Queen Mab


Queen Mab is a fairy referred to in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, where "she is the fairies' midwife." Later, she appears in other poetry and literature, and in various guises in drama and cinema. In the play, her activity is described in a famous speech by Mercutio written originally in prose and often adapted into iambic pentameter, in which she is described as a miniature creature who performs midnight pranks upon sleepers. Being driven by a team of atomies, she rides her chariot over their noses and "delivers the fancies of sleeping men." She is also described as a midwife to help sleepers "give birth" to their dreams. She may be a figure borrowed from folklore, and though she is often associated with the Irish Medb in popular culture, and has been suggested by historian Thomas Keightley to be from Habundia, a more likely origin for her name would be from Mabel and the Middle English derivative "Mabily" all from the Latin amabilis.

Mercutio's speech


"O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lies asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's wat'ry beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone; the lash of film;
Her waggoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid:
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O’er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a’ lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he 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. This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:
This is she—"
— Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Act I, scene IV

In other literature

After her first literary reference in Romeo and Juliet, she appears in works of 17th-century poetry, notably Ben Jonson's "The Entertainment at Althorp" and Michael Drayton's "Nymphidia". In Poole's work Parnassus, Mab is described as the Queen of the Fairies and consort to Oberon, emperor of the Fairies.
"Queen Mab" is a 1750 pantomime by actor Henry Woodward.
Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem is the title of the first large poetic work written by the famous English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Herman Melville's epic American novel Moby Dick includes a chapter titled "Queen Mab", and it describes a dream by Stubb, Captain Ahab's second mate.
In J.M. Barrie's The Little White Bird, Queen Mab lives in Kensington Gardens and grants Peter Pan – who has learned he is a boy, and thus can no longer fly – his wish to fly again.
American philosopher George Santayana wrote a short piece titled "Queen Mab" which appeared in his 1922 book Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. This particular soliloquy considers English literature as an indirect form of self-expression in which the English writer "will dream of what Queen Mab makes other people dream" rather than revealing him or herself.
In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series, Queen Mab of The Winter Court is an important recurring character with mysterious motives. Ruler of the Unseelie Sidhe, Mab lives in a dark castle of ice located in the fey worlds of The Nevernever and generally is considered to be incredibly cruel, cold, and a maker of unbreakable pacts.
Queen Mab is the queen of the Unseelie Court in Julie Kagawa's The Iron Fey series.
Queen Mab is one of the three ancient Fae queens, sister to Maeve and Mora, in Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass series.
Queen Mab is a recurring supporting character in the Hellboy comic book series. She is portrayed as the queen over the Irish fairies known as the
Tuatha Dé Danann and is married to Dagda. Despite watching Hellboy for much of his life they only meet once, in Helllboy: the Wild Hunt.
Queen Mab briefly appears in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic book series. She instructs her courtier, the faerie Cluracan, to interfere in some mortal political affairs that “would not be a good thing for Faerie.”
In Stephen and Owen King’s book Sleeping Beauties, under the alias Evie Black, the main antagonist of the book suggests she is the one being addressed in the Queen Mab speech by Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet.
In Andrzej Sapkowski's short story Złote popołudnie which is a postmodern retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the Queen of Hearts is revealed to be really Queen Mab.
In John G. Hartness’s Monsters, Magic, & Mayhem: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 4.

Film and television

The composer Hector Berlioz wrote a “Queen Mab” scherzo in his Romeo et Juliette symphony. Hugh Macdonald describes this piece as "Berlioz's supreme exercise in light orchestral texture, a brilliant, gossamer fabric, prestissimo and pianissimo almost without pause... The pace and fascination of the movement are irresistible; it is some of the most ethereally brilliant music ever penned."
The song by the British rock band Queen "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke", based on a painting by Richard Dadd and included in the album Queen II, mentions Queen Mab and many other characters such as Oberon and Titania.
Songwriter Becca Stevens set the first half of the text to music on her 2017 album Regina.