Even up until today, females have been fighting for gender equality and the right to be taken seriously by society. In 2015, females still only make seventy-seven cents to every dollar that a male makes. During the Elizabethan time the fight for female equality was yet to begin and males treated women like possessions. In Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the women in the play are expected to surrender to the will of the males and are forced to forfeit the right to make their own destinies. The males in the play hold ultimate power over the women and take away any strength that the female may have. In the play, Shakespeare incorporates four plots that each deal with the advancement of the male and the disregard or shaming of the women. The first plot involves the most powerful man in Athens, Theseus, and his bride, Hippolyta. Previously the queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta was the leader of a powerful group of women who felt that men were unimportant to their lives. Katherine Colborn describes the introduction of Hippolyta by saying “ the audience is presented with a situation that forces a comparison between Hippolyta and Theseus, suggesting that we must understand her in relation to him. The conversation focuses on his…show more content… However, Hermia says “So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord”(Shakespeare 6) proving that she was ready to die rather than marry the man her father wants her to. It was Lysander’s idea to run away and get married, and she went along with it. Even when they did go to the woods, they did not follow through with their plan to run away due to the events that occurred, and Theseus caught them. In the end it is still Theseus’s choice whether to kill Hermia or let the lovers be married. Hermia has no say in his final decision and that is where this argument fails to prove females held some