SOURCE: McGuire, Philip C. “Egeus and the Implications of Silence.” In Shakespeare and the Sense of Performance, edited by Marvin Thompson and Ruth Thompson, pp. 103-115. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

[In the following essay, McGuire explores the ways in which Egeus's silence in Act IV, scene i has been interpreted by modern directors.]

One way to glimpse what the future might hold for performance-centered criticism of Shakespeare's plays is to ponder the challenges posed by a silence that occurs in act 4, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, soon after Duke Theseus and his hunting party find the four young lovers asleep on the forest ground following their baffling experiences of the night before. Lysander, “Half sleep, half waking” (4.1.146),¹ begins to explain that he and Hermia were fleeing “the peril of the Athenian law” (152) that sentences Hermia to death or to a life of perpetual chastity if she persists in refusing to marry the man her father has chosen to be her husband. Egeus, Hermia's father, interrupts, fiercely calling upon Theseus to apply the law most rigorously: “Enough, enough, my lord! you have enough. / I beg the law, the law, upon his head” (153-54).

During act 1, Theseus had warned Hermia that “the law of Athens” was something “Which by no means we may extenuate” (1.1.119-20). Now, however, after hearing Demetrius, Egeus's choice to be Hermia's husband, explain that his love for Hermia has “Melted” (4.1.165) away, Theseus proceeds to set aside the very law upholding an Athenian father's right to “dispose” (1.1.42) of his daughter that he had earlier declared himself powerless to “extenuate.” Theseus declares,

Egeus, I will overbear your will,
For in the temple, by and by, with us,
These couples shall eternally be knit. …

(4.1.178-80)

What is Egeus's response to Theseus's decision to disregard not only his will but also Athenian law? In both the Quarto of 1600 and the Folio of 1623—the two texts of A Midsummer Night's Dream surviving from Shakespeare's time that are considered independently authoritative²—Egeus says nothing. The agreement between Quarto and Folio gives us as much certainty as we can get that Egeus's silence is an authentic feature of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but probing that silence in an effort to determine its specific meaning(s) and effect(s) brings us face-to-face with bedeviling uncertainties.

Evidence from Shakespeare's era prevents us from assuming that Egeus's silence is in and of itself definitive evidence that he withholds assent to a wedding that Theseus will no longer allow him to prevent. The marriage ritual set down in the 1559 Book of Common Prayer—like many of the rituals observed these days—specified functions for the bride's father that he is to carry out in silence. After bringing his daughter to the altar, the father “stands by in mute testimony that there are no impediments to the marriage.”³ A logical response to the question “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” is for the bride's father to say “I do,” but the response the ritual calls for him to make is nonverbal; he is to relinquish his daughter without speaking. However, since what happens in act 4 is not a marriage ceremony, we cannot take evidence of the kind provided by the 1559 Book of Common Prayer as certain proof that Egeus's silence establishes his consent.

Recent productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream demonstrate the range of alternative meanings and effects that can emerge from Egeus's silence. In Richard Cottrell's 1980 production for the Bristol Old Vic Company, Egeus said nothing after hearing Theseus “overbear” his will, but before exiting with Theseus, Hippolyta, and their attendants, Egeus embraced Hermia. In an act that suggested the traditional wedding ceremony, Egeus then relinquished his paternal authority by placing his daughter's hand in Lysander's. With that action he gave Hermia to the man whom he had earlier denounced before Theseus for having “filched my daughter's heart, / Turned her obedience (which is due to me) / To stubborn harshness” (1.1.36-38). The Egeus of that production was a father who had come to accept without reservation the combination of ducal authority and erotic attraction that was soon to make his daughter Lysander's wife.

Elijah Moshinsky's 1981 production for the BBC-TV/New York Life series “The Shakespeare Plays” enacted alternatives that are different but equally consistent with the silence that the Quarto and the Folio assign to Egeus. After hearing Theseus's words authorizing her marriage to Lysander, Hermia moved to her father and they embraced. The reconciliation implicit in those gestures took on an added dimension when, before exiting, Egeus kissed his daughter's hand. In the opening scene, Theseus had warned Hermia “To fit your fancies to your father's will” (1.1.118). By kissing Hermia's hand, the Egeus of Moshinsky's production conveyed that he would now “fit” his will not only to the duke's authority but also to his daughter's “fancies.”

