The central characters are Titiania, the Queen of the Fairies, who is the naked, mischievous figure at the centre of the picture and Bottom, an Athenian worker and Titania's donkey-headed companion who, at her instruction, is surrounded by an outpouring of female exuberance and attention. The name ‘Titania’ is a reference to the Titans, the primal Greek gods and goddesses that helped create the Earth.
It is a dramatically female-dominated scene, with an incredibly imaginative phantasmagoria of fairies, all fraught with their own symbolism. Look, for example, at the woman on the right who is gazing knowingly out at us as she leads a little old man on a leash. This has been interpreted as the triumph of youth over age and of the senses over reason, but it is also clearly the triumph of women over men.
In the play, Titania murmurs lovingly to Bottom, the object of her affections -
Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.
