TITANIA Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed!
Enter four Fairies: PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH and MUSTARDSEED.
PEASEBLOSSOM Ready.
COBWEB And I.
MOTH And I.
MUSTARDSEED And I.
ALL Where shall we go? (3.1.156-7)
Fairy time! More fairies than before, or at least the fairies who have appeared before get names: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed! Titania summons them, and they duly appear, and they’re TINY (like the fairies previously described earlier in the play, and also in Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech in Romeo and Juliet), and also domestic, familiar, the things you see all the time, made strange, a flower on a pea-plant, a scrap of spiderweb, a moth (or, as in the alterative mote, a speck of dust, conventionally one of the smallest smallest things), and a little round seed. Here they are! Ready!replies Peaseblossom, apparently the leader, and the other three add their me toos: And I! And I! And I! Where shall we go? What do you need us to do?
The fairies, three of them at least, were very likely played by children, and this is carefully written for inexperienced actors. Peaseblossom might be the fairy who spoke with Puck earlier on, and could be played by one of the boys, and so takes the lead, but the other three just need to know their names, come when they’re called by name, and to pipe up with and I in turn, after Peaseblossom’s cue; it’s very self-contained, fail-safe, easy to drill and perform.
(And now, relying on adult actors, it can become arch, or sinister, or played for laughs by put-upon domestic staff—but on the page at least, it can just be charming, and historically these would often have been played like pantomime fairies, in tulle and flower garlands, with wings and wands. Noel Streatfeild’s children’s classic Ballet Shoes has a wonderful evocation of a—presumably 1930s?—production perceived as dangerously avant garde because it abandons such conventions.)
