Hippolyta Quotes

Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Hippolyta responds to Theseus, after he complains that the four days until their wedding is frustrating his desires. Her reference to "dream away the time" foreshadows the prevelance of dreams in the play and the strange, magical occurances that will happen in the forest. These are the first words the Amazon queen speaks in the play.

And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, Scene 1. Hippolyta is referring to her upcoming wedding in four days time. Using a simile, she likens the waning moon to a silver bow bent into a curve in the sky and looking down on her wedding celebration. Personification is used here also, as Hippolyta visualizes the face of the moon as that of Diana watching her marry Theseus. In Roman mythology Diana was the goddess of the moon and of the hunt and is often depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and quiver full of arrows.

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.

My love shall hear the music of my hounds.
Uncouple in the western valley; let them go.
Dispatch, I say, and find the Forester. [A Servant exits]
We will, fair queen, up to the mountain’s top
And mark the musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. On the morning of their wedding Theseus and Hippolyta are in the woods with a hunting party. The Duke wants Hippolyta to join him on the mountain summit to watch his hounds in action in the valley below. Obviously proud of his hunting animals, Theseus uses a metaphor to compare their howling to "music."

I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta. Never did I hear
Such gallant chiding. For, besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Hippolyta shares an interest in hunting with Theseus. Here she reminisces about her hunting days before she met Theseus. She recalls being on a hunt with Hercules and Cadmus and hearing the hounds of Sparta cornering a bear. She metaphorically compares their howling to "musical discord" and "sweet thunder." We are also reminded here of Hippolyta’s regal status as Queen of the Amazons.

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images
And grows to something of great constancy,
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Despite Theseus’s skepticism about the lovers’ story of the night in the woods, Hippolyta believes them. The fact that they all told their story in the same way convinces her that their strange tale must be true. Hippolyta speaks of "their minds transfigured so together." This is alluding to the fact that a transformation has taken place, with Hippolyta saying that something positive and enduring can come from such change.

The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. Theseus chides Hippolyta for dismissing the play as the silliest stuff she had ever heard. He responds more charitably to the Athenian laborers’ performance. He says that the best plays are an imitation of life, and the worst can be fixed and gaps filled in using the imagination. Hippolyta’s retort: "It must be your imagination then, and not theirs."
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