You are here

All Site ContentMidsummer Night's DreamAct 2Scene 1
Back to the Play
Perigouna, Aegles, Ariadne, and Antiopa
Mythological Reference
Act 2,
Scene 1
Lines 74-80

An explanation to the references to mythological figures in Act 2, Scene 1 of myShakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

Oberon

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigouna, whom he ravished,
And make him, with fair Aegles, break his faith
With Ariadne and Antiopa?

Oberon is referring to stories about Theseus that depict him as something other than a proper gentleman when it comes to women. He supposedly raped Perigouna, the daughter of a bandit he had killed. He then had a relationship with Ariadne, a princess on the island of Crete, but dumped her for the nymph Aegles (a forest spirit). Later Theseus had a relationship with Antiopa, a defeated Amazonian warrior (like Hippolyta), but abandoned her to marry Phaedra, princess Ariadne's sister. 

Ariadne Helping Theseus by Giving Him a Ball of Thread, Johann Heinrich Tischbein, c. 1779