Titania

“ You will know the man by the Athenian garments which he wears." Puck promised to manage this matter very dexterously: and then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her bower, where she was preparing to go to rest. Her fairy bower was a bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a canopy of woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine. There Titania always slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enameled skin of a snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy in. ”

“ The night on which the lovers were to meet in this wood, as Titania was walking with some of her maids of honor, she met Oberon attended by his train of fairy courtiers.
"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania," said the fairy king. The queen replied, "What, jealous Oberon, is it you? Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his company." "Tarry, rash fairy," said Oberon; "am not I thy lord? Why does Titania cross her Oberon? Give me your little changeling boy to be my page."
"Set your heart at rest," answered the queen; "your whole fairy kingdom buys not the boy of me." ”

“ Oberon stopped over her and laid the juice on her eyes, saying:—
"What thou seest when thou wake, Do it for thy true love take;" Now, it happened that when Titania woke the first thing she saw was a stupid clown, one of a party of players who had come out into the wood to rehearse their play. This clown had met with Puck, who had clapped an ass's head on his shoulders so that it looked as if it grew there. Directly Titania woke and saw this dreadful monster, she said, "What angel is this? Are you as wise as you are beautiful?" ”

“ They may contain wells of wit and wisdom and eloquence and fire to the party to whom they are addressed, and who is bewitched by love’s potion, though to all the rest of the world they are the very embodiment of absurdity and nonsense. Titania, over whom the spell has been wrought, sees an Adonis where everybody else only sees honest Nick Bottom, the weaver, fittingly capped by an ass’s head. It is an evil day for Bottom when the love potion has lost its virtue and the scales drop from the eyes of Titania. ”

“ The Titans, Τιτανες, were properly Titanians; a people so denominated from their worship, and from the places where it was celebrated. They are, like Orion and the Cyclopians, represented as gigantic persons: and they were of the same race, the children of Anak. The Titanian temples were stately edifices, erected in Chaldea, as well as in lower Egypt, upon mounds of earth, λοφοι μαστοειδεις, and sacred to Hanes; Τιτανις and Τιτανες are compounds of Tit-Hanes; and signify literally μαστος ἡλιου, the conical hill of Orus. ”

“ Now my Titania wake you my sweet Queene
Tita. My Oberon, what visions haue I seene!
Me-thought I was enamoured of an asse
Ob. There lies your loue
Tita. How came these things to passe?
Oh, how mine eyes doth loath this visage now!
Ob. Silence a while. Robin take off his head:
Titania, musick call, and strike more dead
Then common sleepe; of all these, fine the sense
Tita. Musicke, ho musicke, such as charmeth sleepe.
Musick still.
Rob. When thou wak'st, with thine owne fooles eies
peepe
Ob. ”

“ Some day mortals will punish thee.”
“No, no,” said Puck, shaking his head; “why, they don’t believe faeries exist.”
“You hear?” sighed Oberon, looking at me gravely; “you mortals don’t believe faeries exist.”
“I do, your Majesty,” I answered eagerly; “and when I return to earth, I will do my best to convince other people. Besides, sire, children always believe in faeries.”
“Yes, the dear children!” cried Titania brightly; “they are our best friends. Ah, children will always believe in us, although they do not see us.” ”

“ And the children said, “I didn’t know Shakespeare was so funny, did you?”
Then Ariel and Titania, Prospero, and the Witch made a magic—they were a mighty quartet, you see. John suggested that they were really the “Biggest Four.” They waved their wands and lifted their hands, and Caliban helped with a mighty “Wow!” Then in came Puck and the other fairies bearing a huge iron kettle, with a ladle sticking out of the top. From the kettle rose a cloud of smoke and a sweet smell that made Caliban sneeze. ”

“ Such an ugly little thing and so lacking in any sort of brightness and attractiveness"—
"To us yes!" purred Titania. "But only think of a man like General Shaftan having cared so much for her that he was unable to die without seeing her and imploring her for the last time to become his wife"— She paused and viewed the crimsoning Undine with a countenance absolutely devoid of guile.
"General Shaftan?" inquired her guest, turning from crimson to scarlet. "General Shaftan? Why, my dear Mrs. ”

