Queen Mab

• Queen Mab


  The queen of the fairies, a figure deeply rooted in English folklore
• Queen Mab is not a character in Shakespeare's plays but is famous within his works because she is mentioned in Romeo and Juliet
• Queen Mab


  • She is not malevolent, but although she may be annoying, she makes mischief in a friendly, playful way most of the time
• Writers who have mentioned Queen Mab

  • Michael Drayton
  • Ben Jonson
  • Robert Herrick
  • John Milton
  • Shelley
• Shakespeare took the tradition of Mab, Queen of the fairies, and evolved her to become Titania, the fairy queen as a major character in A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Queen Mab in Romeo & Juliet

  1. Romeo is making himself miserable over Rosaline

  2. Romeo's friends make fun of his lovesick behaviour

  3. Mercutio tells Romeo that Queen Mab has been infecting his dreams

  4. Mercutio describes Queen Mab and how she operates to affect people's dreams

  5. Mercutio suggests Romeo is being an idiot and that Rosaline is irrelevant
• Queen Mab does not have a dramatic role in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, but her mention serves to underline Romeo's immaturity in the context of relationships
• During the course of the play Romeo faces several challenges and experiences that force him to grow up, and we see that by the time of his death he has matured significantly
• Mercutio's speech about Queen Mab is delivered in Romeo & Juliet


  Act 1, Scene 4
• How Queen Mab gallops

  1. Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love

  2. O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight

  3. O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees

  4. O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream

  5. Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, and then he dreams of smelling out a suit

  6. Sometimes she comes with a tithe-pig's tail tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, then he dreams of another benefice

  7. Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, and then he dreams of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted swears a prayer or two and sleeps again
• Mercutio: 'O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.'