Titania Quotes

The King doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy:
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,
But, they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn-cups and hide them there.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. All is not well in fairyland! Puck reveals to the fairy that a battle of the sexes is taking place between the Fairy King Oberon and his wife Titania. Oberon is jealous of all the time Titania is spending with the changeling boy she stole from an Indian king. She "crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy." Oberon has demanded that Titania give the boy to him, so that he can make him a knight within his retinue, but she refuses. A changling is a child that the fairies steal and bring up as their own, leaving the parents with a fairy child in its place. The royal couple argue so much that the frightened elves go off and hide inside acorn cups, we are told.

Then I must be thy lady. But I know
When thou hast stol’n away from fairyland,
And in the shape of Corin sat all day
Playing on pipes of corn and versing love
To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest step of India,
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskin’d mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded, and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. When Oberon asks why Titania won’t be in his bed right now, she confronts him over his cheating. She accuses him of stealing away from fairyland and magically transforming himself into a shepherd to play music and recite love poems to an amorous shepherdess. The jealous Fairy Queen also accuses him of having an affair with Amazon Queen Hippolyta. The only reason he is back in fairyland is because Hippolyta is marrying Oberon, she claims.

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigouna, whom he ravishèd,
And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,
With Ariadne and Antiopa?

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Oberon gets angry at Titania’s accusations of adultery with Hippolyta. He essentially accuses her of hypocrisy, claiming that she loves Theseus and stole the Duke away from the other women he had been with.

These are the forgeries of jealousy;
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Titania uses a metaphor when she says that Oberon’s accusation that she is seeing other men is the "forgeries of jealousy." She dismisses his charge as a lie resulting from his jealousy over her keeping the Indian changeling child. Oberon’s behavior hasn’t allowed her and her fairies to carry out their special ring dances since the beginning of midsummer, she says.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,
Hath every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,
The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard.
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.
The nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,
For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter here.
No night is now with hymn or carol blest.
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Titania says that the quarrel between her and Oberon has caused huge disruptions in the natural world and the world of humans. It has led to bad weather, widespread flooding, rotting of the corn crops, alterations in the seasons, and the spread of diseases everywhere. She lays the blame for the world becoming barren and the upsetting of the natural order of things squarely at their feet – "We are their parents and original." Her long monologue is a striking poem in which both the wind and the moon are personified. The passage explains the close relationship between the fairies and the natural world. When the fairies are in harmony, so is nature.

Set your heart at rest:
The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip’d by my side…
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Titania tells how the changeling’s mother who died in childbirth was her friend and she undertook the rearing of her boy. A strong and principled Fairy Queen, Titania makes clear to Oberon that she intends to make good on her promise and refuses to hand over the boy to her husband.

Full often hath she gossiped by my side
And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,
Marking th’ embarkèd traders on the flood,
When we have laughed to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Titania is remembering the time she used spend with her human friend in India before she died. She uses a metaphor to compare the sails of the ships to the big, pregnant bellies of women. Titania is now caring for her friend’s child.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 1. Oberon explains to Puck where he will find his wife, so that a trick can be played on her. He uses evocative language and mellifluous verse as he describes Titania sleeping place. This is one of the play’s most beautiful passages and has a dream-like quality about it. The Fairy Queen’s bed of nature is an enchanting and tranquil woodland bower where exotic plants and wild flowers abound. The only sinister thing to disturb this tranquil picture is the reference to the snake. This is foreshadowing of the nasty revenge that Oberson is about to take on his Queen. That Titania is "Lull’d in these flowers" also foreshadows that the juice of a flower will be used to enchant Titania and others who sleep.

Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence –
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with reremice for their leathern wings
To make my small elves coats; and some keep back
The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders
At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 2, Scene 2. Titania instructs her attendant fairies to dance and sing her to sleep. She assigns them their work duties: kill the pests on the rosebuds, fight bats to make leather jackets for the elves from their wings, and keep an especially noisy owl away.

I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again.
Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note,
So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape,
And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me
On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Titania, under the spell of the love potion, gushes like a silly teenager with a crush as she utters these words of love to the ass-headed Bottom. While Bottom has undergone a transformation, so too has Titania. Before we knew her as a strong, feisty and intelligent leader. But now she has turned into a blind and silly fool, who is ridiculously fawning over a donkey-headed buffoon. It is ironic that a lower-class weaver like Bottom should become the object of affection for the Queen of the Fairies. It’s quite the opposite of what we would expect.

