It’s worth stepping back a moment to see how unusual this level of physical description is in Shakespeare’s writing. Very few characters in Shakespeare are given specific physical characteristics. We hear that Cassius in Julius Caesar has a ‘lean and hungry look’ (1.2.195), just as the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet has been worn to the bones by misery; we know that Juliet is just shy of fourteen years old; we know that one of Helena and Hermia is fair and the other dark and one is tall and the other short (but as with everything in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who can possibly remember which is
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