“ Tithonus, in the Greek mythology son of Laomedon, who was wedded to Eos, who begged Zeus to confer on him immortality but forgot to beg for youth, so that his decrepitude in old age became a burden to him; he was changed into a cicada.
Titian, Vecellio, great Italian painter, born at Capo del Cadore, the prince of colourists and head of the Venetian school; studied at Venice, and came under the influence of Giorgione; he was a master of his art from the very first, and his fame led to employment in all directions over Italy, Germany, and Spain; his works were numerous, and rich in variety ”

“ A similar fate has overtaken nearly all his brethren, who are called by Keats Titans and Giants indiscriminately, though in Greek mythology the two races are quite distinct. These Titans are the children of Tellus and Coelus, the earth and sky, thus representing, as it were, the first birth of form and personality from formless nature. Before the separation of earth and sky, Chaos, a confusion of the elements of all things, had reigned supreme. One only of the Titans, Hyperion the sun-god, still keeps his kingdom, and he is about to be superseded by young Apollo, the god of light and song. ”

“ Wit's Titans.—The Titans, in Greek mythology, were the children of Uranus (heaven) and Gaea (earth) , and of gigantic size. They engaged in a conflict with Zeus, the king of heaven, which lasted ten years. They were completely defeated, and hurled down into a dungeon below Tartarus. Very often they are confounded with the Giants, as has apparently been done here by Pope. These were a later progeny of the same parents, and in revenge for what had been done to the Titans, conspired to dethrone Zeus. ”

“ Downward sinks the pit, twice as deep as the heavens are high. In it groan the Titans, hurled down with thunderbolts, and the giants, Otus and Ephialtes, who strove to overturn the throne of Jupiter himself. There lies Tityus, o'er nine roods outstretched, and eternally does a vulture tear his liver with her beak. Over some hangs a rock threatening ever to fall; before others a bounteous banquet is continually spread, but the hands that they stretch to take the food are evermore struck back by the Furies. Some roll a huge stone, others are bound to the revolving wheel. ”

“ It was reserved for Titian to give in his early time the fullest development to the Giorgionesque landscape, as in the Three Ages and the Sacred and Profane Love. Then all himself, and with hardly a rival in art, he went on to unfold those radiantly beautiful prospects of earth and sky which enframe the figures in the Worship of Venus, the Bacchanal, and, above all, the Bacchus and Ariadne; to give back his impressions of Nature in those rich backgrounds of reposeful beauty which so enhance the finest of the Holy Families and Sacred Conversations. ”

“ But it was over at last, and the vulture lay strangled at the feet of Hercules.
To free Prometheus from his chains was the work of a moment, and the Titan rose and stretched his free limbs with a heart at ease.
What passed between the Titan and the Mortal is beyond my guessing, and I have never heard. I only know that a mere Man had, by his strength and his courage, saved one who was greater and wiser than he from Remorse and Despair. ”

“ About the compositions themselves, if we are to take them as the poesie that Titian loved to call them, there is a certain want of significance, neither the divine nor the human note being struck with any depth or intensity of vibration. The glamour, the mystery, the intimate charm of the early pieces is lost, and there is felt, enwrapping the whole, that sultry atmosphere of untempered sensuousness which has already, upon more than one occasion, been commented upon. ”

“ Elder brother of Saturn, who made war [Pg 136] against him, and was ultimately vanquished by Jupiter.
Titans (Ti′tans) were the supporters of Titan in his war against Saturn and Jupiter. They were the sons of Uranus and Gaea, men of gigantic stature and of great strength. Hence our English word Titanic.
Tithonus (Ti-tho′nus) . The husband of Aurora. At the request of his wife the gods granted him immortality, but she forgot at the same time to ask that he should be granted perpetual youth. The consequence was that Tithonus grew old and decrepit, while Aurora remained as fresh as the morning. ”

