TITANIA Why art thou here
Come from the farthest steep of India,
But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,
Your buskined mistress and your warrior love,
To Theseus must be wedded; and you come
To give their bed joy and prosperity.
OBERON How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa? (2.1.68-80)
What are you doing here anyway? Why art thou here come from the farthest steep of India—I thought you were ‘finding yourself’ on yet another gap year, life sabbatical—oh yes, I get it, you’re here because Hippolyta’s getting married! But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon (coarse! athletic! bossy!) your buskined mistress and your warrior love (the buskins are short boots, classicising, usually associated with tragedy as well as with Amazons; here, think more stompy Docs or combat boots) to Theseus must be wedded. She was your little midlife crisis escapade, wasn’t she, a riot grrl, and now she’s getting mar-ried! And you come—dripping with sarcasm—to give their bed joy and prosperity. Because how’s that going for YOU?
Oberon’s been biding his time: how canst thou thus for shame, Titania, glance at my credit with Hippolyta, knowing I know thy love to Theseus? You haven’t got a leg to stand on! Pot, meet kettle! You’ve certainly played away with him often enough and, even more, enabled his adventuring. Didst not though lead him through the glimmering night from Perigenia, whom he ravished? That was a nasty little episode; he’d abducted her, at the very least, and you made it possible for him to abandon her. And you made him with fair Aegles break his faith, with Ariadne, and Antiopa? Theseus is a serial abandoner of women: Ariadne got him out of the labyrinth alive, and he left her on Naxos; he jilted Aegles too, and Antiopa, Hippolyta’s actual sister! And you had a hand in all of that, seducing him away, encouraging him. (Titania here is imagined as the ultimate in unsisterly behaviour, paralleling Helena’s betrayal of Hermia and subsequent accusations made between them.)
Neither of these fairy monarchs has been behaving well, it seems. Both are speaking out of anger and also deep hurt. And, almost always in modern productions, and probably in the original too, Oberon is doubling Theseus and Titania, Hippolyta, adding to the dreamlike quality, shadow selves behaving badly after dark.
