A Midsummer Night's Dream

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             One of the guests at this noble wedding, according to the theory, was Queen Elizabeth I of England - and the play is full of references to her. Both Hippolyta and Titania embody certain aspects of Elizabeth's royal mystique. Hippolyta, as the beautiful "Amazon Queen,"" recalls Elizabeth's reputation for military prowess, as well as her proud refusal to take a husband. Perhaps the play's notion of a "marriage- between Hippolyta and Theseus was meant to refer to the "League of Amity- signed between Elizabeth of England and the King of France at the time that the play was written. Elizabeth also has much in common with Titania, Queen of Fairies. Shakespeare represents Titania as a great patroness of music, dancing, and the arts, as Elizabeth famously attempted to be. Moreover, the very notion of a "Fairy Queen- refers unmistakably to another famous work of the period, Edmund Spenser's epic, the Faerie Queene, intended as an elaborate celebration of Elizabeth and her court. .
             Shakespeare's clearest allusion to the royal member of his first audience, however, comes in Act II, Scene 1, when Oberon describes to Puck the fateful flower, "love-in-idleness,"" that will produce the magic juice. According to the Fairy King, one night in the woods Cupid, "all armed,"" took aim at a "fair vestal, throned by the west."" His arrow missed, and pierced the flower instead, while "th'imperial vot'ress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free."" This is hardly a mere bit of poetic fancy, but instead seems an elaborate compliment to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth ("vestal- means "virgin-). Not only would Elizabeth avoid Cupid's arrow her entire life (she died proudly unmarried and without children), but she also managed to escape a plotted assassination in 1594. When Shakespeare was writing this play, then, a passage such as this once would not only praise Elizabeth for her famous virginity, but would also celebrate her recent miraculous escape from real physical harm.