Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream contains values ​​and laws from a time when fathers, and men in general, held a lot of power over women. Hermia and Helena are used as tools to increase the power of the father's role and masculinity in the world Shakespeare created. At the beginning of the play Helena and Hermia are both popular characters, speaking frequently and constantly being the center of attention. Once the events in the forest have taken place, Helena and Hermia's roles are diminished and their voices are barely heard in the remaining two acts of the play. This shift in focus shows how Hermia and Helena are symbolizations of the impact of men's roles on a woman's life, and rejuvenates love as more important than law under the non-swinging idea of ​​the patriarchal setup that is shown. . In addition to this, their absence at the end of the play describes the dreamlike quality that Shakespeare is describing, influencing the notion of reality and magic through the events that take place in the forest. Hermia's role and her situation with Lysander and Demetrius display the first major meaning surrounding the role of men in Shakespeare's work. Hermia is completely in love with Lysander and her father is aware of this. However, Egeus does not blame Hermia for her behavior and disobedience towards him. She says: “This man has bewitched my son's breast. You, you, Lysander, gave her rhymes and exchanged tokens of love with my son” (1.1.28-30). Egeus takes away Hermia's responsibility for her own actions and denotes her as an object that Lysander can control, and essentially blames Lysander for his actions. Shakespeare depicts love in this way at the beginning by extolling the...... middle of paper ......ena and Demetrius are all happy together and in love, and this brings things back to before the play, when Demetrius was in the love scene with Helena before Hermia. In this way, Shakespeare makes it seem as if the events that occurred in the woods almost never happened, as does the dispute in the opening Acts of the play. By excluding Hermia and Helena, it enhances the importance of Puck and his role as cupid in this story because it gets the clean ending that readers want. Works Cited James, Calderwood L. "A Midsummer Night's Dream: Anamorphism and the Dream of Theseus." Shakespeare Quarterly 42.4 (1991): 409-30. Network. April 5, 2014.Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. A Midsummer Night's Dream. New York: Washington Square, 1993. Print. Taylor, Michael R. "Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream." The Explicator 54.1 (1995): 4-6. Network. April 4. 2014.