The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

William Shakespearec. 1595
Influence24th pct
Popularity81st pct
Shakespeare

Read this if you…

  • want Shakespeare doing magical trickster moonlight fairy land stuff
  • want the absolute best of shakespeare's imagery/poetry
  • want one of his less serious plays that still rips
  • trust Billy's #1 Shakespeare pick

Skip this if you…

  • aren't willing to go slow, read notes, look up analyses of famous passages (only way to "get" shakespeare)
  • foolishly think shakespeare is overrated

Why It Matters

Shakespeare's most magical comedy. Fairies, lovers, and a troupe of amateur actors all collide in a forest over one night of chaos and desire gone haywire. The play treats love as irrational, absurd, and out of anyone's control, which is one of his most honest things to say about people. It's also the most performed Shakespeare play in the world.

The Groblé Take

Breaking of the fourth wall, awesome poetry, especially the depiction of the moonlight fairy world, funny bits like when Helena thinks everyone’s making fun of her and the pyramus and Thisbe play. Robin is awesome and bottom is awesome and Helena is awesome

Connections

The lineage through A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Built Onwhat came beforeWhat It Shapedwhat it set in motionA Midsummer Night’s…MetamorphosesPlutarch's LivesThe Canterbury…The Golden Ass1 CorinthiansEmma

  • Metamorphoses by Ovid. A Midsummer Night’s Dream built on it. - The bungled tragedy the mechanicals stage in Act V — "Pyramus and Thisbe" — comes straight out of Ovid's *Metamorphoses* Book IV - Shakespeare knew it through Arthur Golding's 1567 English translation; the comedy lands harder once you've read Ovid's sincere, mournful original - Ovid is the well Shakespeare keeps returning to — this is the one place he lets you see the seam
  • Plutarch's Lives by Plutarch. A Midsummer Night’s Dream built on it. - The Athenian frame — Duke Theseus, his bride-by-conquest Hippolyta, the wedding the whole night runs toward — comes from Plutarch's *Life of Theseus* - Shakespeare worked from Thomas North's 1579 translation, and North's phrasing surfaces in the play, including the backstory Theseus names in the opening scene - Plutarch is the historical floor under the fairy mischief — read the *Life of Theseus* and you meet the man before Shakespeare married him off
  • The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. A Midsummer Night’s Dream built on it. - The Theseus-and-Hippolyta wedding that frames the whole play is Chaucer's — lifted from the opening of the *Knight's Tale* - Read it first and you'll hear the medieval source under the moonlit comedy; Shakespeare keeps the conquering duke and his Amazon bride, then fills the woods around them with his own fairies - The same Chaucerian well he'd return to for *The Two Noble Kinsmen*
  • The Golden Ass by Apuleius. A Midsummer Night’s Dream built on it. - Bottom's ass-head and his night with Titania are a rework of Apuleius's man-turned-donkey, bedded by a noblewoman who can't get enough of the beast - Shakespeare almost certainly knew it through Adlington's 1566 translation, whose phrases echo through his work - *The Golden Ass* gives the *Dream*'s strangest joke its pedigree — the transformation isn't whimsy, it's a 1,400-year-old comic inheritance
  • 1 Corinthians by Paul. A Midsummer Night’s Dream built on it. - Bottom's "most rare vision" speech in Act 4 is a scrambled echo of Paul: "the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen" - The straight version is in *1 Corinthians* 2:9 — Paul's words for a glory too great to report - Shakespeare gives the sublime line to his most ridiculous character and lets him fumble it. Read Paul first and the gag is sharper
  • Emma by Jane Austen. A Midsummer Night’s Dream shaped it. - Lysander's line — "The course of true love never did run smooth" — becomes Emma Woodhouse's pet quotation two centuries later - Austen lifts the play's whole engine: meddling with other people's hearts and watching it tangle hilariously - Emma is Puck without the magic, certain she can make love run smooth where Shakespeare swore it never could
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Gallery

Depicted in Art

Titania, enchanted, gazes adoringly at the ass-headed Bottom while a swarm of grotesque attendant fairies, changelings, and Reynolds-style children crowd the foreground.

Henry Fuseli, 1790

Titania rises from her flower bank as Oberon lifts the spell; Bottom dozes beside her amid a thicket of fairies and mortal lovers.

Henry Fuseli

The fairy king and queen reconcile center-stage, embracing as their attendant host of fairies celebrates in a densely populated forest tableau.

Joseph Noel Paton, 1847

Sleeping figures of Hermia and Titania share the foreground while fairies watch over them in a densely flowered forest.

John Simmons, 1873

Titania bends toward the donkey-headed Bottom amid Fitzgerald's hallucinatory, jewel-bright fairyland.

John Anster Fitzgerald

Titania reclines nude and asleep in moonlit woodland, ringed by hovering fairy attendants in a watchful guard.

John Simmons

Oberon and Titania confront each other in a moonlit clearing thronged with dozens of tiny fairies, sprites, and creatures across every inch of the canvas.

Joseph Noel Paton, 1849

Oberon stoops over the sleeping Titania to lift the love-spell in a small intimate forest tableau.

Thomas Stothard, 1806

Puck reclines in long grass surrounded by a swarm of tiny luminous fairies emerging from flowers and shadows.

Joseph Noel Paton

Emma Hamilton poses as Titania in a wooded glade, the Indian changeling boy at her side and Puck looking on.

George Romney, 1793

Titania asleep on a flower bank watched by Oberon and a swarm of fairies; a proscenium-like trompe-l'oeil frame surrounds the scene.

Robert Huskisson, 1847

The fairy king and queen stand at center while Puck and a ring of slender nude fairies dance hand-in-hand around them in moonlit woods.

William Blake, 1786

Editions

Recommended Editions

#1Top Pick$6.99$6.51

Folger Shakespeare Library

2004

Folger's the readable one. Text on one page, notes on the facing page, written in plain English instead of textbook-speak. Catches every word and reference you'd otherwise google, without breaking the scene to do it.

Buy on Bookshop
#2

SparkNotes (No Fear Shakespeare)

2003

$7.99$7.45Buy
#3

Arden Shakespeare

2017

$12.95Buy

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Deep Dive

What It's About

Spoiler warning

This summary gives away plot details.

Notable Quotes

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

— Lysander, A Midsummer Night's Dream

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

— Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream

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