Comparing Taming Of The Shrew And A Midsummers Night Dream

In Shakespeare’s comedies The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummers Night Dream, both fathers can be overlooked due to their few occurrences, but are pivotal to the storyline. In the fathers’ pursuits to find favorable suitors for their daughters, their inattentiveness leads to the daughters choosing the men they want to marry. Bianca’s father, Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew is consumed with finding a suitor for his eldest daughter Katherine before Bianca, distracting him from Bianca’s communication with Lucentio, a man who wants to marry her, but is disguised as a tutor named Cambio, while Lucentio’s servant, Tranio pretends to be him. Baptista does not pay much attention to what Bianca is doing because she appeared to be an obedient daughter compared to her
Comparing this with Egeus, Hermia’s father in A Midsummers Night Dream, Egeus clearly insists that he wants Hermia to marry her suitors, Demetrius, yet he does not persistently enforce this throughout the play. Egeus is absent during Hermia’s journey with Lysander, the man she truly loves. Although both of the fathers motivation to have their daughters marry a certain man stem from slightly different reasons based off their social class, their fathers’ aided their marriages because of their obliviousness to each their daughters sneaky actions even though it may be assumed that the fathers hold a great deal of power.
From the beginning of A Midsummers Night Dream, Egeus makes it clear that he is angry about Hermia’s choice in men when he expresses, “Full of vexation come I with complaint against my child, my daughter Hermia. Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord, this man hath my