The fairy king and queen
In wood outside Athens, Oberon the king, and Titania the queen of the fairies, with their tiny train of followers, held their midnight revels.
Between this little king and queen of sprites there happened, at this time, a sad disagreement; and whenever they met the quarreled.
The cause of this disagreement was Titania refusing to give Oberon a little boy, whose mother had been Titania’s friend.
One night as Titania was walking with some of her maids of honor, she met Oberon attended by train of fairy courtiers.
`Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,’ said the fairy king.
The queen replied, `What, Jealous Oberon, is it you? Fairies skip hence; I have foresworn his company?’
`Tarry, rash fairy,’ said Oberon. `Give me your boy to be my page.’
`Set your heart at rest,’ answered the queen. I will not give you the boy at any cost.’ She then left her lord in great anger.
`Well, go your way,’ said Oberon. `Before the morning dawns I will torment you for his injury.’
Oberon then sent for puck, his chief favorite and privy counselor.
`Come here, Puck, said Oberon. ~Fetch me the flower which Maids call `Love in idleness’; the juice of that little purple lower laid on the eyelids of those who sleep, will make them, when they awake, dote on the first thing they see. Some of the juice of that flower I will drop on the eyelids of my Titania when he is asleep; and the first thing she looks upon when she opens her eyes se will fall in love with. And before I will take this charm from off her sight, which I can do with another charm I know of, I will make her give me that boy to be my page’.
Puck, who loved mischief to be heart, was highly diverted with this intended frolic of his master, and ran to seek the flower. When puck returned with the little purple flower, Oberon went unperceived by Titania, to her bower, where she was preparing to go to rest. Her fairy bower was a bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a company of woodbine, musk –roses, and eglantine. There Titania always slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enameled skin of snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with their pretty lullaby, the left her to perform some important services she had enjoined them. Oberon then softly dew near his Titania, and dropped some of the love juice on her eyelids, saying:
`What thou seest when thou dost wake, Do it, for thy true-love take’
After a white of wandering in the woods, Oberon said to puck, `I will go and see what sweet love my Titania has found.’
Titania was still sleeping, and Oberon seeing a clown nears her, who had lost his way in the wood, and was likewise asleep. `This fellow,’ said he, `shall be my Titania’s true love’, clapping an ass’s head over the clown’s, it seemed to fit him as ell as if it had grown upon his own shoulders. Though Oberon fixed the ass’s head on very gently, it awakened him, and rising up, unconscious of what Oberon had done to him, he went towards the bower where the fairy queen slept.
`Ah! What angle is that I see, said Titania, opening her eyes, and the juice of the little purple flower beginning to take effect? `Are you as wise as you are beautiful?’
`Why, mistress,’ said the foolish clown, `if I have wit enough to find the way out of this wood, I have enough to serve my turn’.
`Out of the wood not desire to go,’ said the enamored queen.’ I am a spirit of no common rate. I love you. Go with me, and I will give you fairies to attend upon you.
She then called four of her fairies: their names were peas-blossom, cobweb, moth and mustard-seed.
`Attend,’ said the queen,’ upon this sweet gentleman. Hop in this walks, and gambol in his sight; feed him with grapes and apricots and steal for him the honey bags from the bees. Come, sit with me,’ said she to the clown, and let me play with amiable hairy cheeks, my beautiful ass! And kiss your fair large ears, my gentle joy!’
`My sweet love,’ said the queen, `What will you have to eat? I have a venturous fairy shall seek he squirrel’s hoard and fetch you some new nuts.’ `I hard rather have a handful of dried peas,’ said the clown, who with his ass’s head had got an ass’s appetite. `But, I pray, let none of your people disturb me, for I have a mind to sleep.’
`Sleep, then,’ said the queen,’ and I will wind you in my arms. Oh how I love you! How I dote upon you!’
When the fairy king saw the clown sleeping in the arms of is queen, he advanced within her sight, and reproached her with having lavished her favors upon an ass.
This she could not deny, as the clown was then sleeping within her arms, with his ass’s head crowned her with flowers.
When Oberon had teased her for some time, he again demanded the boy; which she, ashamed of being discovered by her lord wither new favorite, did not dare to refuse him.
Oberon, having thus obtained the little boy he had so long wished for to be his page, took pity on the disgraceful situation into which, by his merry contrivance, he had brought his Titania and threw some of the juice of the other flower into her eyes; and the fairy queen immediately recovered her senses, and wondered at her late dotage, saying how she now located the sight of the strange monster.
Oberon likewise took the ass’s head from off the clown, and left him to finish his nap with his own fool’s head upon his shoulders.
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