The figures of Theseus and Hippolyta, firmly enthroned, save A Midsummer Night’s Dream from dissolving into moonlight. They are never led astray by the fairies, and they give the play substantiality. This is more than a stage impression, the stiffening is also intellectual. When Theseus hears the story of the night’s confusions, his comment is, “More strange than true – “. But Hippolyta insists that it “—grows to something of great constancy”. The play itself does that. But what is the thing of constancy? The brief answer, I think, is beauty. That may sound deceptively simple; for behind it lies a great part of the Neo-Platonist philosophy of the Renaissance.
Why did Shakespeare close Theseus and Hippolyta to frame his dream-story? This is the kind of question we ought to ask whenever he brings in mythological figures; because they are always more than ornament, they are part of his parable as well. The Theseus-and –Hippolyta theme – as it is presented to us here – is the turning of a war into a wedding, a sword into a ring: out of chaos has come a birth of beauty. It is to this that the regal couple in the background owe their stability. For the symbolic purpose of this play they have attained the thing of constancy towards which the wavering characters are shown to grow.
This miracle – the bringing of order out of confusion – is performed by
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If we press our original question – “Why, for more than romantic reasons, is the highest duty of Shakespearean lovers neither to their parents nor to the law, but to love?”---the answer might be because love, and nothing else, will lead the soul to perfection. The Renaissance “Platonists” were agreed about that, and I suggest it provisionally. But it leaves many knots to unravel; and they will be impossible to loosen, unless we take hold of the threads of philosophic argument at their beginnings in Plato and