TITANIA         His mother was a votaress of my order; And in the spiced Indian air by night, Full often hath she gossiped by my side, And sat with me on Neptune’s yellow sands Marking th’embarked traders on the flood, When we have laughed to see the sails conceive And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind, Which she with pretty and with swimming gait Following (her womb then rich […]

TITANIA         And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension: We are their parents and original. OBERON         Do you amend it then; it lies in you. Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy To be my henchman. TITANIA                     Set your heart at rest. The fairy land buys not the child of me.      (2.1.115-122) Titania concludes […]

TITANIA         And thorough this distemperature, we see The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter change Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which. (2.1.106-114) And thorough this distemperature—because everything […]

TITANIA         The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud, And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want their winter here; No night is now with hymn or carol blest. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air That rheumatic diseases do abound.           (2.1.98-105) It’s not just the mud and the rain, it’s the unrelenting grimness, the loss of all the nice […]

TITANIA         Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, As in revenge have sucked up from the sea Contagious fogs, which, falling in the land, Hath every pelting river made so proud That they have overborne their continents. The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain, The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard. The fold stands empty in the drowned field, And crows are fatted […]

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 […]

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 […]

Enter OBERON at one door with his train, and TITANIA at another with hers. OBERON         Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania. TITANIA         What, jealous Oberon? Fairies, skip hence. I have forsworn his bed and company. OBERON         Tarry, rash wanton. Am not I thy lord? TITANIA         Then I must be thy lady; but I know When thou hast stolen away from fairy land And in the shape […]

PUCK  The wisest aunt telling the saddest tale Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; Then slip I from her bum, down topples she, And ‘Tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough; And then the whole choir hold their hips and laugh, And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there. But room, fairy. Here comes Oberon. FAIRY  And here my mistress. Would that he were gone.  (2.1.51-59) […]

PUCK              Thou speak’st aright: I am that merry wanderer of the night. I jest to Oberon, and make him smile When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile, Neighing in likeness of a filly foal. And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl In very likeness of a roasted crab, And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her withered dewlap pour […]