Oberon

King of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, spouse of Titania.

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Oberon is a king of the fairies in medieval and Renaissance literature. He is a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which he is spouse of Titania, Queen of the Fairies. In that play, Oberon is the king of all of the fairies and is engaged in a dispute with his wife Titania, the fairy queen, over custody of a child. Because Oberon and Titania are both powerful spirits connected to nature, their feuding disrupts the weather. Oberon tricks Titania into giving him back the child using the juice from a special flower that makes one "madly dote upon the next live thing that it sees".

Quick Facts

Title: King of the fairies

Lore & Background

Oberon is first attested as the name of a fairy king in the early 13th century chanson de geste entitled Les Prouesses et faitz du noble Huon de Bordeaux, wherein the eponymous hero encounters King Oberon of the fairies as he passes through a forest. Huon is forewarned by a hermit not to speak to Oberon, but his courtesy causes him to answer the fairy king's greetings and so wins his friendship and aid. The fairy king is dwarfish in height, though very handsome. He explains that, at his birth, an offended fairy cursed him not to grow past three years of age but relented and gave him great beauty as compensation. In this story, he is said to be the child of Morgan le Fay and Julius Caesar. He is given some Celtic trappings, such as a magical cup that is ever full. "The magic cup supplied their evening meal; for such was its virtue that it afforded not only wine, but more solid fare when desired", according to Thomas Bulfinch.

Reader's Guide

Oberon is a character in The Scottish History of James IV, a play written c. 1590 by Robert Greene. In 1610, Ben Jonson wrote a masque of Oberon, the Faery Prince. It was performed by Henry Frederick Stuart, the Prince of Wales, at the English court on New Year's Day, 1611. Oberon is a main character in Michael Drayton's narrative poem Nimphidia (1627) about the fairy Pigwiggin's love for Queen Mab and the jealousy of King Oberon. In the anonymous book Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests (1628) Oberon is known as "Obreon" and is the father of the half-fairy Robin Goodfellow by a human woman. Christoph Martin Wieland first published his epic poem Oberon in 1780; it in turn became the basis for the German opera Huon and Amanda, later known as Oberon, by Sophie Seyler. Johann Wolfgang Goethe included the figures from Shakespeare's work in Faust I. Oberon is married to Titania, and the couple are celebrating their golden wedding anniversary in Faust I. In 1826, Carl Maria von Weber's opera, Oberon, debuted at Covent Garden in London, England. Oberon appears with Titania in Richard Dadd's unfinished painting, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, displayed in the Tate Museum.

Did You Know?

Shakespeare saw or heard of the French heroic song through the c. 1540 translation by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, called Huon of Burdeuxe.
In 1830, botanist John Lindley named a flowering plant in the family Orchidaceae, Oberonia after the fairy king.