When
Hermia wakes up, she observes that Lysander is not there. Then, we can see
Hermia upset when she sees that Lysander has fallen in love with
Therefore,
their relationship changes, we could say that they become enemies because of
the love of men. So their friendship at the beginning contrasts with their
hostility in this part of the play. Even there is a moment in the play in which
we see a quarrel between the two women. During the play we can observe that
Hermia has more control of her emotions, and in her speech there is no
self-pity and no hysteria. Nevertheless, in this part of the play we find some
dialogues in which we can see how she attacks
“How low am I ? I am not yet so low
But
that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.”
(MND, Act III scene ii, lines 297-298,
Hermia)
Finally,
everything is restored and Lysander shows his love again to Hermia, so she
forgets what had happened and accepts it as a dream. At the end, Theseus (Duke
of Athens) overrules Egeus and commands the wedding between Hermia and
Lysander.
We
know that Hermia is one of the main characters and after reading the story we
are sure about it. Therefore, we could say that she is an essential character
and the story would not be the same without her. First of all, Shakespeare
could not show us the conflict between father and daughter and her response to
that imposition of marriage with the man that she does not love. Then, it would
not be understandable or the story would not be so interesting in seeing
Lysander wooing
On
the other hand, if we have to perform this play, I think that an actress (or as
in Shakespeare’s time it could be perform by a man disguised as a woman) would
be necessary to perform this character, i.e, that she could not be substituted
by any other actress or omited. In any case, the actress chosen to perform
Hermia could play a secondary character such as one of the fairies.
[1] [2]