The Changeling
Early on in the play, we learn that Titania has been taking care of a "lovely" Indian boy and spends all her time lavishing him with love and affection (2.1). This has caused a huge rift between Titania and her husband Oberon, who wants the boy to be his personal "henchman" (errand boy/attendant). Oberon is also bitter about the fact that Titania keeps the kid to herself while ignoring Oberon. According to Puck, Titania "perforce withholds the loved boy, / Crown him with flowers, and makes him all her joy" (2.1.26-28). Although the boy doesn't have a speaking role in the play (and doesn't even appear on stage in some productions), he's a pretty important figure in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
What We Know About the Changeling
First things first: Who exactly is this little boy and where are his real parents? According to team Oberon, the little boy is a "changeling" Titania stole from "an Indian king" (2.1.23; 22).
Side note:If you were thinking Shakespeare was referring to the Angelina Jolie movie—we're sorry to disappoint.Stephen Greenblatt tells us that a "changeling" typically refers to "a child left by fairies in exchange for one stolen, but here [the term refers] to the stolen child." "Changelings" are an important part of English fairy lore and Shakespeare often makes references to them in his plays, like The Winter's Tale (3.3) and Henry IV Part 1, where King Henry says he wishes some fairies had switched his rotten kid for a better son at birth (1.1).
Titania doesn't deny that she's got the kid with her, but she tells a different story about how she came to care for him. According to Titania, she used to be friends with the kid's human mother back in India but "she, being mortal, of that boy did die" (2.1.140). Translation: The woman died in childbirth, so Titania is fiercely committed to raising the boy for her friend.
Why is the Boy from India?
We also want to point out that Shakespeare makes a very big deal out of the fact that the boy is from "the farthest step of India," which is also the place from which Oberon has travelled to attend the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta (2.1). In the play, India is imagined as an exotic, far-off place, where the evening air is "spiced" and where the sails of merchant ships "grow big-bellied with the wanton wind" (2.1.133). Shakespeare wrote this play in the late 16th century, when England had already been trading with India for a few hundred years, so we're not surprised at Shakespeare's geographical shout-out.
The Changeling and Domestic Drama
Like we said, the little boy is the object over which the Fairy Queen and King fight, so, in many ways, he's emblematic of the couple's domestic power struggle. When Oberon succeeds in taking the boy from Titania (by dosing her with magic love juice and forcing her to fall deliriously in love with Bottom), Oberon basically strips Titania of a mother-child type relationship that is obviously important to her.
Some critics see Oberon and Titania's fight as a dramatization of what often happened in upper-class houses in Shakespeare's England, where boys of a certain age were taken out of their mom's care and sent off to school (with other boys and male teachers). Scholars Gail Kern Paster and Skiles Howard argue that "The play identifies the emotional violence of this radical separation of mother and son with Titania and her ferocious refusal to let her godson go. Oberon parodies and ridicules her maternal attachment and care by putting the monstrous Bottom in the boy's place."
Brain Snack: In 1862, a British magazine called Punch published a Midsummer Night's Dream-inspired political cartoon commenting on the US Civil War. The provocative cartoon depicts Oberon as President Lincoln and Titania as the State of Virginia. The Changeling is depicted as a young slave boy, over whom Lincoln and Virginia are fighting.
FAQs
Character Analysis
Why does Oberon want the changeling boy? ›
Oberon wants Titania's changeling child to serve him in his court instead of hers. He also wants to satisfy his own jealousy, as Titania and Oberon have accused each other of romantic dalliances with mortals: Titania with Theseus and Oberon with Hippolyta.
Why won t Titania give up the changeling? ›
Titania refuses to let the boy go because his mother was a close friend of hers, and when she died in childbirth, Titania agreed to raise her son. Hatching a plan to win the Indian boy, Oberon sends Puck in search of a flower called love-in-idleness.
Who is the monster in Midsummer Night's Dream? ›
The monster—a simple weaver named Bottom who came into the woods with his companions to rehearse a play for Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding—is himself the victim of magic. He has been turned into a monster by Oberon's helper, a hobgoblin or “puck” named Robin Goodfellow.
