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The chatter between Puck and the fairy is ended by the sudden appearance of Oberon at one end of the stage and Titania at the other. The mood, as suggested by Puck, is dark and angry. \"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania\" is Oberon\'s welcome. The moon\'s light, which is generally their natural accustomed light, has turned sour. This king and queen are in a mutual rage--his, a jealous one, as Titania points out. She is ready to leave immediately. Oberon upbraids her; is he not her lord? But Titania is not the kind of woman who can be easily pushed around. If he is her lord, she asks, why has he gone running around with Phillida (a familiar figure in romantic poetry)? And not only that--isn\'t the real reason he\'s come to Athens so that he can bless the union of Theseus and Hippolyta, his \"former mistress\" and \"warrior love\"? Obviously, the jealousy works both ways. Try to understand both of their sides. Is Oberon being too domineering? Is Titania neglecting her duties? Oberon and Titania are not nice \"airy sprites\" or tiny, funny elves. They are both mighty magical powers. They rule over an enchanted and mysterious realm, and they are filled with intelligence, passion, and cunning. They have the full range of human emotions, but their power is more than human. Oberon throws back his accusations: Titania is herself in love with Theseus and has previously caused the duke to break off with other of his affairs.
Titania, exasperated, replies that all of that has been concocted by Oberon\'s jealous imagination. Ever since the beginning of midsummer, Oberon has spoiled all their meetings with his jealous rages. More than that: this disturbance between them has set the whole natural world out of order. The primal forces themselves seem to be taking revenge on the king and queen who are so furiously at odds. The winds have sucked up fogs from the sea and overswollen the rivers with their contents. The ox and the farmer have labored in vain; the grain is rotting in the drowned field. The cattle are dead and the crows fat from feeding off them. The lovely English mazes and lawn games are full of mud. Even the moon is so angry that she spreads diseases through the air. The picture is absolutely frightening. It\'s almost as if biblical plagues have descended on England, corrupting its beauty. The very seasons are out of whack. Nobody can tell whether it\'s summer or winter. Frost falls on the new rose and spring buds burst through the snow and ice. And all of this, explains Titania, has occurred because she and Oberon have lost their harmony.
NOTE: This confusion in the natural world indicates how powerful Oberon and Titania are. You all know how difficult a family disturbance can be; sometimes it feels as if the whole world is breaking apart. But with Oberon and Titania it seems to be literally true. That their quarrel affects nature also displays the ways in which the different realms of the play affect each other. Each set of characters (the court, the lovers, the fairies, and the rustics) reflects and comments upon the others.
Titania\'s speech contains some of the most beautiful language in the play. Part of the excitement in experiencing Shakespeare is in noticing how rich his writing is, how fully he explores and expands his images and brings them to life. To really make the natural disasters vivid, he uses personification. All the forces of the world seem to act with will and emotion, just as people do. The wind sucks up water from the sea \"as in revenge\"; the rivers overflow because they are \"proud\"; the moon is \"pale in her anger.\" The whole scene, then, is alive with feeling. And when things have feeling, don\'t you have stronger feelings for them?
Oberon tells Titania it\'s within her power to restore order to the world: all she has to do is give the changeling boy to him. Titania is not interested. She explains how close she was to the boy\'s mother, how they gossiped and played together. The woman unfortunately died in childbirth, and for her sake Titania plans to rear the boy.
How long does she plan to stay in the woods? Oberon wants to know. Perhaps till after Theseus\'s wedding day, she replies. If the king wants to dance in the moonlight with her, fine; if not, let them be. Oberon wants only the boy, \"Not for thy fairy kingdom,\" cries Titania, and off she goes.
Oberon, a haughty and relentless presence, immediately plots his revenge. He calls Puck to his side, reminiscing about a time he heard a mermaid on a dolphin\'s back singing so beautifully that \"stars shot madly from their spheres\" to hear her music. (Scholars have pointed out the similarity between this image and some spectacular court entertainments for Queen Elizabeth in the late sixteenth century. This is sometimes used to help date the writing of A Midsummer Night\'s Dream.) That same time, adds Oberon, he saw Cupid flying, armed with arrows of love. He aimed an arrow at a virgin, but missed. (It has also been suggested that the virgin was a reference to Queen Elizabeth, known as the Virgin Queen.) Oberon, being sharp of eye as well as mind, marked exactly where the misdirected arrow fell. Do you get the feeling this jealous king doesn\'t miss a thing? He seems to have stored up potential magic charms the way a dog might store some bones. He knows they will come in handy some day.
The arrow fell on a flower, turning it from milk-white to purple. This startling sexual imagery makes us feel the dangerous and eerie power of Cupid\'s arrow. The wound it makes is \"love\'s wound.\" The flower is called love-in-idleness; we know it today as a pansy. Filled with Cupid\'s magic, this transformed flower has the power to transform others. Its juice, squeezed on a sleeper\'s eyelids, will make that person fall in love with the next live creature he or she sees. Note Shakespeare\'s use of the word \"creature\" to indicate that the love object might not necessarily be human.
NOTE: SHAKESPEARE AND FLOWERS: In trying to give you a picture of the power of the fairy world, Shakespeare relies heavily on the use of flowers. They seem to stand as special signposts of magical transformation. Flowers and plants have traditionally been associated with magic, and in the case of certain herbs their curative medicinal powers are well-known. In Shakespeare\'s time, much scientific, philosophical, and magical investigation was devoted to the powers and properties of plants and flowers. But no matter how much scientific understanding we have of them, their colors and intricate forms still instill in us a sense of wonder.
Sometimes Shakespeare compares the fairies to flowers in terms of their height. This makes them seem as if they\'re part of another dimension, even if we can see that on the stage they\'re the size of people. Some of the fairies even have floral names, connecting them to some elemental mystery. Later, Oberon will repeat the names of flowers as if they were magical incantations.
Here the love-in-idleness plant is symbolic of the power in love to change people, altering their inner and outer natures. Swollen as it is with the \"poison\" of Cupid\'s arrow, the flower is the essence of the nature of love. And the nature of love is at the heart of this play.
Notice also the recurrent theme of eyesight. In this instance, the eyes of the sleeping lover-to-be are altered by the juice of the plant. What \"creature\" this person sees on awakening--worthy or not--will become the object of love.
Oberon commands Puck to get that flower. The spriteful Robin obeys quickly: He\'ll \"put a girdle round about the earth / In forty minutes.\" Alone, Oberon tells us his secret plan. Titania is to be the victim upon whose eyes the charmed juice will work its magic. And don\'t expect kindliness from the king; he\'s not after a prince for his queen. Rather he hopes for something more grotesque: a lion, a bear, a wolf, a bull, or even a monkey. And she won\'t have her \"real\" eyes returned until she delivers up the changeling boy to Oberon! How does this nastiness make you feel about Oberon and his potential power? Watch how this edge of danger undercuts the comedy of transformation, keeping dramatic tension alive. With Oberon lurking in the unseen air, how safe would you feel?
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