and me,
For everlasting bond of fellowship),
Upon that day either prepare to die
For disobedience to your father’s will,
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would;
Or on Diana’s altar to protest
For aye austerity and single life.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Hermia is told by Theseus to think hard about her decision to disobey her father’s wish to marry the man he has chosen for his daughter. The Duke gives her a deadline of the next new moon. Then she must either marry Demetrius, or prepare to die or live a life of austerity as a virgin priestess in the temple of Diana. Hermia is denied the freedom to make her own choice in the matter of who she loves and marries. This is controlled by men: her father and Theseus.
Theseus

There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me, then
Steal forth thy father’s house tomorrow night,
And in the wood a league without the town
(Where I did meet thee once with Helena
To do observance to a morn of May),
There will I stay for thee.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Lysander hatches a plan for his and Hermia’s escape to his aunt’s house away from Athens, where they can marry and the laws of Athens don’t apply. He tells her that if she loves him she should steal away from her father’s house and meet him in the woods the following night, so that they may elope. The mention of a place where Helena and Hermia used to spend time foreshadows Helena’s return to this spot in the next Act, where she will awaken the bewitched Lysander, who falls in love with Helena instead of Hermia. It also foreshadows Hermia’s plans to replace Helena in the enchanted Lysander’s affections.

O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!
Love takes the meaning in love’s conference.
I mean that my heart unto yours is knit
So that but one heart we can make of it.
Two bosoms interchainèd with an oath,
So then two bosoms and a single troth.
Then by your side no bed-room me deny,
For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. In his declaration of love to Hermia, Lysander defends his request to sleep beside her as innocent. He uses metaphorical language to describe how their hearts are "knit" into one heart, two bodies "interchainèd" with vows of love. He uses wordplay to argue that it is not wrong for them to "lie" together as he didn’t "lie" when he pledged to marry her.

Now thou and I are new in amity,
And will tomorrow midnight solemnly
Dance in Duke Theseus’ house triumphantly,
And bless it to all fair prosperity.
There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be
Wedded, with Theseus, all in jollity.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Peace is restored in fairyland and the world of humans. Oberon and Titania are friends once more. The Fairy King says that they can dance for Duke Theseus tomorrow at midnight and bless his marriage and that of the other Athenian lovers.

Enough, enough, my lord; you have enough:
I beg the law, the law, upon his head.
They would have stolen away; they would, Demetrius,
Thereby to have defeated you and me,
You of your wife and me of my consent,
Of my consent that she should be your wife.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Egeus is a controlling father and wishes to the sole decider of who his daughter Hermia marries. After Lysander explains that he and Hermia ran away to be married, Egeus wants him to be punished. He demands that Duke Theseus bring the law down on his head. Even though Hermia loves Lysander, the unrelenting Egeus still demands that his daughter marry Demetrius.

Fair lovers, you are fortunately met.
Of this discourse we more will hear anon. –
Egeus, I will overbear your will,
For in the temple, by and by, with us,
These couples shall eternally be knit.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Theseus overrules Egeus’ commmand that his daughter Hermia must marry Demetrius. He decrees that later in the temple the marriages of Lysander and Hermia and Demetrius and Helena will take place along with his own. The two sets of young Athenian lovers achieve their happy ending – with the help of the Duke’s intervention and the magic love juice which Demetrius is still under the spell of.
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