Shakespeare · Soliloquies & Solo Speeches
Production Notes
Titania confronts Oberon, her husband, over his demand for the changeling boy. Her speech explains how their quarrel has fractured the natural world itself — floods, failed harvests, confused seasons. It is one of Shakespeare’s great ecological speeches, and it operates as both accusation and lament.
The speech rewards Players willing to hold stillness in the face of power. Titania is not shouting; she is precise, each image selected to land. The scale of the damage she describes — whole seasons disrupted — should make the Queen of the Fairies feel enormous.
Script
TITANIA
These are the forgeries of jealousy; And never, since the middle summer’s spring, Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, By pavèd fountain or by rushy brook, Or in the beachèd margent of the sea, To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, As in revenge have sucked up from the sea Contagious fogs, which, falling in the land, Hath every pelting river made so proud That they have overborne their continents. The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain, The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard. The fold stands empty in the drownèd field, And crows are fatted with the murrain flock. The nine-men’s-morris is filled up with mud, And the quaint mazes in the wanton green, For lack of tread, are undistinguishable. The human mortals want their winter here. No night is now with hymn or carol blessed. Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound. And thorough this distemperature we see The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world By their increase now knows not which is which. And this same progeny of evils comes From our debate, from our dissension; We are their parents and original.
Facilitator Notes
Warm-up: Explore large and small — what physical scale does a fairy queen command? Try the speech once tiny, once enormous. Which is more powerful?
Debrief prompts:
- Titania speaks of nature’s disruption as a consequence of a domestic quarrel. How does Shakespeare connect the personal and the cosmic?
- Which image in the speech lands hardest for Players? Why?
- The speech ends with “We are their parents and original.” Who is “we”? What does Titania admit in that last line?
- Titania is angry — but is she also frightened? Where might fear live in this speech?