Welcome to the Shakespeare Kids!
Thank you for joining our group of “players, “or Shakespearean performers. With your help, we can help Mr. Shakespeare pull off his all-kids performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”!
So you’ve volunteered to take on the role of Titania (pronounced “Tih TAHN yah”), Queen of the Fairies. Bravo! She is a powerful combination of grace and strength, and we will need someone special like you to take on this challenging part.
This section will give you some background information on Titania from different parts of the play. Here you will find:
- Let’s get started: Who is Titania?
- “The fairy land buys not the child of me”
- “Proud Titania”: the Fairy Queen and King
- “Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed!”
- “I am a spirit of no common rate”
- Begin your own exploration
Be sure to also read the “Do It in Action!” section of this site, which will give you plenty of ideas about how to begin working on your own version of Titania.
Even if you don’t get to perform right away on the Globe stage sometimes it takes a while you’ll enjoy transforming yourself into the Fairy Queen and learning her lines. Have fun!
Let’s get started: Who is Titania?
If you are new to Shakespeare and his “Dream,” you may be wondering, “Who exactly is Titania?”
There is no simple answer to that question. It’s a mystery, in a way. One of the fascinating things about Shakespeare is that we cannot say for certain what he was thinking when he created these characters. He left behind no interviews with newspapers, no journal entries, no scribbled notes for his actors. He wrote only a few stage directions in his texts. All we really have is language the words written for Shakespeare’s actors to speak.
So the first step is to look at Titania’s words. You will be the lead detective in solving this mystery, as you begin to speak Titania’s language and memorize her lines.
A second place to look at Titania’s actions. You’ll learn these as you work on the scene, and by reading on in the play to the next scenes.
A third place to look for clues is in what other characters say about Titania. These lines are clues sprinkled throughout the play by Shakespeare, and you have to listen carefully and read carefully to find them.
It’s good to read with a pencil or highlighter handy to mark any clues you find, so you can refer to them later. The more detective work you do, the better prepared you will be for your performance!
Remember that even if you’ve seen someone play Titania before, on stage or in a movie, there is no one right way to play the role. Your Titania will be a wonderful and unique mix of Shakespeare’s character and you your way of moving, speaking, and thinking.
Even as you read this, there are probably hundreds of different Titanias being performed in different schools and theaters around the entire world, and each one is completely different though they are all using Shakespeare’s words.
So it’s your turn to play Titania and make her words come to life!
“The fairy land buys not the child of me”
We first meet Titania in Scene Three, when she and Oberon continue to “square” or fight over the changeling boy whom Oberon wants to be his “henchman,” to ride in the place of honor in his train or troop of fairies.
In stories of Shakespeare’s time, a changeling boy was a human child taken by fairies. Puck describes the boy as being stolen “from an Indian king.” But when Titania stands her ground with Oberon, and refuses to turn over the boy, she tells a different story. The mother was a “votress of my order,” meaning she had joined a religious order devoted to worshipping a deity or goddess. The mother and Titania were great friends:
And, in the spicéd Indian air by night, Full often hath she gossiped by my side, And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands, Marking the embarkéd traders on the flood…
Titania describes sitting with the pregnant mother by the shores of a port city of some kind. The two women watched the wind puff up the sails of “traders,” ships headed out on the “flood,” or tide, and they would laughingly compare the shape of the sails to the roundness of the mother’s belly. The mother would “sail upon the land” imitate a ship and “fetch me trifles, and return again/ As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.” We can imagine the mother dashing down the beach and fetching a beautiful shell and returning it with a smile to Titania as if it were a type of playful game.
The mood of this happy recollection changes suddenly:
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.
Perhaps the mother died in childbirth perhaps her dying wish was to ask Titania to take the boy and raise him. It’s not clear. But Titania seems dedicated to taking care of him, and rejects what she sees as Oberon’s jealous grasping.
The child is never actually seen, though in many films and performances of “Dream” the directors cannot resist the temptation of having a young child dash on with Titania as the Changeling Boy.
“Proud Titania”: the Fairy Queen and King
Oberon greets her with those words “proud” meaning haughty or full of herself. From Oberon’s point of view, she is being stubborn and unreasonable. All he wants is a little boy what’s the big deal? Even Titania’s beautiful speech about the mother seems to have no effect on the King.
In several speeches which are not in your text (we trimmed them to keep the scene a reasonable length, but you can read them in the complete text at the library or bookstore, or online) Oberon and Titania begin the argument by accusing each other of flirting with humans Oberon with various mythical lovers and Hippolyta, Titania with Theseus. So there is some mysterious way in which the Fairy King and Queen can cross from the fairy realm to the human one and back again.
It’s not entirely clear whether the accusations of unfaithfulness began the quarrel, or the tussle over the boy but it’s bad enough that Titania has “forsworn” Oberon’s company, meaning she has vowed not to go anywhere near him. Puck warns Titania’s fairy earlier to keep Titania away from his boss: “Take heed she come not within his sight,” because Oberon is so angry.
Titania does leave the door open for Oberon to make peace and restore their relationship, when she says:
If you will patiently dance in our round, And see our moonlight revels, go with us; If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.
His only response is to ask for the boy one more time which provokes her furious sweeping exit:
Not for thy fairy kingdom! Fairies, away. We shall chide downright if I longer stay!
In the end, though, Oberon and Titania come back together. And when they are reunited, the joy and relief is obvious in their lines. Harmony is restored, and they speak in rhyme together to end that section of the scene:
Oberon:
Then, my queen, in silence sad Trip we after night’s sade. We the globe can compass soon, Swifter than the wand’ring moon.
Titania:
Come, my lord, and in our flight Tell me how it came this night That I sleeping here was found With these mortals on the ground.
“Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed!”
Titania does not call any fairies by name in the first scene, only calling them as a group. In her second scene, Scene Four (Act 2, scene 2), two fairies sing a lullaby to her and they are listed in the text as “First Fairy” and “Second Fairy.” We can guess they were two of Shakespeare’s company who could sing beautifully.
But once she awakens with the love juice on her eyes, and falls in love with Nick Bottom and his donkey’s head, she summons four fairies by name. These fairies seem to work as a foursome, and their entrance creates a kind of musical effect:
Peaseblossom: Ready.
Cobweb: And I.
Moth: And I.
Mustardseed: And I.
ALL: Where shall we go?
In the next scene with Titania and Nick Bottom, all reappear except for Moth, who is mysteriously absent, though the stage direction includes “fairies,” so Moth may be in that mix…
“I am a spirit of no common rate”
When Titania falls in love with Bottom, and he seems to at first be trying to get away to go home, she gently but firmly demonstrates her power:
I am a spirit of no common rate, The summer still doth tend upon my state, And I love thee. Therefore go with me…
What she’s telling him is “I am powerful enough, and important enough, that even the weather and the seasons are affected by what I do. So if you know what’s good for you, go with me!” In a long speech not included in your text (again, see the complete text if you want to know more!), Titania tells Oberon that his quarrelling and their “debate” has begun to mix up the seasons.
Titania’s line is an interesting echo of a line of Oberon’s: “We are spirits of another sort.” Oberon and Titania are both unique, and they each know it. They certainly seem made for each other. (They know that, too.)
Begin your own exploration
It bears repeating: Every person who plays Titania will bring something different to the role. There is no one “right” way to play such a rich part.
In the end, it is through sounding out Titania’s language the words Shakespeare wrote for her that you will learn the most about this character.
So have fun learning jos lines, saying them out loud in a hundred different ways, and creating your own very real and unique Titania, Queen of the Fairies!
