Oberon, Titiana and Puck with Fairies Dancing
WILLIAM BLAKE
WILLIAM BLAKE, c.1786. WATERCOLOR AND GRAPHITE ON PAPER
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and William Blake are natural bedfellows. Shakespeare’s most wild, inventive and dreamlike play suited a man who saw imagination as “human existence itself”, and Blakes drawing of the final scene embodies nature and emotion over logic and reasoning. The four fairies dance in a circle, jubilant and joyful with their linked lands creating infinity. Oberon and Titiana stand aside, almost fearful of the scene ahead of them for these fairies are nature themselves, feminine, untameable and sexually free. Blake interpreted Shakespeare’s work to align with his worldview, and free love was an essential part of that. A unique mind, he saw visions of a potential world where humans would return to natural, primal states that would create an honest society.