Equity and the Problem of Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream: Or, the Ancient Constitution in Ancient Athens

Abstract

This essay examines the unsuspected role of equity in A Midsummer Night's Dream. According to Plutarch, Theseus promised that Athens would "be a common wealth . . . [in] which he woulde only reserve to him selfe the charge of the warres, and the preservation of the lawes. . . ." As such, ancient Athens recalls early modern England, which also considered itself a nation ruled by laws, not men. Theseus, therefore, must follow "the ancient privilege of Athens." But following the law did not mean slavishly enforcing it, and in a move that echoes the sixteenth-century debates on the topic, Theseus uses his equity to soften the law as much as he can, thus coming up with the wrong result (enforced marriage)—but for the right reasons. At the play's end, Theseus famously overrules Egeus ("I will overbear your will"), but in doing so, Theseus replaces law with will, and by doing so comes perilously close to the definitive behavior of a tyrant. He thus comes to the right result, but for the wrong reasons. The article demonstrates that the problem of law and equity participates in a web of disturbing resonances that reinforce each other and further trouble the play's performance of comic closure.