What are the creatures in Midsummer Night's Dream? ›
In Shakespeare's popular comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, the four fairies who attend to Queen Titania represent Shakespeare's interpretation of what fairy folk might be. He made his fairies, including Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, more benevolent than the traditional folklore of the time dictated.
What happened to the changeling child in A Midsummer Night's Dream? ›
Titania wants the Indian Boy, an “irrational, unattainable” emblem of desire. Because Titania loves the boy, he becomes valuable to Oberon. Eventually, he succeeds in taking the changeling away from Titania's all-female world and “school[s] him in- stead as a knight, to 'trace the forests wild'” (Garber 219-20).
What does the changeling boy represent? ›
In Midsummer Night's Dream, the changeling boy is a lovely little boy from India that was taken by the fairies. This was a lovely boy that pulled in Titania's attention because of how lovely it was and Oberon got jealous. Here we can have both interpretations of a custody battle and of desire and jealousy.
Why does Titania keep the Indian child? ›
The conversation turns to the little Indian boy, whom Oberon asks Titania to give him. But Titania responds that the boy's mother was a devotee of hers before she died; in honor of his mother's memory, Titania will hold the boy near to her.
Why did Titania give Oberon the child? ›
Oberon, the husband of Titania, chooses to get his revenge on his wife by using magic to make her fall in love with a monster. He finds Titania sleeping after her tryst with Bottom and feigns shock and anger. To apologize to her husband for her infidelity, she agrees to hand over the changeling boy.
Why does Titania love the Indian boy? ›
Oberon and Titania, the king and queen of the fairies respectively, are arguing over custody of an Indian boy. Oberon wants the Indian boy as a henchman, and Titania wants the boy because she was friends with his mother.
The fairy king Oberon sends Puck to fetch this purple-hearted bloom early in the play, and they both use it to drug the fairy queen, Titania, as well as the Athenian youths Lysander and Demetrius, rearranging couplings with a dash of juice applied to the unsuspecting eyes of slumbering lovers.
What is the moral lesson of A Midsummer Night Dream? ›
One lesson that I have learned in A Midsummer Night's Dream is that if you love someone it should not be because of their appearance but because of their personality. If you do not do this you will have a lot of fights. Just because someone looks good on the outside does not mean they act good on the inside.
Who is the villain in A Midsummer Night's Dream? ›
Egeus is the main antagonist of the 1596 Shakespeare comedy play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. He is the exceedingly cruel father of one of the play's protagonist, Hermia, who wants her to marry a man named Demetrius instead of another named Lysander (whom she loves), and who will have her executed if she defies him.
Is Puck Oberon's son? ›
Biography. Puck is over 4000 years old being the eldest son of Oberon and Titania and older brother of Mustardseed. He is heir to the throne of Faerie and so is given the title 'Crown Prince'.
What creature is Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream? ›
Based on the Puck of English mythology and the púca of Celtic mythology, Puck is a mischievous fairy, sprite, or jester. He is the first of the main fairy characters to appear, and he significantly influences events in the play. He delights in pranks such as replacing Nick Bottom's head with that of an ass.
What is the demon in Midsummer Nights Dream? ›
The character Robin Goodfellow, also referred to as "The puck, Robin Goodfellow" and Hobgoblin, appears as a vassal of the Fairy King Oberon in William Shakespeare's 1595/96 play A Midsummer Night's Dream, and is responsible for the mischief that occurs.
Why does Oberon want the changeling Boy quizlet? ›
What reason does he give for wanting the boy? Oberon wants the changeling boy that Titania has. He wants a companion on his wanderings.
Why does Oberon want the changeling boy brainly? ›
Final answer:
Oberon, in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', wants the changeling boy to serve as his henchman. The child was a devotee of Titania, Oberon's wife, who refuses to give him up, leading to conflict.
Why is Oberon jealous of the boy? ›
Oberon is extremely angry about the fact that Titania won't give him the changeling boy. Oberon is jealous of the attention Titania is giving the changeling boy.
What does Oberon do with the Indian boy? ›
Oberon wants the Indian boy as a henchman, and Titania wants the boy because she was friends with his mother. Angry, Oberon makes Puck squeeze the juice of a magical flower on Titania's eyes to make her fall in love with the first living thing she sees (spoilers: Bottom with a donkey head).
