Henry Meynell Rheam (British painter) 1859 - 1920
Titania aka Titania Welcoming her Fairy Bretheren, s.d.
watercolour
37 x 59 cm.
private collection
Titania is a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the 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.
Shakespeare's Titania is a very proud creature and as much of a force to contend with as her husband Oberon. The marital quarrel she and Oberon are engaged in over which of them should have the keeping of an Indian changeling boy 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 servant Puck, Titania magically falls in love with a rude mechanical (a lower class labourer), 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
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