Titania
Titania, queen 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 Oberon, king of the fairies, Titania has come to Athens to bless the impending marriage of Duke Theseus and the Amazon queen Hippolyta. Titania’s stubborn refusal to give up an Indian changeling boy to Oberon results in a cosmic quarrel with him that disrupts the balance of nature and casts a blighted shadow over the mortal world. Her entrapment by Oberon’s magical flower and subsequent infatuation with weaver Nick Bottom, whose head is transformed into that of a donkey, forms much of the play’s comic episode.
Role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Quarrel over the changeling boy and Oberon’s scheme (Act II, scene 1)
Titania enters the scene, embroiled in a bitter dispute with Oberon over the custody of an Indian changeling boy. Oberon’s servant, Puck, describes their discord before they enter the scene:
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, stol’n from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling.
Although Titania and Oberon preside over the fairy realm, their quarrel quickly descends into mortal pettiness, marked by jealousy and prurient insinuation. Both of them itemize each other’s amorous conquests; Titania sarcastically questions Oberon’s intention of coming to Athens to bless his erstwhile mistress Hippolyta’s wedding. Oberon, in turn, accuses Titania of having loved Theseus. Since they are the “parents and original” of the natural world, their discord has threatened it with barrenness and disorder:
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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.
Titania reveals that she is mourning the death of the changeling’s mother, who was a votaress (a devout worshipper) of her order. The memory of her companion endears the child to her, and she refuses to let Oberon enlist him as his henchman. Incensed by her resistance and jealous of her affections toward the boy, Oberon resolves to use magic to humble her. He orders Puck to fetch him 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. A new object of desire, be it a lion or a bear, is intended to cure Titania of her current obsession:
And ere I take this charm from off her sight
(As I can take it with another herb),
I’ll make her render up her page to me.
Enchanted love and comic humiliation (Act II, scene 2–Act IV, scene 1)
While Titania sleeps, Oberon applies the juice of the magic flower to her eyes, ensuring she will wake when “some vile thing is near.” Meanwhile, Puck transforms the weaver Bottom by giving him the head of an ass and positions Bottom so that Titania will see him upon waking. She instantly falls in love, calling Bottom an “angel,” and summons her fairies to serve him with fruits and lullabies. She continues to lavish affection on him, which he accepts, unperturbed. By Act IV, scene 1, Oberon has secured the changeling boy and lifts the spell on Titania with another herb. She wakes, bewildered, and exclaims:
My Oberon, what visions have I seen!
Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.
Reconciliation with Oberon (Act IV, scene 1 and Act V, epilogue)
Once Oberon secures the changeling boy to serve among his fairy attendants, his vengeance is complete. And with it comes an end to Titania’s enchantment. He applies the antidote to her eyes, lifting the spell that had bound her affections to Bottom:
Be as thou wast wont to be;
See as thou was wont to see.
Despite the indignity she has endured, Titania does not linger in shame. Her reconciliation with Oberon is swift, and they rejoin as corulers, blessing the nuptials of Theseus, Hippolyta, and two Athenian couples (Hermia and Lysander; Helena and Demetrius). Their renewed harmony restores natural order and ushers in the play’s resolution.
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Character appraisal and models
Titania inhabits the middle world of the Shakespearean three-level design.
- The first world is that of apparent civilization with hints of impending disorder.
- The middle world is that of magical metamorphoses where characters wear masks, assume disguises, and play roles higher or lower than their ascribed social status.
- The final world is that of restored social order.
The metamorphoses of the middle world unsettle not only the minds of the enchanted characters but also those of the audience. The result is a deliberate suspension of individuality of the characters. Under the influence of magic, characters momentarily lose the stability of a fixed identity. In this dream logic their identities become fluid and interchangeable, as if their romantic and personal essences can be rewired by mistaken appearances or the touch of a flower. This mutable quality was especially prized by Romantic and Victorian audiences, who found in the play’s instability a dreamlike enchantment, an aesthetic well suited to the capricious fairies who govern the action. Shakespeare dramatizes this aesthetic most clearly in Titania, choosing her to be the only character of the fairy realm to experience the effect of magical transformation and loss of identity. Like Hermia—the distressed Athenian lover who asks “Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?”—Titania too finds herself altered. Upon waking from enchantment, she questions her tryst with Bottom wherein she, the queen of fairies, was “enamour’d of an ass.”
Oberon’s salutation, “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” indicates the literary source of her name. She is the moon goddess, Diana, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. 8 ce), and just like the moon, she will regain her identity in phases. In the play Shakespeare subtly evokes this lunar association through Puck’s reference to “triple Hecate” (Act V, scene 1), a goddess identified with the threefold aspects of the moon. In classical tradition the moon goddess was known by many names: Phoebe or Cynthia in heaven, Hecate or Proserpina in the underworld, and Diana or Lucina on Earth. These identities embodied the cyclical forces of chastity, fertility, and childbirth. These aspects map directly onto Titania’s arc in the play, as she moves from sexual abstinence to enchanted desire, and finally to a role that blesses generative union.
Before her enchantment, Titania resides in a world apart from Oberon. She recalls the votaress who died in childbirth, describing a tender companionship:
And in the spicèd Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip’d by my side;
And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands,
Marking th’ embarkèd traders on the flood,
When we have laugh’d to see the sails conceive,
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Titania’s friendship with her votaress, her remembrance of their nighttime gossiping in a world bereft of men, mirrors the schoolgirlish bond between Hermia and Helena:
All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower
Titania’s headstrong attachment to the Indian changeling boy expresses her insistence on chastity; she has withdrawn from Oberon’s company and his bed, retreating into a self-contained, female world shaped by memory and mourning. Her guardianship of the child—born of a deep bond with his mother—signals an allegiance to a realm of female intimacy and loyalty, untouched by the demands of conjugal desire. Her stubbornness might be further compounded by Oberon’s wish to remove the boy from a world of female nurture into one of male authority and service. Yet the shift from chastity toward sexual reawakening and fertility is crucial. The Athenian ladies Hermia and Helena do graduate from the youthful innocence of girlish union to forging a rivalry for the love of a man. Similarly, Titania must balance her role as the goddess of chastity with the equally important role as the propagator of fertility in the natural world. Here lies Oberon’s rationale for her magical entrapment and the germ of her transformation.
In the comic episode of her affair with Bottom, much of her character may be understood in light of what happens to her rather than what she does. The question of custody shifts from the Indian changeling boy to Bottom. In Titania’s words, he is bound to her:
Out of this wood do not desire to go.
Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.
Bottom’s desires are more infantile than sexual; he wishes to sleep, to feed, and to listen to music. Titania adorns him with musk-roses and kisses his ears in a bid to cure him of his “mortal grossness” and turn him into another “airy spirit.” Some Freudian critics have read Titania’s actions toward Bottom as an attempt to replace the changeling boy in her affections with him. Her lavish care for Bottom can be read as a subconscious response to the impending loss of the changeling boy, a loss she must confront when the flower’s magic wears off.
By the play’s end, by giving up the changeling boy and reconciling with Oberon, Titania achieves a unified identity, reflected in Oberon and Titania’s collective blessing upon the Athenian marriages:
To the best bride-bed will we,
Which by us shall blessèd be;
And the issue there create
Ever shall be fortunate.
So shall all the couples three
Ever true in loving be;
And the blots of Nature’s hand
Shall not in their issue stand.
This moment reconciles two opposing forces, fertility and chastity, within a harmonious whole. The play’s conclusion, marked by marriage, reconciliation, and the hope of healthy children, is a defining feature of Shakespearean comedy: Discord gives way to resolution, and all ends in joy.