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All Site ContentMidsummer Night's DreamAct 3Scene 2
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“like coats in heraldry”
Cultural Context
Act 3,
Scene 2
Lines 195-216

An explanation of Helena’s reference to “coats in heraldry” in Act 3, Scene 2 of myShakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Helena

Injurious Hermia, most ungrateful maid,
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared —
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us — O, is it all quite forgot?
All schooldays' friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry: seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition,
Two lovely berries molded on one stem.
So, with two seeming bodies but one heart –
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crownèd with one crest.
And will you rend our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?

This a reference to heraldry, the system of formal titles and symbols associated with the hierarchical class structure of Shakespeare's England. A "coat" (coat of arms) was an emblem "due but to one," used by a single noble family. Its description was officially recorded using precise technical language. On the coat of arms that Helena is describing are images of the two of them "of the first" (in the primary color of the design), and an image of one "crest" (the figure at the top of the coat of arms), in this case one hart (“one heart"), a male deer.