In Celia Brannerman's 1980 production for the New Shakespeare Company at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London, Egeus, in his silence, submitted obediently but without any enthusiasm to Theseus's dictate. Egeus did not move to embrace Hermia after hearing Theseus declare, “Egeus, I will overbear your will.” He did allow Hippolyta to take his hand in a comforting gesture that also implied that he would remain a valued member of Athenian court. Egeus exited with Theseus and Hippolyta, but there was no reconciliation between father and daughter, and Hermia's father did not acknowledge her husband-to-be.

The most acclaimed of recent productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream—Peter Brook's for the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 1970s—enacted possibilities radically different from those already described.⁴ When Theseus finished announcing “… by and by, with us, / These couples shall eternally be knit,” Egeus stepped from where he had been standing between Theseus and Hippolyta and strode toward the exit downstage right. He paused briefly, even expectantly, as he heard Theseus begin to speak again—“And, for the morning now is something overworn” (181). Once it was clear, however, that Theseus was simply announcing the cancellation of the hunting, Egeus continued to make his departure. Before Theseus could call, “Away, with us to Athens” (183), Egeus was gone, leaving through an exit different from the one used moments later, first by Theseus and Hippolyta and then by the four lovers as they returned “to Athens.” In the specific context established by that production, Theseus's words “Three and three, / We'll hold a feast in great solemnity” (183-84) registered the fact that “Three and three” did not include Egeus. The exit that Egeus made in Brook's production established that he was withdrawing from Athenian society.

The standard tactic for discriminating among alternatives such as those acted out in the four productions I have cited, for deciding which is “right” and which “wrong,” which honors Shakespeare's intentions and which violates them, is to scrutinize the words of the play for evidence of what Shakespeare himself intended. When we look to those words, however, we find that neither the Folio nor the Quarto gives information of the caliber we need. Because each gives Egeus nothing to say, there are no words of his to scrutinize. The stage directions in the Quarto and the Folio are also of limited utility. They give no precise sense of how the silent Egeus makes his exit, and they help to drive home how little the words others speak reveal about Egeus's response to Theseus's decision authorizing Hermia's marriage to Lysander.

The Folio specifically requires that Egeus enter in act 4, scene 1 with Theseus: “Enter Theseus, Egeus, Hippolita and all his traine.”⁵ The stage direction for the exit to be made after Theseus overrules Egeus is less precise: “Exit Duke and Lords.” There is, perhaps significantly, no specific mention of Egeus. Egeus could be one of those “Lords” who exit with Theseus—as happened in Elijah Moshinsky's 1981 production for BBC-TV. In such a case, Egeus remains a member of Athenian society, whether or not he accepts Hermia's marriage to Lysander.

However, nothing in the Folio requires that Egeus departs with Theseus. By first specifically including Egeus among those who enter with Theseus and by then not specifically listing him as one of those who leave with Theseus, the Folio allows for the possibility—enacted in Brook's production—that Theseus [sic] makes an exit separate from Theseus and those who go with him. Such an exit—which the Folio permits but does not mandate—would establish that Egeus's response to Theseus's exercise of ducal authority is to withdraw from Athens. Earlier Lysander and Hermia had fled from Athens in order to escape the punishments proscribed by “the sharp Athenian law” (1.1.162). The law they fled is the law that Egeus invokes when he calls for “the law, the law” upon Lysander's head, and it is that law that, overbearing Egeus's will, Theseus sets aside. The Athens to which Hermia and Lysander return is an Athens that will officially accept and validate their marriage: “In the temple, by and by, with us,” Theseus says, “These couples shall eternally be knit.” It is also the Athens from which Egeus could choose to withdraw. If he does, then Egeus in his silence is, like Malvolio and Jacques, a man who excludes himself from a renewed social order in which he is welcome to participate. We might even see in such an Egeus a forerunner of those tragic fathers, Lear and Brabantio, who cannot bring themselves to accept a daughter's will.

The corresponding stage directions in the Quarto are, if anything, open to even more diverse possibilities. The Quarto reads: “Enter Theseus and all his traine”—a phrasing that does not single out Egeus and Hippolyta as the Folio does. The Quarto provides no stage directions for the exit beyond what is implicit in Theseus's final words in the scene:

Away, with us, to Athens. Three and three,
Weele holde a feast, in great solemnitie. Come Hyppolita.

