#titania!dream

[diioonysus]

women in art: titania

[the-evil-clergyman]

Titania Sleeping by Heinrich Faust (19th Century)

[alifeoffairytales]

Details from Arthur Rackham’s illustration "And now they never meet in grove or green," (1908) from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

[aenslem]

Rupert Everett & Michelle Pfeiffer as Oberon & Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) | dir: Michael Hoffman

[7pleiades7]

Titania Sleeping (1840) by Richard Dadd (1817-1886), oil on canvas, 64.8 × 77.5 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

[fishfingersandscarves]

Soft Fuzzy Man - Lemon Demon | the sandman animatic

or as i affectionately call it morpheus' relationship L compilation

[writing-for-life]

The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known

Or: Does Morpheus really have commitment issues?

[Bear with me, I’ll get to this panel 🤣]

I’ve read many times that Morpheus supposedly has commitment issues, and it always has me scratching my head a bit…

I personally rather think he is desperate to commit. He so badly craves a serious relationship that he is prone to rush into it and build it on wonky foundations, but he has certainly no commitment issues as we would commonly understand them.

Is it in his nature though to be truly seen and understood when he is [a] Dream? And can dreams ever last? These are the much more interesting questions in my view. Let’s have a look at the romantic relationships we know of…

Killalla: Walked out on him. That wasn’t his lack of commitment. If anything, he came on a bit strong while she was still assessing her feelings for him.

Alianora: He fully committed to her despite basically being bullied into it by Desire. And they were happy for “a goodly while”. For those in doubt: “Goodly” doesn’t mean “a bit”. It means “great, large, long.” And the fact that Alianora couldn’t go back to her own plane because she had stayed in the Dreaming too long corroborates that they were together for a long time. Probably longer than any human relationship ever lasts, because I doubt “a long time” means “a couple of years” for someone who is 12 billion years old.

And now I’ll sandwich the relationship we hardly know anything about between some random (?) panels to also make a point why I think it might sit here in the timeline…

Titania: Who knows. Sounded like an affair, and as if they both had no intention of committing. He was clearly very fond of her though, and I can never shake the feeling that we should look a bit deeper into AMND and find the parallels between Auberon, Titania (not hard, and they are pretty much pictured as estranged) and Bottom. There are many ways to get confused with a jackass, you know? 🤣 Plus, Bottom is the one who gets to play Pyramus in “Pyramus and Thisbe”. That’s the ultimate blueprint for “Romeo and Juliet”: Ill-fated love of catastrophic proportions, people are dead by the end of it. That’s why I often wondered if the affair with Titania was actually pre-Nada, and the inspiration for Shakespeare wasn’t random (it wasn’t random for The Tempest either). I mean, it wasn’t random anyway because it was a parting gift, but I also don’t think it was entirely random with regard to their relationship. Wild head-canon of course, but maybe not that wild (he also says that Wendel’s Mound was already a theatre before humans walked the earth, so there’s that)? And even if he wasn’t committed (we quite frankly don’t know if he intended to but she didn’t or couldn’t), she and the Fae meant enough to him to give them a play as a parting gift.

Nada: Killed herself after one night, but that wasn’t down to lack of commitment on his part. Again: If anything, he came on far too strong, wanted to be with her and was far too pushy about it.

Calliope: We don’t know how long they were together before they had Orpheus. Could have been a while, could have been only a shortish time. But even if we assumed they had him fairly quickly—they were still together when Orpheus, who was mortal, got married to Eurydice, so even if he got married young, we’re still talking something in the realm of +/- 20 years, and that’s the absolute low-ball-estimate. And while they had started to drift apart (considering what we know from Calliope), they were still on good terms and had no intention of splitting up until the whole Orpheus drama caused a rift they couldn’t mend. Again: That’s not someone who has commitment issues. It’s a relationship breaking down over hurt, stubbornness and grief.

Thessaly: Again, she was the one who left him and caused his dramatic interlude in the rain. Were they ill suited? Yes. Did she feel neglected and went into a strop over it? Yes. Did he not get that she felt neglected? Also yes, but that’s not lack of commitment. That’s his not getting that people aren’t mind readers (must be hard if you’re probably one yourself 🤣) and, by and large, need assurances of love. He doesn’t get that these women don’t understand they have his love; he can’t grasp that line of thinking because it is all so clear to him when he loves someone: They have him, what’s the issue? Is that a not so great way of (not) communicating when you’re having a relationship to someone? Absolutely. Is it a commitment issue though? Absolutely not.

I think Morpheus doesn’t really have commitment issues in romantic relationships—wouldn’t that almost be antithetical to his nature? Rules and responsibilities. Yeah, about that one…

What I do think is that he struggles with the mortifying ordeal of being (not) known by his lovers. Because how could he? He is Dream. That is his problem. Dreams cannot be fully known or understood. He is very eloquent but at the same time a very… confusing communicator. I don’t want to say “bad”, because I feel that’s not getting to the bottom of it. Again, it is the nature of dreams to be confusing and strange, open to (mis)interpretation, hard to grasp and understand. And they also stop being dreams once they become real. All of that is true and hence makes relationships both hard for him and those involved. Is he truly not willing to commit though?

I still find that hard to believe…

[cinematic-phosphenes]

Elspeth Catton as Titania at the Midsummer Night's Dream party SALTBURN (2023), dir. Emerald Fennell

[illustratus]

The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Joseph Noel Paton

[janeeyreofmanderley]

How that scene should have gone:

Titania :My Oberon, what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamored of an ass! Titania:*looks at husband* Titania: But then, that seems to be my type anyway.

[naturaltolife]

Fairy Queen, Titania —Aesthetic

The Fairy Queen, Titania

Titania is a character in William Shakespeare's 1595–1596 play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. She's the Queen of the Fairies and wife of the Fairy King, Oberon. The pair are depicted as powerful natural spirits. Together, they guarantee the fertility or health of the human and natural worlds.

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Henry Fuseli - Titania adoring Bottom, c. 1790.

Versions >> 1 | 2

[the-evil-clergyman]

Titania by Emma Whitney (1881-84)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Vivien Leigh as Titania in a stage production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," 1937. I get chills just viewing this photo!

(Broadway Remembered)

* * * *

Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. I am a spirit of no common rate, The Summer still doth tend upon my state. And I do love thee; therefore go with me. I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing while thou, on pressèd flowers, dost sleep, And I will purge thy mortal grossness so That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed!

Titania in Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

A Midsummer Night's Dream - art by Arthur Rackham (1908)

[editfandom]

Titania - A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1999