TITANIA These are the forgeries of jealousy;
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margin of the sea
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. (2.1.81-87)
These—these accusations—are the forgeries of jealousy! Titania is magnificent, whether or not she’s styling it out—how very dare you—when in fact it’s largely true, or not, her charge stands: you’re making this up, because you can’t stand it that I have my own life, you can’t stand it that I’m happy! But her speech is about to become stranger, wilder, full of anger, yes, but also deep anxiety, a wondering agony at what this rupture in their love is doing, not just to them, but to the world.
A transition, first: and never, since the middle summer’s spring—since the beginning of midsummer, but it sounds more seriously muddled than that, summer and spring—met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead, by paved fountain or by rushy brook, wherever we’ve met, up in the hills, down in the valleys, in the woods or the meadows, in gardens or beside streams (and rushy is bullrushes, but it also makes the stream wild, a torrent, not a murmur)—and the locations of these encounters flash before the eyes, a collage of greens, blues, leaves, water—and even when we met on the shore, in the beached margin of the sea to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, fairies dancing on the sand, circling, chanting, leaving footprints even as their traces are blown away, the sound of wind, singing, stamping (but ringlets also here has to suggest hair, streaming in the wind) but with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. You spoil everything! You can’t leave anything alone! Who we are is unclear: is it Titania and her court, her attendants, trying to go about their fairy business only to have Oberon turn up, over and over, picking a fight? Or is it the fairy couple themselves, carrying on as usual, but unable to meet, even to dance, without falling out? Brawls are a dance, too, a lively one, so there’s an added sense of disruption as the fairy rings are boisterously wrecked (one can imagine Puck getting into it). In a few lines, Titania has conjured a landscape, and a way of life, that is under tremendous strain, that’s going wrong.
