Titania monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream

Titania’s monologue

TATIANA: Set your heart at rest:

The fairy land buys not the child of me.

His mother was a votaress of my order:

And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,

5Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,

And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,

Marking the embarked traders on the flood,

When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive

And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;

10Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait

Following,.her womb then rich with my young squire,--

Would imitate, and sail upon the land,

To fetch me trifles, and return again,

As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.

15But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;

And for her sake do I rear up her boy,

And for her sake I will not part with him.

Public domain text.