His Titania (also engraved inside the Shakespeare Gallery), overflows with elvish fun and imaginative drollery. It professes to embody that portion of the initial scene within the fourth act in which the spell-blinded queen caresses Bottom the weaver, on whose shoulders Oberon’s transforming wand has placed an ass’ head. Titania, a gay and alluring being, attended by her troop of fairies, is endeavoring to appear as lovely as you can in the sight of her lover, who holds down his head and assumes the environment of the very stupid of creatures. One almost imagines that her ripe round lips are uttering the well-known words,-“Come sit thee down 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.”
The rout and revelry which the fancy with the painter’s art painting techniques has poured for this spell-bound pair, baffles all description. All is mirthful, tricky, and fantastic. Sprites of looks and many types of hues-of all “dimensions, shapes, and metals,”-the dwarfish elf as well as the elegant fay-Cobweb commissioned to kill a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle, that Bottom could have the honey-bag-Pease-Blossom, who had the less agreeable employment of scratching the weaver’s head-and that each fairy who can find the hoard with the squirrel and carry away his nuts-with a score of equally merry companions are swarming everywhere and in full employment. Mustard-Seed, a fairy of dwarfish stature, stands on tiptoe in the hollow of Bottom’s hand, endeavoring to succeed in his nose-his fingers almost touch, he could be in just a quarter of an inch of scratching, but it is evident they can don' more, and his old master techniques is simply too a lot of an ass to raise him up.
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