Titania

The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (1846), by Sir Joseph Paton

Titania was the name of a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Shakespeare's play, she is the queen of the fairies. Due to Shakespeare's influence, later fiction has often used the name "Titania" for fairy queen characters. In traditional folklore, the fairy queen has no name. Shakespeare took the name 'Titania' from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where it is an appellation given to the daughters of Titans.^[1] In the Shakespeare play, Titania is a very proud creature and as much of a force to contend with as her husband Oberon. The marital quarrel she and her husband are engaged in over which of them should have the keeping of a changeling page is the engine that drives the mix ups and confusion of the other characters in the play. Due to an enchantment cast by Oberon's henchman Puck, Titania magically falls in love with a rude mechanical (a lower class laborman), Nick Bottom the Weaver, who has been given the head of an ass by Puck, who feels it is better suited to his character (Which bears a resemblance to the story of Lycaon). Oberon states in the play:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,

Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;

And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,

Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in

Important Quotes

In the second act, Titania refers to the Athenians as "human mortals." Scholar John Hale interprets this as extremely significant word choice. Hale sees this reference to the mortality of humans from the fairie point of view to be indicative of Shakespeare's uncanny ability to write from the perspective of all of his characters. Titania, using the word "mortal" is both looking down on the youths and at the same time slightly sympathizing with them. Shakespeare's inclusion of this simultaneously condescending and empathetic reference to humans by the Queen of the Fairies is a perfect example of Shakespeare's nuanced writing. In a subtle manner, this individual quote from Titania portrays Shakespeare's mastery of writing and characterization. ^[2]

Other historical references

Subsequently, Titania has appeared in many other paintings, poems, plays and even graphic novels. Johann Wolfgang Goethe took the figures from Shakespeare's work to Faust I. Titania is married to Oberon, and the couple is celebrating its golden wedding anniversary in Faust I. Titania is also the largest of Uranus's moons, among others that are also named after Shakespearian characters and those of Alexander Pope.

Modern references

• She has occasional cameo roles in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic series, and is a major supporting character in The Books of Magic. In the mythology of those comic series, she is a mortal woman, who has lived and ruled in fairy land so long that no one remembers she once looked (and still is, under her magical seeming) human. It is hinted, though never outright stated, that she may have once been the lover of Dream, the protagonist of the Sandman series. It is eventually revealed that she is the mother of Timothy Hunter, the protagonist of the Books of Magic series. The character recently returned in her own graphic novel God Save the Queen.

Lady Titania, as portrayed in Gargoyles

• In Disney's Gargoyles, Titania was the queen of the fairies, but a millennium before the main events of the series, she apparently greatly angered her husband Oberon, causing them to divorce and him to banish her and all other members of their race from Avalon to teach her to "grow up." It is possible that she manipulated Oberon into that action though, as she was shown to make several such clever feints and ploys during her appearances in the series. The royal pair eventually reconciled and remarried.
• Titania and Oberon appear as major characters in the novel Magic Street by Orson Scott Card.
• Titania is the queen of the Summer Court of the Faeries in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books.
• In Frewin Jones's The Faerie Path, Titania is the mother of the book's main character, Tania.
• Titania is the Queen of the Fay in the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game.
• In the Doubled Edge series by Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis, Titania is the High Queen of the Sidhe (elves) and the consort to Oberon. She is the patron and protector of the young magician Elizabeth Tudor. It is hinted that Titania is in fact Hera.

References