As stage directions, Theseus's words were inconclusive. “Away, with us, to Athens,” for example, may be words of reassurance to Egeus—an effort to include him that Egeus may either accept or refuse. The words could also be an order from the Duke to Egeus, a command that he may or may not obey. In the opening scene, after what might be called Hermia's trial, Egeus leaves with Theseus, emphasizing his allegiance by declaring, “With duty and desire we follow you” (1.1.127). His words on that occasion resonate against the silence with which Hippolyta responds to Theseus's words calling for her to depart with him, “Come, my Hippolyta” (1.1.122). Hippolyta again says nothing when in act 4 Theseus says, “Come Hyppolita.” This time, however, Egeus is silent too. He may wordlessly obey or he may wordlessly disobey the words that Theseus may direct to him: “Away, with us, to Athens.” However, those words need not be addressed specifically to Egeus. Spoken to Hermia after Egeus has departed in anger, they could be Theseus's effort to ease whatever anguish Hermia feels at the departure of her embittered father: “Away, with US, to Athens.”⁶ Thus, like the Folio, the Quarto allows the possibility that Egeus exits with Theseus and his “traine” but does not require it. Also, like the Folio, the Quarto does not require that Egeus exit apart from them either.

If we seek to clarify the meanings and effect of Egeus's silence by looking at the wedding festivities of act 5, we find differences between the Quarto and the Folio that compound our difficulties.⁷ The Folio begins act 5 with a direction that specifies the presence of Egeus: “Enter Theseus, Hippolita, Egeus and his Lords.” The corresponding stage direction in the Quarto, however, reads “Enter Theseus, Hyppolita, and Philostrate.” There is no specific mention of Egeus as there is in the Folio, and there is no term equivalent to the “Lords” of the Folio that can be taken to include Egeus. In the Quarto Philostrate is the only person present to overhear the conversation between Theseus and Hippolyta, while the Folio requires that at least several be present, one of whom must be Egeus. Thus, the Folio, in contrast to the Quarto, establishes a situation in which Egeus stands by without speaking as he and others hear the Duke, who has overruled his will and Athenian law in order to permit Hermia's marriage, explain that he “never may beleeve” the lovers' account of what transpired during their night in the woods. Egeus must come to terms with a marriage that is one of the consequences of “Fairy toyes” in which Theseus himself does not believe.

Egeus's absence from festivities celebrating three weddings, one of which is his daughter's, is certainly compatible with interpreting Egeus's silence after Theseus overrules him as a refusal to accept Hermia's marriage to Lysander. The Quarto, then, justifies a production like Brook's in which Egeus, embittered at having Theseus “overbear” his will, ignores his daughter and withdraws from Athens rather than accept Hermia's marriage to Lysander. A father absent from his daughter's nuptial festivities would be another of those elements in A Midsummer Night's Dream that call attention to the darker, destructive possibilities inherent in the dynamics of sexual attraction and the processes of familial and communal renewal that the wedding revels and the play itself celebrate.⁸

Egeus's absence from the wedding festivities poses what I should like to call a dramaturgical problem: what means does Shakespeare provide to give that absence theatrical impact, to make it register on those watching a performance? One way to appreciate the problem is to try to remember whether Egeus was absent from the wedding festivities in the last performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream you saw. Shakespeare faced the same problem in act 5 of The Merchant of Venice, and there he insured that Shylock's absence would be an element of the audience's experience by having characters refer to Shylock. Lorenzo tells Jessica that the moonlit night they are enjoying together at Belmont reminds him of the night in Venice when she left her father to run away with him:

                                                                                          In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
As far as Belmont.

(5.1.15-18)⁹

Antonio refers explicitly to his bond with Shylock when he offers to guarantee Basanio's fidelity to Portia by entering into another bond on his behalf:

I once did lend my body for his wealth,
Which but for him that had your husband's ring
Had quite miscarried. I dare be bound again,
My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord
Will never more break faith advisedly.

(249-53)

After Portia and Nerissa reveal the parts they played at Shylock's trial, Nerissa explains to Lorenzo and Jessica how the sentence imposed on Shylock benefits them:

There do I give to you and Jessica
From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift,
After his death, of all he dies possessed of.

