Titania's Tremendous Traits

Q Tabarestani and Blake Lattimer

After thoroughly analyzing Midsummer Night’s Dream, we have come to the conclusion that Titania, Queen of the Fairies and wife of the powerful Oberon, has many varying traits, however, her main goals were to take care of the young Indian boy and to pleasure the foolish Bottom while she was under the love potion. From her first appearance in the story, the reader or viewer is able to witness Titania’s characteristic of responsibility and compassion towards the orphan child. As seen through her short speech, she stated that “for [the mother’s] sake I will not part with him”, which ultimately expresses her loyalty to her assistants and their livelihood (Act. 2, Sc.1: 142). She does not truly love the boy in an erotic sense, but rather in a mother to child manner in which she cares for him as if his mother never passed away. Another emotional characteristic of the Queen is her demanding and forceful attitude while she was being controlled by false love. During Act. 3, Sc. 1, she commands that Bottom should not and will not leave the dream forest by saying, “out of this wood do not desire to go, thou shalt remain here wether thou wilt or no” (Act. 3, Sc. 1: 154-155). This moment almost frightens Bottom, as seen in the film version of the play, and makes him quickly rethink his choice of words. Although this event may have been caused by her extreme love for Bottom at that particular moment, Titania’s overall demeanor throughout the scene was leaning slightly more towards controlling her love than complete infatuation. On the other hand, Titania rapidly changes in emotional state and soon becomes extremely caring and loving toward her ass-head. First, she brings out her four helping fairies and says, “be kind and courteous to his gentleman”, and then follows this statement by telling Bottom all of the possible services the fairies and the Queen can do for him while he is with them (Act. 3, Sc, 1: 170). It almost feels as if she is tempting his love with material objects, but later the reader is able to see a more sensual and sexual side of Titania. She whispers to Bottom, “the female ivy so enrings the barky fingers of the elm”, which is a sexual innuendo that refers to how the Queen will wrap her arms around her donkey-headed lover (Act. 4, Sc. 1: 44-45). Along with this statement, the book also references many other smaller sections where Titania and Bottom may have had relations after the writing stopped. Finally, the last trait has to be Titania’s unmatchable beauty and figure. As clever and quick-thinking as Bottom was, he awoke Titania from her deep sleep, made a contradictory statement that told Titania why should she love such a fool, but suddenly took back his previous statement by saying, “reason and love keep little company together nowadays” (Act. 3, Sc. 1: 145-146). One of the only reasons why Bottom would have revoked his line was that it took him a few seconds to comprehend the beauty and elegance of the Queen. If she was not appealing to the eye, Bottom would have strolled out of the woods as quickly as he strolled in. In addition to her physical and emotional traits, Shakespeare decided to put Titania’s line into iambic pentameter and rhyme almost every pair of adjacent lines. For example, in Act. 3, Sc, 1 lines154-163, every last word of each line rhymes with its own separate pair such as “go”, “no”, “deep”, and “sleep”. Her overall tone is very elegant and structured along with her sensual mood and behavior. All in all, Titania demonstrated many different characteristic through her flowing and complex lines while also showing the audience two main sides of her real personality.