Titania, and Love: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Interpretive Essay
(Word count: 1000)
The concept, and theme of love is thrown around a lot in literature, and Shakespeare’s works are no exception. ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is an exceptional showcase of the mysterious emotion of love, and this essay will be focusing on the theme of love surrounding Titania in particular. In this play, the motivations and subsequent actions of Titania are explored and show how love can change people and their relationships. In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the little Indian boy, who is being taken care of by Titania, is a major source of conflict in Titania and Oberon’s marriage. Oberon wants the little Indian boy to be one of his humble servants, but Titania
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Whilst she is sleeping, Oberon has a potion put into Titania’s eyes. As soon as Titania awakes, she is greeted by Bottom. Titania speaks: “Mine ear is much enamored of thy note. // So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape. // And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me // on the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.” (65) This quote makes use of imagery. The potion that was put into Titania was a love potion, which made her fall in love with the first person who she lays eyes on when she awakes, who in this case, is Bottom, who has taken the form of an ass. Titania adds: “Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.” (65) Which signifies that she either already has, or soon will fall in love with Bottom. This quote is an example of dramatic irony. The next morning, when Titania wakes up, she feels as if she’s had a nightmare: “My Oberon! What visions have I seen! // Methought I was enamour'd of an ass” (105). This quote demonstrates both exclamations, and assonance. This quote tells us that the love potion used on Titania was not permanent, because it has obviously worn off the morning after, as shown by her general disgust at the thought of being together with an
Oberon is the one in the relationship with all the power because he guilt’s Titania into giving him the Indian boy, “She in mild terms begged my patience, I then did ask of her [for the] child” (IV. i. 59-60). Oberon does not love Titania because he always has to get everything he wants. Also, Oberon and Titania are jealous of each other.
Their wedding is not a result of a love story, not even a misalliance. On the contrary, Theseus has conquered Hippolyta in battle and forced her to submission. Nowhere in the play has Hippolyta claimed that she loves him. In addition, the other couple of the older generation, Oberon and Titania, is not governed by pure and innocent love. Oberon appears to be quite possessive and jealous of his queen. He is so conceited that he desires to punish and humiliate Titania for disobeying him.Nevertheless, it is not quite clear whether Oberon and Titania are married.Shakespeare, through the magical world of fairies, suggests an alternativeutopian kind of
One of his plays, ‘A midsummer’s night dream’, includes the themes of love and magic,where love is represented as a force that makes people act in irrational ways to entertain the audience in a comical and dramatic way. He used different techniques throughout the play to create a tumultuous and intriguing factor. The storyline of the play follows various couples such as Hermia and Lysander and Oberon and Titania. These couples show examples of irrational behaviours with love and magic throughout the play.
Love is constantly changing or being manipulated and an example of this love is when Oberon, the king of the Fairies, gives his wife, Titania, the queen of the Fairies, a potion that makes her fall in love with an ass (77). Oberon does this act out of spite because his wife does not want to give him a changeling boy, an ugly idiot, stupid, fairy baby left in the human world, as a servant. Oberon instructs his personal fairy servant, Puck, to give a potion to Oberon’s wife and make her fall in love with an ass. There are two dreams in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that critics say are the only two that really matter.
Titania claims at Oberon's current frustrations with their relationship are "the forgeries of jealousy." What else, in your opinion, has the ability to poison/taint love? And, in what ways can such love be restored?
In spite of that, Oberon and Titania do not show those qualities towards each other. During Oberon and Titania’s argument about the rightful caregiver of the changeling boy, they both throw several accusations at one another, including Titania’s betrayal to her husband. Oberon reveals Titania's affair with Theseus, “Knowing I know thy love to Theseus/ First thought not leave him through the glimmering night/From Perigenia, whom he ravished,/And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,” (II.I.76-79) Titania’s incoherent affair negatively impacts the lives of many, as she persuades Theseus to commit unjust acts of rape and abandonment to numerous women.
