Act 1, scene 1. An angry Athenian nobleman Egeus, enters, with his daughter Hermia and … Hermia is one of the two women in the pairs of lovers made up of Lysander and Hermia and Helena and Demetrius, making for a complicated plot following the story of a shifting love quadrangle. The timeline below shows where the character Hermia appears in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. Hermia’s strength is most evident in the opening scene, where she faces off with her father, Egeus, in front of Duke Theseus. She is a girl of ancient Athens named for Hermes, the Greek god of trade. Hermia's "darkness" is significant, reminding us of the racial slurs that continue to plague our culture. Hermia is a fictional character from Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Hermia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Hermia is a character in Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, named after Hermes, the Greek god of commerce. She passionately rejects male authority figures in order to make a powerful claim for her own “sovereignty” in the realm of love. Hermia is one of the strongest female characters in the play.