Oberon

Oberon, the king of the elves or fairies, and the husband of Titania. The name is derived from the French Auberon or Alberon, and that from the German Alberich (alb, 'elf,' and rich). Oberon is first mentioned as 'Roi du royaume de la féerie' in the 13th-century French poem of Huon de Bordeaux. The quarrel between Oberon and Titania and their subsequent reconciliation through Huon, a French noble, and Amanda, daughter of the sultan of Babylon, whom the former leads home by the help of Oberon, after many difficulties, form the basis of this tale, which was afterwards shaped into a popular prose romance. The name first appeared in English in Lord Berners' translation (Early Eng. Text Soc. 1885), and was adopted in many ballads, and also in Greene's play, The Scottish History of James IV., slain at Flodden. Neither these, however, nor Spenser's use made the name familiar, but Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, where, as Keightley points out, the fairy mythology is an attempt to blend the elves of the village with the fays of romance. The fairies here agree with the former in their diminutive stature, in their fondness for dancing, their love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensities. Like the fays, they form a community ruled over by the princely Oberon and the fair Titania. Wieland used the subject for his well-known romantic poem, and Planché's adaptation of this forms the subject of Weber's opera. The old chanson de geste was edited by Guessard and Grandmaison (Paris, 1860). See Liebrecht's German translation of Dunlop's History of Prose Fiction (1851).