(291-93)

There are no equivalently direct references to the absent Egeus in act 5 of the Quarto version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Twice, however, what characters say could refer to Egeus. Early in act 5, Theseus asks, “Where is our usual manager / Of mirth?” The possibility that Egeus is the usual manager of mirth cannot be ruled out conclusively, but even if Theseus's question does refer to the absent Egeus, a reference so oblique is unlikely to register with much force on a theatre audience. A second possible reference to the absent father comes after the end of the play-within-the-play, when Snug, stepping out of his role as Lion, explains why Wall is not one of those “left to bury the dead”: “No, I assure you,” he tells Demetrius and others in the Athenian audience, “the wall is downe that parted their fathers.” Again, however, if this is a reference to Egeus, it is indirect and of questionable theatrical impact.

Words, however, are not the only means at a dramatist's disposal. Doubling Egeus with another character is a tactic available to Shakespeare that could use the visual dimension of drama in order to draw attention to Egeus's absence.¹⁰ Doubling Egeus and Philostrate, for example, would create a theatrical situation in which seeing Philostrate, whom Theseus calls upon in the Quarto to provide the wedding entertainment, could also make the audience conscious that Egeus has absented himself from the nuptial merriment. Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream doubled Egeus and Peter Quince. The presence during act 5 of the novice director who struggles to bring theatrical order out of the impulses and imaginings of the rude mechanicals was a visual reminder of the absent father who had tried to make his daughter's fancy and sexual energies fit his will. I might also point out that the visual parallels generated by doubling Egeus would enhance the theatrical effectiveness of what are otherwise no more than possible, very indirect verbal references to him in the Quarto.

The Folio—in contrast to the Quarto—not only calls for Egeus to be present during act 5 but also provides a means for directing attention to him by giving him words to speak that the Quarto assigns to Philostrate. Clearly, by mandating the presence of Egeus during the wedding festivities, the Folio rules out the possibility that Egeus's response when Theseus overrides his will is to withdraw permanently from Athens. Even if the silent Egeus stalks off alone when he exits in act 4, he must, according to the Folio, be present in act 5. The presence of Egeus increases the possibility—more difficult to envision if, as the Quarto permits, he is absent—that he is fully reconciled to the marriage of Hermia and Lysander. The Folio has Egeus provide the list of “sports” from which Theseus selects the nuptial entertainment. In the Folio, it is Egeus, not Philostrate, who explains how the play of Pyramus and Thisby can be “merry” and “tragicall” as well as “tedious” and “briefe.” As part of that explanation, Egeus confesses that watching the play in rehearsal “made mine eyes water: / But more merrie teares, the passion of loud laughter / Never shed.”

Although the Folio certainly allows for full reconciliation between father and daughter, it does not mandate it. The first words that Egeus speaks are in response to the ducal command “Call Egeus.” Egeus answers, “Heere mighty Theseus,” and by stressing “mighty,” the actor playing Egeus can make his reply a telling reference to the power Theseus exercises, power capable of overriding both a father's will and the law upholding that father's right to exercise his will. Even Egeus's account of how his eyes watered is less conclusive than it first appears. The phrase “more merrie teares” can be spoken so that it implies that Hermia's father has also shed other, less merry tears. Note, too, that while “more” can serve as an adverb of comparison, it can equally well function as an adjective meaning “additional.” When it does, the sentence of which it is a part says that Egeus has not shed any merry tears since the rehearsal.

For me the most persuasive evidence for the possibility that Egeus's presence at the wedding festivities can signify nothing more than dutiful obedience to his duke is the fact that all the words he speaks are addressed to “mighty Theseus.” He never speaks to Hermia or Lysander, and neither of them ever speaks to him.¹¹ Thus, Egeus's acts of speaking during act 5 also establish a silence that he maintains toward his daughter and her new husband and that they maintain toward him.

