Oberon
Who is Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
What causes the discord between Oberon and Titania?
How does Oberon plan to subdue Titania?
What mistake does Puck make with the love potion?
How is balance restored in the play?
Oberon, king of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of William Shakespeare’s middle comedies, written about 1595–96 and published in 1600 in a quarto edition from the author’s manuscript. Along with his queen, Titania, Oberon has come to Athens to bless the impending marriage of Duke Theseus and the Amazon queen Hippolyta. But Oberon and Titania’s own discord—centered on an Indian changeling boy—disrupts harmony for all and leads to enchantments, mistaken identities, and romantic entanglements. Though mischievous and at times ruthless, Oberon ultimately restores balance, embodying both the chaotic and benevolent aspects of magic in the play.
Role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Oberon’s argument with Titania (Act II, scene 1)
Oberon enters the Athenian woods, locked in a bitter quarrel with Titania over the custody of a changeling boy. He demands the child for his own retinue, but Titania refuses, prompting Oberon to plot a scheme to subdue her through magic. Oberon enlists his mischievous servant, Puck (also called Robin Goodfellow), to fetch a rare flower, “love-in-idleness,” whose potent nectar compels those under its spell to fall hopelessly in love with the first creature they see upon waking.
The mischief of “love-in-idleness” (Act II, scene 2–Act III, scene 2)
Oberon’s use of the love potion sets off a cascade of events. In Act II, scene 2 he secretly anoints Titania’s eyes as she sleeps, ensuring that she will wake up when “some vile thing is near” and fall irrevocably in love with it. To his amusement, this turns out to be Nick Bottom, a weaver whose head has been transformed into that of an ass by Puck’s spell. Meanwhile, Oberon has spotted four young Athenians—Hermia and Lysander, who have eloped into the woods, and Helena, who is hopelessly in love with scornful Demetrius. Moved by Helena’s devotion, Oberon instructs Puck to enchant Demetrius so that he will return her love. But Puck, mistaking Lysander for Demetrius, anoints the wrong man’s eyes. In Act III, scene 2 Oberon discovers the error when Lysander begins to pursue Helena, leaving Hermia distraught. He himself adds the potion to Demetrius’s eyes, but then both men pursue Helena. Oberon reprimands Puck and orders him to correct the mistake.
" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">
Reconciliation and restoration (Act IV, scene 1–Act V, epilogue)
In Act IV, scene 1, after having successfully humbled Titania, Oberon lifts the enchantment from her eyes, and the couple reconciles. Their union signals the restoration of balance, not only in the fairy realm but in the entire natural world. Oberon also releases Bottom from his grotesque transformation and the right couples are together—Lysander with Hermia and Demetrius with Helena. In the play’s closing moments, the epilogue of Act V, Oberon and Titania bestow their blessings upon the Athenian couples and Theseus’s court.
The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.
SUBSCRIBE
Character appraisal
Oberon is a figure of power and mystery presiding over the fairy realm. He commands the forces of nature, bending moonlight and flowers to his will, yet he cannot master his own emotions—jealousy, pride, and desire—which drive much of the play’s magical disorder. When Titania resists giving up the changeling boy, Oberon’s jealousy and frustration are evident:
Tarry, rash wanton. Am not I thy lord?
He knows, however, that by the time the flower’s magic wears off, Titania’s obsession with the Indian boy will have ended. Oberon’s manipulation is innocuous in intent but not in temperament; he is jealous of Titania’s devotion to both the changeling and Theseus, duke of Athens.
How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
…Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
He is therefore resolved to torment her, reinforcing the idea that love can sometimes subsume traces of violence. But beyond his relationship with Titania, Oberon seeks harmony. He commands Puck to correct his mistake with the lovers.
Although Oberon appears to be omnipotent, his failure to anticipate that the potion could be misapplied underscores the play’s message that romantic identity is fragile, as loyalties in love are easily transferred from one person to another, sometimes rendering individuals interchangeable. The lovers themselves struggle to identify one another as loyalties shift, as Hermia protests:
Am I not Hermia? Are not you Lysander?
The oddly impersonal nature of love in the play makes Puck’s mix-up almost inevitable. When Demetrius wakes from the enchantment, he expresses no logical reason for his change in affections—only that love itself is mutable, beyond his control:
But, my good lord, I wot not by what power
(But by some power it is)—my love to Hermia,
Melted as the snow...
Shakespeare’s portrayal of Oberon and the fairies is a significant departure from Elizabethan folklore, in which fairies would often make mischief, steal children, and engage in night-time revelry. Titania and Oberon are not household spirits, nor are they agents of disorder. Instead, they rule over apastoral world, as Shakespeare adapts elements of folklore and transforms them into an Arcadian vision—a utopian world where nature and humanity coexist peacefully:
But we are spirits of another sort.
Oberon’s character also represents a reworking of European fairy king archetypes. He resembles the May King, a figure from seasonal fertility rites, and his dispute with Titania has threatened the agrarian world:
The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.
Despite Oberon’s ethereal nature and habitation, Shakespeare imbues him with complexity. He is neither an infallible deity nor a mere trickster, but a being who discovers the chaotic potential of the magical flower, uses it to resolve the Athenian lovers’ conflicts, and eventually evolves. By the play’s end, he ensures that balance is restored, blessing the Athenian marriages and welcoming harmony back into both mortal and fairy worlds.
Sources and inspirations
Shakespeare derived the name and origin of Oberon from the 13th-century French poem Huon de Bordeaux, translated to English by Lord Berners. This text situates him in an enchanted forest near the city of Momure and identifies him as:
A King of the Fayryes named Oberon; he is of height but of three foote, and crooked shouldered, but yet he hath an Angell-like visage, so that there is no mortal man that seeth him, but that taketh great pleasure to behold his face.
Oberon also appears in Robert Greene’s The Scottish History of James the Fourth (1598), an Elizabethan play loosely based on historical events. In this work the fairy king occupies an eerie, liminal space—an in-between realm associated with the supernatural—and is first seen in a graveyard, speaking to a hermitlike character named Bohan.
In “The Merchant’s Tale,” one of the stories in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387–1400), the fairy monarchs Pluto and Proserpina debate marriage and deception while interfering in mortal affairs. Scholars believe that Shakespeare drew upon this dynamic in the play. Unlike Chaucer’s detached arbiters, however, Shakespeare’s Oberon and Titania embody human passions, experiencing jealousy and desire firsthand.
Notable adaptations
In Benjamin Britten’s 1960 opera, Oberon was written for a countertenor—a male singer who uses falsetto to reach a higher vocal range that is lighter than the typical male voice. This choice heightens his otherworldly presence, distinguishing him from mortals and fairies.
Peter Brook’s 1970 stage adaptation of the play departed from the fairy-tale grandeur of Oberon, instead presenting him in a striking purple gown, swinging on a trapeze with Puck. Rather than the elaborate, nature-inspired settings typical of earlier productions, Brook’s vision was stripped down and abstract. When not performing, actors sat along the balcony edges, their presence blurring the boundary between performer and observer, echoing the omnipresence of fairies in the play: “We the globe can compass soon / Swifter than the wand’ring moon.” Gregory Doran, former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, regarded the production as a landmark in modern Shakespearean performance, shaping movement and staging in later adaptations.