ABSTRACT
Hippolyta is Queen of the Amazons, fiancée and later wife of Theseus, Duke of Athens. She is a strong, magnanimous and noble woman. She and Emilia, her sister, have just bidden farewell to Pirithous, a close friend of Theseus, to join the Duke in the war against Thebes. The women then get to talking about close-friendships between people of the same sex. Emilia has just talked at length about her childhood friendship with Flavinia, and finishes her speech with ‘the true love ‘tween maid and maid may be / More than in sex dividual.’ This is Hippolyta’s response. She could be any age between mid-twenties and early forties.