An especially important set of differences between Quarto and Folio turns on how the list of possible entertainments is presented. In the Folio Theseus asks Egeus what entertainments are available, while the Quarto has him ask Philostrate. In the Quarto Philostrate provides a “briefe” from which Thesus proceeds to read out the titles of the various sports, interspersing comments on each. The Folio changes what the Quarto presents as a single speech given by Theseus into a dialogue involving Lysander and Theseus. Lysander reads out the titles, and Theseus responds to each. What needs emphasis is that Egeus himself never carries out Theseus's charge that he “SAY, what abridgement have you for the evening” (my emphasis). That charge is the first of a series of questions Theseus asks: “What maske? What musicke? How shall we beguile / The lazie time, if not with some delight?” The questions can be asked very rapidly, but if Theseus pauses after each question, waiting for an answer that does not come before asking the next, the lines can emphasize that when Egeus does at last speak, he does not “Say” what the entertainments are. Instead, he says, “There is a breefe how many sports are rife [sic]: / Make choice of which your Highnesse will see first.”

By having Lysander be the one who then reads out what is in the brief, the Folio establishes a situation in which Hermia's new husband speaks what her father was called upon to say. Although it is clear that Lysander reads from the brief to which Egeus refers, it is not clear how that document gets into Lysander's hands, and it is equally unclear what significance emerges from the fact that Lysander rather than Egeus says what the “sports” are. Does Egeus himself hand the brief to Lysander and by that action both acknowledge and (literally) give his voice to Lysander? Does giving the brief to Lysander indicate that Egeus is declining to read it himself—a reluctance to speak that could echo his silence after Theseus overbears his will? Instead of giving the brief to Lysander, Egeus might place it on a table—“THERE is a briefe …” (my emphasis)—and Lysander could then step forward and read it. Another possibility is that Lysander snatches the brief from Egeus before he has a chance to read it, in effect taking Egeus's voice and his place as he has taken his daughter. Perhaps Egeus hands the brief—deferentially? defiantly?—to Theseus, who then passes it to Lysander. Such a sequence could establish a harmony between father and son-in-law centered on the figure of the duke. Alternatively, however, the same set of actions could convey that Theseus's response to an Egeus unwilling or unable to bring himself to “Say” what entertainment is available is to confer new status upon Lysander by giving him the opportunity to “Say” what Egeus will not.

By requiring the presence in act 5 of an Egeus who speaks, the Folio rules out the possibility that Egeus withdraws permanently from Athens rather than be present for a wedding he does not want, but the Folio leaves us unable to determine whether Egeus is present at his daughter's wedding festivities as a rejoicing father or as a dutiful courtier. Thus, neither the Folio nor the Quarto provides information that allows us to decide how Shakespeare wanted Egeus to respond to Theseus's decision authorizing Hermia's marriage to Lysander and to the marriage itself once it is performed. Even if we could convince ourselves that we had divined Shakespeare's intentions, the differences between the Quarto and the Folio suggest that those intentions did not remain fixed and constant but were fluid and changing. The Folio may be a revision of the Quarto, but if it is, the revising process was not one that worked toward clearer definition and greater specificity of intention. The aim of any revision that may have occurred seems to have been to give Egeus's response to Hermia's wedding—whatever that response is—greater theatrical effectiveness by requiring that, after his silence in act 4, he be present and speak during act 5.¹²

The differences in how the Quarto and the Folio present Egeus in act 5 are radically incompatible. There is no way to halve those differences nor to mediate them away by conflating the two texts. Egeus cannot be absent as well as present. The dialogue between Theseus and Hippolyta cannot be a relatively private conversation that only Philostrate is present to overhear and a public exchange that takes place in the presence of Egeus and the “Lords.” Nevertheless, recent editors—among them Madeleine Doran,¹³ David Bevington,¹⁴ G. Blakemore Evans,¹⁵ Stanley Wells,¹⁶ and R. A. Foakes¹⁷—have concurred in providing a stage direction at the beginning of act 5 that follows the Quarto in requiring the presence of Philostrate and follows the Folio in specifying the presence of others identified as lords and attendants. As a result of such conflation, the beginning of act 5 available to the vast majority of scholars, students, and theatre artists is significantly different from the two beginnings with the best claim to being Shakespeare's—the one in the Quarto and the one in the Folio.¹⁸

We can, of course, deal with the problems posed by Egeus's silence and the differences between the Quarto and the Folio by dismissing them as trivial. Egeus is a minor character, such a line of thinking would run, and his response to the wedding that Theseus declares will take place is a peripheral matter of no major significance. The inadequacy of such reasoning comes into focus if we think of A Midsummer Night's Dream in terms of the three phases that the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep has identified as the components of all rites of passage: separation, transition, and reincorporation.¹⁹ Lysander and Hermia enter the woods as part of a conscious decision to separate themselves from Athens, and once in the woods they, as well as Helena and Demetrius, undergo experiences that ultimately permit the four young lovers to pair off as male and female: each “Jill” ends up with a “Jack.” Theseus then makes possible the reincorporation of Lysander and Hermia into an Athens they had fled when he overrules Egeus and sanctions their marriage. The postnuptial festivities of act 5, which is set in Athens, make that reincorporation manifest, but the precise nature of that reincorporation varies according to how Egeus responds to his daughter's marriage.