Even later in his monologue Oberon says, “And now I have the boy, I will undo/ This hateful imperfection of her eyes:” (4.1 45-46) He thinks that he is being so generous and kind since he is taking off the love potion. The reason he is doing that is because he has what he wants, and has no need for Titania to still be in love with
When Oberon attempts to force Titania to give him the changeling child, she goes against patriarchal norms of women submitting to men when she refuses to give it to him. Her refusal is direct when she says, “Set your heart at rest. The Fairyland buys not the child of me. His mother was a votaress of my order, […] And for her sake I will not part with him” (2.1.107-108,123). She defies Oberon’s expectation that she will listen to him and tries instead to keep a promise she has to a friend of hers. This deviation from patriarchal norms shows that Titania is a strong female character who has the power to combat a man’s wishes and make her own decisions. Her
The audience is intrigued by the humorous dispute and will concentrate more on the play. During act 4, Oberon gives Titania the juice from the magical flower for her to fall in love with Bottom who is given the head of a donkey, or ass. This is so Oberon can make Titania look foolish being in love with an outrageous creature. Later on, Oberon is over the joke and reverses the love potion and Bottom’s donkey head. Titania wakes up shocked and believes it was all a dream. She sees Bottom a few feet away from her, still asleep, and says “How came these things to pass? / Oh, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!”(4.1.78-80). Titania’s statement translates to “How did this happen? Oh, I hate looking at his face now!” Titania insults Bottom in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place in Athens where the the Duke Theseus and the Queen of the Amazons Hippolyta are set to get married. Following this we see the fruition of two more plots of love, Helena, Lysander, Demetrius, and Hermia and the king and queen of the fairies Oberon and Titania. The plot I am going to focus on will be that of the four lovers, the complication and the conflict that they’re love causes. The conflict begins when “Take time to pause, and by the next new moon—the sealing day betwixt my love and me
This scene begins with the fairies putting Titania to sleep. They sing her a song and once she falls asleep Oberon comes to the sleeping woman and puts the nectar in her eyes, although it does not occur in this scene the nectar causes Titania to fall in love with Bottom.
Furthermore, Titania complains due to Oberon’s actions, she and her fairy friends have been unable to meet anywhere for their usual dancing and frivolity without being disturbed. In order to further expand the point of the irrationality of love to the audience, Shakespeare continues to use hyperbole to express her intense feelings. Titania reasons that because of Oberon’s insistence on taking the Indian boy as his knight, there is no place for her to meet—not “on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, by pavèd fountain, or by rushy brook, or in the beachèd margent of the sea” (Shakespeare II.i.86). His continual interruptions have prevented their dances and moreover, his revenge has brought about terrible consequences for the human mortals. As Shakespeare details the affects, he imaginatively uses personification to describe the pale moon in her anger filling the air with disease and the icy winter wearing a crown of summer flowers in mockery. As Titania’s closes her long rant directed at Oberon, she concludes by confessing, “And this same progeny of evils comes from our debate, from our dissension, we are their parents and original” (Shakespeare II.i.118). As a
Titania is arguably the strongest women in the play; however she is still susceptible to the devious schemes of Oberon and Puck. She is tricked, by the use of a love-juice potion, into falling in love with Bottom who appears to have an ass’s head, “An ass’s nole I fixed on his head” (III.ii.17). This event leads to Oberon asking her for the changeling child “Which straight she gave to me,” (IV.i.58) showing that even strong woman can be tricked by men, which is still
A Midsummer Night 's Dream is a play about love. All of its action—from the escapades of Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena in the forest, to the argument between Oberon and Titania, to the play about two lovelorn youths that Bottom and his friends perform at Duke Theseus 's marriage to Hippolyta—are motivated by love. But A Midsummer Night 's Dream is not a romance, in which the audience gets caught up in a passionate love affair between two characters. It 's a comedy, and because it 's clear from the outset that it 's a comedy and that all will turn out happily, rather than try to overcome the audience with the exquisite and overwhelming passion of love, A Midsummer Night 's Dream invites the audience to laugh at the way the passion of love can make people blind, foolish, inconstant, and desperate. At various times, the power and passion of love threatens to destroy friendships, turn men against men and women against women, and through
Titania, queen of the fairies, and Oberon, king of the fairies, are intended to be in love. When they fight over a small indian boy, King Oberon seeks revenge on her by casting the cupid juice to make her fall in love with someone unfortunate. Magic influences Titania and she falls in love with a low life character, Nick Bottom. In fairytales and love stories, beautiful and powerful characters like Titania are assumed to love characters equally as beautiful and powerful. So it comes as a shock to readers for her to fall in love with Bottom, especially while he has the head of a donkey. The audience will take it as comedy because we are so used to the stereotypical prince and princess love story. It is so unusual that even Bottom is perplexed by her love, he says “Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that. And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays;…” (William Shakespeare, 3.1, 119-121). Bottom is confused by Titania’s love for him because he thinks she has no reason to love him, for he is poor and ugly. Even he believes that a beautiful queen like Titania should fall in love with someone equal to her.