HERMIA         If then true lovers have been ever crossed,

It stands as an edict in destiny.

Then let us teach our trial patience

Because it is a customary cross,

As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,

Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.   (1.1.150-155)

It sounds a bit as if Hermia’s just giving up, or else she’s slightly high on this idea that it’s somehow a guarantor of the truth and intensity of their love, that it’s being frustrated and denied. Of course, she can also speak with biting sarcasm, rebuking Lysander for being so defeatist: if then true lovers have been ever crossed, it stands as an edict in destiny. This not running smooth thing, it’s just fate, is it, nothing to be done? And so we have to suffer gracefully, just put up with it, nobly, tragically? then let us teach our trial patience because it is a customary cross—just the way things are, this barrier, this burden—as due to love and thoughts and dreams and sighs, wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers. Not getting what you want, being THWARTED, is just part of the deal when you’re truly, madly, deeply in love, along with all those other things? And fancy again, desire, infatuation, imagination, fantasy… But Hermia can also sound as if she’s issuing a challenge…