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Mab
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Also called:
Queen Mab
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Mab

English folklore
Also known as: Queen Mab
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History

Mab, in English folklore, the queen of the fairies. Mab is a mischievous but basically benevolent figure. In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, she is referred to as the fairies’ midwife, who delivers sleeping men of their innermost wishes in the form of dreams. In Michael Drayton’s mock-epic fairy poem Nymphidia (1627), she is the wife of the fairy king Oberon and is the queen of the diminutive fairies. Mab is similarly mentioned as a pixielike fairy in works by Ben Jonson, John Milton, and Robert Herrick. Her place as queen of the fairies in English folklore was eventually taken over by Titania.