OBERON         Well, go thy way. Thou shalt not from this grove

Till I torment thee for this injury.

My gentle puck, come hither. Thou rememberest

Since once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

That the rude sea grew civil at her song,

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid’s music.

PUCK                          I remember.   (2.1.146-154)

Titania’s done most of the talking in this barbed encounter, and certainly had the most lyrical, impassioned speech but, left with Puck, Oberon becomes lyrical, the bully or the whinger changing mode. (But still a machiavel.) Well, go thy way. See you! Please yourself, then! Thou shalt not from this grove till I torment thee for this injury. You’ll get what’s coming to you, you’re not making it out of this wood until you’ve paid for this. No one gets away with insulting Oberon; he gets what he wants in the end.

Switch. My gentle puck, come hither. (Puck, gentle? Oberon, polite?) Then he takes flight, it’s a direct parallel to Titania’s evocation of her seashore idyll with her friend, as if the bittersweet and nostalgic picture painted by the fairy queen has itself prompted Oberon’s plan. Thou rememberest since once I sat upon a promontory—that time I was on the clifftop, looking out to sea—and heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath—oh the song of the mermaid, so sweet and beautiful (and the detail that the mermaid is riding on a dolphin, which seems both redundant and fantastical, a mermaid riding side-saddle??)—that the rude sea grew civil at her song (the sea was calmed; again, the opposite to Titania’s earlier description of the sea as hostile) and certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid’s music. It was so beautiful that there were shooting stars, a cosmic lightshow, because the mermaid’s song was even more glorious than the music of the spheres itself. It’s as if Oberon is painting a picture, or weaving a tapestry; a silken, glowing off-cut from Marlowe’s Hero and Leander.

I remember. Yep. Puck can be ecstatic, in the memory too, but more likely laconic, steady on, guv, where’s this going? and it gets a laugh.