SOURCE: “The Changeling in A Dream,” in Studies in English Literature, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring, 1988, pp. 259-72.

In the following essay, Slights contends that the changeling boy reflects the irresolution and indeterminancy of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Midway through the first scene of Act II in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon, King of the Fairies, begs “a little changeling boy” of Titania. She responds, “The fairy land buys not the child of me” (II.i.120, 122), and from this exchange—or non-exchange—follows a highly determined though minimally textualized custody battle.¹ After a great deal has been done and said about the nature of love and marriage, and a quantity of flower juice has been squirted about, Oberon again “ask[s] of her her changeling child,” and “straight” Titania gives it to him (IV.i.59-60), not because the snaky scales of feminine insubordination have fallen from her eyes, but...