Hermia, from Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Nights Dream, Hermia is one of the strongest female characters in the play. She passionately rejects male authority figures in order to make a powerful claim for her own “sovereignty” in the realm of love (https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/msnd/character/hermia/). "And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet, There my Lysander and myself shall meet; And thence from Athens turn away our eyes To seek new friends and stranger companies." Hermia, A midsummer Night's Dream Act 1 Scene 1 The artist has portrayed Hermia waiting in woodland for her lover to join her, it is a transitional work with echoes of his early landscapes, as in Green Summer, (1864) and looks forward to his work on a much larger scale. There are definite parallels between the character of Hermia and that of Maria Zambaco.
Rossetti letter to Madox Brown 23 January 1869: Poor Ned's affairs have come to a smash altogether, and he and Topsy, after the most dreadful to-do, started for Rome suddenly, leaving the Greek damsel beating up the quarters of all his friends for him and howling like Cassandra. Georgie stayed behind. I hear to-day however that Top and Ned got no further than Dover, Ned being so dreadfully ill that they will probably have to return to London.
This large-scale watercolour depicts Hermia, one of the central characters from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As confirmed by her aunt, Katharine Asquith, the figure is probably modelled on Amelia Margaret Graham (1852–1900), third daughter of William Graham, known as ‘Amy’. Burne-Jones has chosen the scene where Hermia wakes from an enchanted sleep in the woods and is eventually allowed to marry her beloved Lysander.The picture, then hanging in the White Room, is referred to in an unpublished description of selected contents of Mells Manor compiled many years later by Frances Horner. It states: ‘The water colour in green is by E. Burne Jones, and given to Mr. William Graham. It is unfinished.’1 1. Frances Horner, ‘Concerning Mells Manor House and its Contents’, bound typescript, n.p., Mells Manor Archive, D/08/0627.
In January 1869 his wife Georgina found a letter from Maria in his clothing and Burne-Jones reluctantly ended the affair.