# A Midsummer Night's Dream — Character guide

> Key figures in A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare.

- [Demetrius](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/demetrius.md): Demetrius holds Egeus's blessing to marry Hermia, but she loathes him, and he spurns Helena, who once had his oaths and now dogs his steps. His cruelty to Helena — 'I charge thee, hence' — exposes how love in Athens beha
- [Lysander](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/lysander.md): Lysander is the romantic who talks his way past Egeus's fury and Theseus's law, arranging a midnight escape through Athens's gates. His confidence in 'reason' and 'the will of man' is exactly what the fairy wood dismantl
- [Hermia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/hermia.md): Hermia stands accused by Egeus of being 'stubborn' and 'harden'd,' yet she answers Theseus with startling composure, asking to know the worst and choosing it anyway. Her bond with Helena — 'two lovely berries moulded on 
- [Helena](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/helena.md): Helena opens the play comparing herself unfavorably to Hermia — 'I am as ugly as a bear' — and closes Act I deciding to betray her friend's escape for one more glimpse of Demetrius. Her pursuit of a man who spurns her is
- [Oberon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/oberon.md): Oberon is locked in a bitter quarrel with Titania over a changeling boy, and his response is not negotiation but enchantment — a flower struck by Cupid's arrow, squeezed onto sleeping eyes. He commands Puck with the casu
- [Titania](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/titania.md): Titania holds her ground against Oberon over the Indian boy, and her defiance — rooted in memory of the child's mother — is the one thing in the wood that will not bend to a king's will. Drugged with love-juice, she dote
- [Puck](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/puck.md): Puck is Oberon's servant and the fairy world's resident prankster, known to villagers as Robin Goodfellow: he skims milk, spoils ale, and leads night-wanderers astray for the sheer fun of it. His loyalty to Oberon is pla
- [Theseus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/theseus.md): Theseus opens the play impatient for his nuptials with Hippolyta, the Amazon queen he won by conquest and now means to wed 'in another key.' When Egeus drags Hermia before him, Theseus upholds the harsh Athenian law—marr
- [Hippolyta](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/hippolyta.md): Hippolyta stands beside Theseus as his conquered bride, soon to be Athens's duchess, and her few early lines reveal a poised, unflustered temperament. Where Theseus frets that the moon 'lingers' his desires, she answers 
- [Egeus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/egeus.md): Egeus arrives at Theseus's palace 'full of vexation,' accusing Lysander of stealing Hermia's heart with rhymes, rings, and moonlight serenades. He insists she marry Demetrius, and when she refuses, he invokes an Athenian
- [Nick Bottom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/bottom.md): Nick Bottom is the loudest of the 'rude mechanicals,' a crew of tradesmen rehearsing a play for Theseus's wedding, and he cannot resist auditioning for every role—Pyramus, Thisbe, even the lion. His comic self-importance
- [Peter Quince](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/quince.md): Peter Quince is the organizer of the 'rude mechanicals,' the amateur troupe preparing 'Pyramus and Thisbe' for the Duke's wedding feast. He reads the scroll, hands out roles, and gently fends off Bottom's demands to play
- [Francis Flute](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/flute.md): Bellows-mender who plays Thisbe in the mechanicals' play.
- [Tom Snout](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/snout.md): Tinker who plays the Wall in the mechanicals' play.
- [Robin Starveling](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/starveling.md): Tailor who plays Moonshine in the mechanicals' play.
- [Philostrate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters/philostrate.md): Master of revels to Theseus, arranges the wedding entertainment.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_midsummer_nights_dream_se/characters