Titania And Bottom Analysis

In May 1774, Johann Herder wrote to his mentor Johann Hamann that “there is living in Rome a noble German from Zürich, Henry Fuseli, a genius like a mountain torrent, a worshipper of Shakespeare, and now, Shakespeare’s painter.” With such a reputation, it was no surprise that Henry Fuseli was one of the main contributors to Boydell’s and Woodmason’s Shakespeare Galleries. For both, Fuseli provided a total of fourteen history paintings which almost always included some depiction of the supernatural in them. Out of the fourteen, Fuseli based six of them on the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hereinafter also referred to as Dream). While derivative of the play I will, in this essay, examine Fuseli’s Dream paintings — especially Titania and Bottom (fig.1) which currently resides in the Tate — its effect and how it stands separate from the text as a work of sublimity despite its reliance on it. Titania and Bottom (fig.1) depicts a moment from Act 4 Scene 1 of the play, just before Oberon wakes Titania, his fairy queen, from the spell he placed on her which caused her to fall in love with Bottom who had been magically transformed into a donkey-headed man. Here, Titania’s fairies-in-waiting are being called upon to attend to the ass-headed Bottom while she dotes on him. The painting places the main characters up front and centre, surrounded by a crowd of fairies. The painting depicts the very lines from the play itself, specifically the moment when Bottom calls upon