ABSTRACT
388 A Midsummer Night's Dream Demosthenes. And it semeth also, that they dyd not passe through Thessalie, without fighting: for there are seene yet of their tumbes all about the cittie of Scotusa, hard by the rocks, which be called the doggs head. And this is that which is worthy memorie (in mine opinion) touching the warres of these Amazones. How the Poet telleth that the Amazones made warres with Theseus to revenge the irtiurie he dyd to their Queene Antiopa, refusing her, to marye with Phaedra: and as for the murder which he telleth that Hercules dyd, that me thinckes is altogether but devise of Poets. It is very true, that after the death of Antiopa, Theseus maried Phaedra, having had before of Antiopa a sonne called Hippolytus, or as the Poet Pindarus writeth, Demophon. And for that the Historiographers doe not in any thing speake against the tragicall Poets, in that which concerneth the ill happe that chaunced to him, in the persons of this his wife and of his sonne: we must needes take it to be so, as we finde it written in the tragedies. And yet we finde many other reportes touching the mariages of Theseus, whose beginnings had no great good honest ground, neither fell out their endes very fortunate: and yet for all that they have made no tragedies of them, neither have they bene played in the Theaters ....