TITANIA: On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.
BOTTOM: Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. When Titania swears her love to the ass-headed Bottom, he immediately recognizes the absurdity of the situation. Still unaware that he has the head of a donkey, he has enough self-awareness to realize that a royal personage like Titania has no reason to love a lowly weaver. He may be regarded the fool of the play, but Bottom makes one of its wisest observations: that love and logic are seldom found together these days. Here we see a reversal of roles. Bottom is the wise one, while love and Oberon’s charm have transformed Titania into a blind fool.

Out of this wood do not desire to go.
Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate.
The summer still doth tend upon my state,
And I do love thee. Therefore go with me.
I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep
And sing while thou on pressèd flowers dost sleep.
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. –
Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Titania effectively abducts Bottom, informing him that he will remain in the wood with her, whether he wishes to or not. She also declares her complete love for him, promising to use her magical powers as Fairy Queen to transform his mortal body into an "airy spirit." She then summons her four attendant fairies to wait on Bottom.

Be kind and courteous to this gentleman.
Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey bags steal from the humble-bees,
And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs
And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes
To have my love to bed and to arise;
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.
Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. Titania orders her retinue of fairy attendants to wait on her new lover Bottom. They are commanded to courtesy to him and bring him all the treasures of the wood. These include fruits, honey, beeswax candles, and butterfly wings to shade his sleeping eyes from the moonbeams. The Fairy Queen is smitten by Bottom, who is to receive the royal treatment.

Come; wait upon him. Lead him to my bower.
The moon methinks looks with a wat’ry eye,
And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,
Lamenting some enforcèd chastity.
Tie up my love’s tongue; bring him silently.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1. In the scene’s final lines, Titania instructs her attendant fairies to lead her lover Bottom to her sleeping place. We get a good idea of what’s on her mind, when she talks of flowers weeping because they are forbidden to have sex and she tells the fairies to tie her lover’s tongue and keep him silent.

My mistress with a monster is in love.
Near to her close and consecrated bower,
While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,
A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,
That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,
Were met together to rehearse a play
Intended for great Theseus’ nuptial-day.
The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort,
Who Pyramus presented, in their sport
Forsook his scene and enter’d in a brake
When I did him at this advantage take,
An ass’s nole I fixed on his head:
Anon his Thisbe must be answered,
And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,
As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,
Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,
Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,
So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;
And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;
He murder cries and help from Athens calls.
Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong,
Made senseless things begin to do them wrong;
For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;
Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.
I led them on in this distracted fear,
And left sweet Pyramus translated there:
When in that moment, so it came to pass,
Titania waked and straightway loved an ass.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 2. Fairy King Oberon’s faithful servant Puck reports back to his master on the outcome of Oberon placing the love potion on the sleeping Titania. Puck tells how Oberon’s plan for Titania has worked and she has fallen in love with a monster. Puck explains that he came upon a group of workmen-actors in the forest near Titania and transformed the head of the one playing Pyramus into that of an ass. He uses similes to describe how the other workmen ran when they saw him, like wild geese that spot a hunter, or a flock of jackdaws flying at the sound of a gunshot. Titania then woke up "and straightaway loved an ass," the mischievous Puck says with obvious glee.

Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms…
So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
Gently entwist. The female ivy so
Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Titania is completely besotted with Bottom, urging him to sleep next to her. Here she speaks about the “female ivy” climbing the elm tree – this image is a metaphorical representation of a couple’s relationship as the woman wraps herself around a man.

And, gentle Puck, take this transformèd scalp
From off the head of this Athenian swain,
That he awaking when the other do
May all to Athens back again repair
And think no more of this night’s accidents
But as the fierce vexation of a dream.
But first I will release the Fairy Queen.

– William Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1. Oberon instructs Puck to remove Bottom’s ass head, so that he is transformed back to his normal self and Puck’s mischief is undone. Also says that he will release Titania from her spell. The Fairy King suggests that the Athenians will return to the city and forget the crazy happenings of the night, thinking all was just a dream and not real.
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