Act 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream sets up two of the play’s four stories in Athens: a young woman ordered to marry the man her father has chosen or die, and a company of craftsmen casting a play for the duke’s wedding.
This summary takes Act 1 scene by scene. Each scene covers what happens, the key lines, and why it matters for the rest of the play. For the whole story, see our full guide to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and for everyone who appears here, see our guide to the A Midsummer Night’s Dream characters.
At a Glance
Here is Act 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in brief.
Act 1, Scene 1: The Law of Athens
The play opens in the palace of Theseus, duke of Athens, who is counting the days to his wedding.
“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour / Draws on apace,” he tells his bride; they will marry in four days, at the new moon. Theseus conquered Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, in battle, and he promises that the wedding will be different: “Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword, / And won thy love, doing thee injuries; / But I will wed thee in another key.”
An angry father interrupts. Egeus comes “Full of vexation” with his daughter Hermia and two young men. He wants Hermia to marry Demetrius, but she loves Lysander, who, Egeus says, “hath bewitch’d the bosom of my child” with poems, songs, and love tokens. He demands the full force of the law: “I beg the ancient privilege of Athens, / As she is mine, I may dispose of her,” either to Demetrius or to her death.
Theseus sides with the father. To a daughter, he tells Hermia, a father should be “as a god,” and she “but as a form in wax” to be shaped as he wishes. Hermia answers, “I would my father look’d but with my eyes.” “Rather your eyes must with his judgment look,” replies Theseus. When she asks the worst that can happen, he tells her: “Either to die the death, or to abjure / For ever the society of men,” living as a nun. She has until his wedding day to decide. Hermia does not hesitate: she would rather wither as a nun than marry a man she does not love.
Lysander argues his case. He is as well born and as rich as Demetrius, and Hermia loves him. Besides, Demetrius “Made love to Nedar’s daughter, Helena, / And won her soul,” and then abandoned her. Theseus admits he has heard as much, but he leaves the law as it stands and takes Demetrius and Egeus away with him.
The Lovers’ Plan
Left alone, the lovers console each other. “The course of true love never did run smooth,” says Lysander. Lovers have always met obstacles, and Hermia adds the worst of them: “O hell! to choose love by another’s eye!” Lysander describes how quickly love can be lost, “So quick bright things come to confusion,” and then proposes a way out. He has a widowed aunt whose house is seven leagues from Athens, beyond the reach of its law. They will meet tomorrow night in the wood outside the city, where he once met Hermia and Helena to celebrate a morning in May, and run away together. Hermia swears by Cupid’s strongest bow that she will be there.
Helena
Helena arrives, miserable. Demetrius loves Hermia, and Helena would give anything to be her: “Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, / The rest I’d give to be to you translated.” The two friends trade matching lines. “I frown upon him, yet he loves me still,” says Hermia. “O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!” answers Helena. To comfort her, the lovers tell Helena their plan. Soon Demetrius will be free.
Alone, Helena reflects on love’s unfairness. In Athens she is thought as fair as Hermia, but Demetrius will not see it: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; / And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.” Then she makes a bad decision, knowing it is one: “I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s flight.” Demetrius will follow Hermia into the wood, and Helena will follow him, just to see him there and back again.
Act 1, Scene 2: The Casting of the Play
At the house of Peter Quince, a carpenter, a group of Athenian craftsmen gather to cast a play for the duke’s wedding night.
Their play is “The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.” Quince reads the parts from his scroll. Nick Bottom, a weaver, is to play Pyramus, “A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.” Bottom would rather play a tyrant, and gives them a sample of how he would rant: “The raging rocks / And shivering shocks / Shall break the locks / Of prison gates.” “This was lofty!” he says, pleased with himself.
Francis Flute, a bellows-mender, is cast as Thisbe, and protests: “Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.” He can wear a mask, says Quince. Bottom immediately offers to play Thisbe too, in “a monstrous little voice.” Robin Starveling, a tailor, is to play Thisbe’s mother; Tom Snout, a tinker, Pyramus’s father; and Snug, a joiner, the Lion. “Have you the lion’s part written?” asks Snug. “Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.” It is nothing but roaring, Quince tells him.
Bottom wants that part as well: “Let me play the lion too: I will roar, that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me.” But if he roars too terribly, Quince warns, he will frighten the duchess and the ladies, and that would be enough to hang them all. Bottom has a solution: he will “roar you as gently as any sucking dove.” Quince flatters him back into the lead role: Pyramus, he says, is “a sweet-faced man, a proper man,” so Bottom must play him. They agree to meet in the wood outside the city the next night to rehearse.
A Closer Reading: Whose Eyes?
The first scene keeps coming back to one question: whose eyes should choose a lover? The rest of the play answers it in the most literal way possible.
Listen to the exchange between Hermia and the duke. “I would my father look’d but with my eyes,” she says: if only he could see Lysander as she does. Theseus reverses her words: “Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.” She must learn to see with her father’s eyes. A few minutes later, alone with Lysander, Hermia names the cruelest obstacle a lover can face: “O hell! to choose love by another’s eye!” And Helena ends the scene by arguing that eyes do not choose love at all: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”
Four characters, four views of how love sees. Then the lovers go into the wood, and the question stops being a figure of speech. Oberon’s magic flower works by being dropped on sleeping eyes. Whoever is anointed will love the first creature they see when they wake. Lysander and Demetrius are made, quite literally, to choose love by another’s eye, Oberon’s, or Puck’s.
Act 1 lays out the argument; the wood tests it. Hermia hoped her father would see with her eyes. By the end of the night, the fairies will have decided what everyone sees, and Theseus himself will change his judgment to match what the lovers’ eyes have chosen. Our guide to the themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream follows love and seeing through the whole play.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Act 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, answered briefly.
What Happens in Act 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
Egeus demands that his daughter Hermia marry Demetrius, and Theseus tells her she must obey, die, or become a nun. Hermia and Lysander plan to run away through the wood, and Helena decides to tell Demetrius. Meanwhile, a group of craftsmen cast a play, “Pyramus and Thisbe,” to perform at the duke’s wedding.
What Choices Does Theseus Give Hermia?
Three: marry Demetrius as her father wishes, be put to death under the law of Athens, or live the rest of her life as a nun. She has until Theseus’s wedding day to decide.
Why Does Helena Tell Demetrius About the Plan?
She hopes to win his thanks, and at least to have the chance to follow him into the wood and see him. She knows it will cost her, since he is going to pursue Hermia.
Who Plays Which Part in “Pyramus and Thisbe”?
In the casting, Bottom is Pyramus, Flute is Thisbe, Snug is the Lion, Starveling is Thisbe’s mother, and Snout is Pyramus’s father. By the performance in Act 5, the parts have changed: Snout plays the Wall and Starveling plays Moonshine.
Where Do the Lovers and the Craftsmen Plan to Meet?
In the same wood outside Athens, on the same night. The lovers mean to escape through it; the craftsmen mean to rehearse there. Neither group knows the fairies are there too.
Related Reading
Three pages that take A Midsummer Night’s Dream further.