Titania is the Queen of the Fairies and wife to Oberon, and although she and her husband seem evenly matched at the beginning of the play, most of Titania’s power is completely overshadowed once she is enchanted. In the play, she first appears in a quarrel with Oberon, declaring she will not reconcile with him until he gives up trying to take the changeling child from her. She offers no compromise, indicating Titania’s strong-willed independence. After Oberon gives Titania a love potion to make her infatuated with Bottom, she no longer cares about the child or Oberon’s decisions. The potion makes it so she is entirely focused on the grotesque Bottom, and the imagery of this fairy queen lovelorn for a clumsy craftsman highlights how even the strong Titania has become subject to men. Titania’s potion-induced lovesickness for Bottom indicates just one of many examples in the play of women being oppressed by the wiles of powerful men, especially because after the spell is lifted, Titania’s animosity remains in the past and she holds no grudge against Oberon for humiliating her.

Like Oberon, Titania has no trouble playing with mortals. Her conflict with Oberon is about the ownership of a young human boy. Neither Titania’s nor Oberon’s argument as to why they should have custody is about the child’s welfare, but rather which of them would be better entertained and served by his presence. When she sees Bottom with his donkey head, Titania is under Oberon’s love spell, but she is still aware of his mortality, and in her lovesick ramblings she suggests purging Bottom of his “mortal grossness” and turning him into an immortal spirit, like herself. In both the changeling’s and Bottom’s cases, as well as in her own enchantment, Titania does not seem to be malicious so much as fascinated by mortality, which is one of the only things she cannot attain herself.

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