If Egeus's silence and (in the Quarto) his absence from the wedding signifies his permanent withdrawal from Athens, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play in which marriage and the movement toward it occasion an irreparable break between father and daughter. The family composed of father and daughter fragments as the more inclusive social unit of the city accepts and validates the formation of a new family through marriage. Reincorporation coincides with Egeus's withdrawal. Athens loses a citizen in the process of acquiring a new couple with the potential to bring forth offspring who will be part of the next generation of Athenians. Renewal of the city becomes possible through a process of change that exacts a lasting cost.

The reincorporation that occurs in A Midsummer Night's Dream is radically different, however, if Egeus and Hermia are reconciled and he wholeheartedly accepts her marriage. In such a case, the family unit into which Hermia was born survives her entry into the marital family that she and Lysander form. The social unit of the family—in both its natal and its marital embodiments—and the social unit of the city emerge from the process of renewal intact and regenerated.

Should Egeus do no more than obediently submit to Theseus's authority, a third variety of reincorporation takes place. The continuing estrangement of father and daughter testifies to the shattering of the natal family, but the city itself remains capable of including both the embittered but dutiful father and the marital family her marriage to Lysander brings into existence. Egeus loses Hermia, and Hermia loses Egeus, but Athens loses no one. The city itself benefits as the result of a process that sees one family break apart as a new family that will help to ensure the city's future comes into being.

We are accustomed to thinking of Shakespeare's plays as works that he himself completed in all important details, and we routinely expect—if we do not demand—that those who study, teach, edit, and (especially) perform his plays will honor Shakespeare's intentions as codified in the words he wrote. Once we accept the importance to Egeus, however, the limits of the concepts of completeness and intentionality become inescapable. The very words mandating that Egeus respond to Theseus's decision to “overbear” his will and (in the Folio) to the fact of Hermia's marriage do not give us information adequate to determine what Shakespeare wanted those responses to be, yet those responses are essential components of the play's vision. In this instance, the notion of fidelity to Shakespeare's intentions does not suffice, and as we try to come to terms with the consequences of that insufficiency, one of our first priorities must be to rethink, to reenvision the relationship between Shakespeare and those who perform what we reflexively call his plays. Perhaps because of Shakespeare's own dramaturgical design, perhaps because of the accidents of textual transmission, the Quarto and the Folio present circumstances requiring that those who perform A Midsummer Night's Dream be responsible for determining what Egeus's responses are. The only way to know with anything approaching precision what those responses are is to know how the play has been performed, to take into account what actors actually do or have done. The responses enacted will vary—I would even say must and should vary—from performance to performance, production to production. Each time specific alternatives from among the panoply of available responses are enacted, A Midsummer Night's Dream achieves a particular state of completion, an actual coherence of vision, that it does not have in either its Quarto or its Folio manifestation. Those who perform the play endow it with essential, necessary details that Shakespeare's words require but do not themselves furnish. In so doing, theatre artists do more than serve as agents obediently implementing Shakespeare's intentions. They act as virtual cocreators with him, bringing to completion a process that he initiated. As they do, A Midsummer Night's Dream becomes their play as well as his and challenges all who study what we (misleadingly) call “Shakespeare's” plays to come to terms with their character as works that come into being through a process that is collaborative, collective, and communal in nature.

Notes

1. The modern edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream from which I quote is Madeleine Doran's in William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, The Pelican Text revised, gen. ed. Alfred Harbage (New York: Viking Press, 1977).

2. A second quarto of A Midsummer Night's Dream was printed in 1619 with the false date of 1600 on the title page. Since it was based on the first, it has no independent authority.

