Hippolyta: A Midsummer Nights Dream
Initial Research on how Hippolyta is portrayed in the original play:
In the play, Hippolyta is preparing to marry the Duke of Athens, Theseus. They are high status and very noble people. Shakespeare based these from another play The Knight's Tale by Chaucer (one of the sources Shakespeare added to and adapted for MSND). In that story, Chaucer shows how Theseus conquests the Amazons and captures their queen, Ypolita, taking her as his wife. There are some themes of forced marriaged here (this is not how me and Ruby chose to play their relationship in our modern day interpretation).
Hippolyta is an interesting character because she represents a female matriach in a patriarchal society who is then captured and dominated by men under the norms of patriarchy. She has a small number of lines in the play, which could show her insignificance even though she is a former strong female queen. This could be Shakespeare trying to criticise the patriarchal norms of the society he lived in.
This picture gives evidence of my character development. On this sheet I established iambic pentameter, relationships with characters, objectives and I defined some terms I didn't understand the meaning of, like pomp and nuptial. Doing this helped me understand my character further.
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