SOURCE: "Hippolyta's Silence and the Poet's Pen," in Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences, University of California Press, 1985, pp. 1-18.
[In the following excerpt, noting that Hippolyta speaks
Oberon, Titania, and Puck with Fairies Dancing: watercolor by William Blake, c. 1785-87. relatively few lines in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
McGuire examines various interpretations of her silence that are allowed by Shakespeare's text and the implications of these interpretations for the meaning of the play.]