3. Lynda E. Boose, “The Father and the Bride in Shakespeare,” PMLA 97 (1982): 326. In this impressive essay, Boose observes, “Hence in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a play centered on marriage, the intransigent father Egeus, supported by the king-father figure Theseus, poses a threat that must be converted to a blessing to ensure the comic solution” (327). I am less certain than she is that the conversion she says must happen actually takes place.

4. See Peter Brook's Production of William Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” for the Royal Shakespeare Company: The Complete and Authorized Acting Edition, ed. Glen Loney (Chicago: Dramatic Publishing Company, 1974), 67b.

5. Quotations from the Folio follow The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, ed. Charlton Hinman (New York: Norton; London: Paul Hamlyn, 1968). Quotations from the Quarto of 1600 follow Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto: A Facsimile Edition of Copies Primarily from the Henry E. Huntington Library, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Kenneth Muir (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981).

6. Rather than italicize words that I emphasize, I have resorted to capitalizing all letters in them. This enables me to preserve the italicization present in the Folio. It should be noted, however, that we cannot be sure that in Shakespeare's time italicization was an indication of emphasis.

7. I am deeply indebted to Barbara Hodgdon. Her essay “Gaining a Father: The Role of Egeus in the Quarto and Folio,” Review of English Studies, n.s. 37 (1986): 534-42, has enriched my understanding of Egeus's role in act 5 of the Folio.

8. Those elements include Titania's account of how the changeling boy's mother died giving birth to him (2.1.135-37), the deaths of the lovers Pyramus and Thisby in the play-within-the-play, and Oberon's closing incantation against birth defects:

   So shall all the couples three
   Ever true in loving be;
   And the blots of Nature's hand
   Shall not in their issue stand.
   Never mole, harelip, nor scar,
   Nor mark prodigious, such as are
   Despisèd in nativity
   Shall upon their children be.

   (5.1.396-403)

9. Quotations follow Brent Stirling's edition of The Merchant of Venice in William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, Pelican Text revised.

10. For a discussion of doubling in various plays by Shakespeare, including A Midsummer Night's Dream, see Stephen Booth's “Speculations on Doubling in Shakespeare's Plays,” in Shakespeare: The Theatrical Dimension, ed. Philip C. McGuire and David A. Samuelson (New York: AMS Press, 1979), 103-31. An expanded version of that essay was published as appendix 2 in Booth's book, “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” Indefinition, and Tragedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 129-55.

11. In fact, Hermia, like Helena, says nothing at all during act 5. In both the Quarto and the Folio we have a situation in which two brides remain silent throughout festivities celebrating their weddings. Their silence is all the more intriguing when set against their insistence on speaking at other moments in the play. In act 1, for example, Hermia first asks Theseus's pardon, then “made bold” by “I know not” “what power,” goes on “In such a presence here to plead my thoughts” (1.1.59, 61). The silence of Hermia and Helena accentuates the fact that Hippolyta, who remained silent during Hermia's trial in act 1, is the only bride who speaks during the festivities. For a discussion of Hippolyta's silence in act 1, see chapter 1, “Hippolyta's Silence and the Poet's Pen,” in my Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 1-18.

12. In “Gaining a Father,” Barbara Hodgdon points out that by requiring Egeus's presence the Folio raises the issue of when and how he makes his exit. She comments on several possibilities, and the point I should like to emphasize is that his final exit, whenever and however it occurs, is made in silence and is therefore open to various, even conflicting alternatives.

13. P. 169: “Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, and Philostrate [with Lords and Attendants].”

14. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. Hardin Craig and David Bevington, rev. ed. (Glenview, Illinois; Brighton, England: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1973), 201: “Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, and PHILOSTRATE, [Lords, and Attendants].”

15. The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 241: “Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, and PHILOSTRATE, [Lords, and Attendants].”

16. New Penguin edition (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1967), 107: “Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate, Lords, and Attendants.”

17. The New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 115: “Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords and Attendants.”

18. The New Oxford Shakespeare (William Shakespeare, The Complete Works, gen. ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986], 371), comes close to following the Folio: “Enter Theseus, Hippolyta, [Egeus], and attendant lords.”

19. Boose, “Father and the Bride,” 325. Another way of establishing the importance of Egeus is to link him with the issue of authority; see Leonard Tennenhouse, “Strategies of State and Political Plays: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII,” in Political Shakespeare: New essays in cultural materialism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985), 109-28.