Romantic Poet a Midsummer\'s Night

¶ … Romantic poet

A Midsummer's Night Parallel: The Language of Oberon and Thesus' Worlds

Marriage, fertility -- and a world upside down. Although the rules that define courtship and marriage Theseus' kingdom may seem to stand in profound contrast to that of Oberon and Titania's, they share many similar characteristics. First of all, even in fairyland, there is a war between the sexes. Hippolyta was an Amazon before Theseus captured her as his prize, and similarly the Queen of fairyland Titania is striving to assert her authority over proud, King Oberon. However, the language of the fairies, in contrast to the language of the humans, is far more profoundly metaphorical in nature. Rather than relying upon rhyme of vague generalities, when the fairies express their emotions, their words are intense, vivid and eschew easy couplets to show they recognize a more profound supernatural realm than humans, and the transient nature of passion.

This can be seen immediately when the viewer or reader learns how both Oberon and Titania, and unspecified times, have enjoyed the love of Theseus and Hippolyta. Titania says wryly:

The bouncing Amazon,

Your buskin'd mistress and your warrior love,

To Theseus must be wedded, and you come

To give their bed joy and prosperity" (II.1).

To which Oberon responds:

How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus? (II.1)

In contrast, when Helena mourns the fickleness of Demetrius, she pouts in an adolescent fashion, and complains that she is just as pretty as Hermia, even though Demetrius cannot see it: How happy some o'er other some can be!

Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.

But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;

He will not know what all but he do know (I.1).

The fairies' desires function in a human-like fashion, as they can feel sexual impulses and envy, and even enjoy relationships with mortals, and yet they also have a kind of supernatural function, as they extend their blessings to the moral realm, as they do at the end of the story, and can transport themselves and their lovers wherever they want -- Oberon can pretend to be a 'Corin' to a shepherdess, while Titania is said to have, when with Thesus:

lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigenia, whom he ravished?

And make him with fair AEgle break his faith,

With Ariadne and Antiopa? (II.1)

Instead of the language of 'what of that' or 'he doesn't know' of Helena, the language of the fairest speaks of the ravishment of mythological figures in blank verse and the careless, transcendent impact passion can have. The fairies' language, even at their pettiest or even when Titania is making love to Bottom as an ass, is always lush and luxuriant, and full of potent images, in contrast to the language of the humans which is, like the human perspective itself, limited in its knowledge of eternity and must be confined into marriage.

This contrast can be seen in the most serious jealous 'spat' of Oberon and Titania. Titania demands that she be allowed to keep a young boy, the child of a woman who served her until, being mortal, died of childbirth: "grow[n] big-bellied with the wanton wind" (II.1). This sense of eroticism between women and women is implied less specifically in Thesus' wooing of Hippolyta, an Amazon, but unlike the crude techniques Thesus uses to dominate the Amazon, and his equally pedestrian language: "Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,/and won thy love, doing thee injuries" (I.1). Oberon uses tricks and cunning just as magic as his language to extract Titania's young squire from his change -- shaming Titania into forcing her to yield the changeling child to him. "Having once this juice, / I'll watch Titania when she is asleep, / and drop the liquor of it in her eyes" (II.1). Likewise, even while Titania chides Oberon, she has a rueful knowledge of the extent to which the fairy king and queen's fight has impacted the world:

Thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea

Contagious fogs; which falling in the land

Have every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents (II.1).

Oberon and Titania are thus not above the common desires and petty passions that motivate all mortals -- but they know the harms that their jealousies can do, even on a cosmological level, accept that infidelity is a part of life -- and when moved use more creative ways to wage war with the opposite sex. Titiana is jealous of Hippolyta, her most obvious human parallel, given that she has also enjoyed a relationship with Theseus, but she extracts no revenge -- she simply moves on, as Oberon can love a shepherdess, a young boy, and his queen. At their most profound and insightful, the ageless fairies seem to be able to accept that beings such as themselves will have multiple passions, even though they still have the feelings of a human-like creature. This is unlike the four adolescent lovers who literally fall to blows when they suspect infidelity, or even Hippolyta who tries to first foreswear men rather than seek power and multiple relationships like Titania.

Oberon and Titiana, even though they use allegations of infidelity as a weapon during their power struggle, do not seriously expect one another to be faithful all of the time. The parallels between the two suggest there is the sense that conflict is inherent to male-female relationships, in both the celestial and terrestrial spheres. But Thesus' and Hippolyta's language and behavior do not set their desires in the context of eternity. Their words have a conventional ring, and are characterized by black-and-white thinking when talking of love and conflict, not by profound sense of the sorrows that envy causes for the environment, in provoking a war, as does Titania.

The conventional nature of human love and envy perhaps is most starkly dramatized however, in the conventional and virtually interchangeable language of the lovers, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena. When expressing their feelings for one another, rather than using images and setting their passion against the tide and sweep of a wider history, they resort to the language of couplets and conventional wisdom:

Hermia: O. cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low.

Lysander: Or else misgraffed in respect of years,

Hermia: O. spite! too old to be engaged to young.

Lysander: Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,

Hermia: O. hell! To choose love by another's eyes.

In contrast to the specific language of the fairies, the lovers speak in vague generalities and use the same types of meter and rhetorical expressions. Helena's monologue, mourning the loss of Demetrius to Hermia, even uses rhymed couplets, just like Lysander and Hermia rhyme together, to express their love. This makes the confusion that Puck has for the different lovers emblematic of a greater truth -- humans think too much of their passions, and take them too seriously -- even while they use less individuated and profound language to express their passions.