“ In the Bacchus and Ariadne Titian's genius flames up with an intensity of passion such as will hardly again be seen to illuminate it in an imaginative subject of this class. Certainly, with all the beauties of the Venuses, of the Diana and Actaeon, the Diana and Calisto, the Rape of Europa, we descend lower and lower in the quality of the conception as we advance, though the brush more and more reveals its supreme accomplishment, its power to summarise and subordinate. ”

“ Sculptors delighted in the long flowing lines and beautiful curves which could be developed in different poses. Titian’s picture translates the spirit of Greek sculpture, so to speak, into the art of painting. The figure of Venus may well be compared with the marble Venus of Milo, in the pure beauty of the face, the exquisite modelling of the figure, and the sweeping lines of grace described in the attitude. [18] The painter contrasts the delicate tint of the flesh with the rich crimson of the mantle which falls from the shoulder. ”

“ Yet in fulness and variety of life, in unexaggerated dignity, in coherence, in richness and beauty, if not in poetic significance of colour, in grasp of humanity and nature, Titian stands infinitely above his younger competitor. If, unhappily, it were necessary to make a choice between the life-work of the one and the life-work of the other—making the world the poorer by the loss of Titian or Tintoretto—can it be doubted for a moment what the choice would be, even of those who abdicate when they are brought face to face with the mighty genius of the latter? ”

“ For decorative effect, for "go," for frankness and breadth of execution, it could not be surpassed. Yet hardly elsewhere has the great master approached so near to positive vulgarity as here in the conception of the fair Europa as a strapping wench who, with ample limbs outstretched, complacently allows herself to be carried off by the Bull, making her appeal for succour merely pour la forme. What gulfs divide this conception from that of the Antiope, from Titian's earlier renderings of female loveliness, from Giorgione's supreme Venus! ”

“ Here again the colour-harmony in its subdued richness and solemnity has a completeness such as induces the beholder to accept it in its unity rather than to analyse those infinite subtleties of juxtaposition and handling which, avoiding bravura, disdain to show themselves on the surface. The sublime beauty of the landscape, in which, as often elsewhere, the golden radiance of the setting sun is seen battling with masses of azure cloud, has not been exceeded by Titian himself. ”

“ The power of vivid conception, the spontaneous fervour which mark Titian's latest efforts in the domain of sacred art, are very evident in the great St. Jerome of the Brera here reproduced. Cima, Basaiti, and most of the Bellinesques had shown an especial affection for the subject, and it had been treated too by Lotto, by Giorgione, by Titian himself; but this is surely as noble and fervent a rendering as Venetian art in its prime has brought forth. Of extraordinary majesty and beauty is the landscape, with its mighty trees growing out of the abrupt mountain slope, close to the naked rock. ”

“ Art itself could only add to it the right accent, the right emphasis, the larger scope in truth, the colouring and illumination best suited to give the fullest expression to the beauties of the land, to the force, character, and warm human charm of the people. This is what Titian, supreme among his contemporaries of the greatest Venetian time, did with an incomparable mastery to which, in the vast field which his productions cover, it would be vain to seek for a parallel. ”

“ Titian, in a wise harmony, without either the Æschylean fury of Tintoretto, or the material gorgeousness of Veronese, realised an ideal of pure beauty. Continuing the traditions of Bellini and Giorgione, with a breadth of treatment, and a vigour of well-balanced faculties peculiar to himself, Titian gave to colour in landscape and the human form a sublime yet sensuous poetry no other painter in the world has reached. ”

“ Indeed if it were altogether in colour and forms no more than common nature, there would be no real martyrdom in it—it would be but a vulgar murder; but every part is in sympathy with the sentiment. Had Titian merely represented the clear sky of Italy, and brought out prominently green-leaved trees and herbage, because such things are, and were in such a scene where this martyrdom was suffered, the picture would not have been as it is, and must ever be, the admiration of the world and a monument of the genius of Titian. ”