The Fairy Attendants: Servants Who Treat a Weaver Like a King
First appears: Act 3, Scene 1
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed enter Act 3, Scene 1 when Titania summons them to wait on Bottom, the weaver with an ass's head. They have four names and very few lines. Their value is almost entirely visual: the most rarefied beings in the play, running errands for the most earthly one.
Bottom treats them with cheerful practicality. He sends Cobweb to fetch a honey-bee's honeybag. He asks Mustardseed to help him scratch. He commends Peaseblossom to his parents, 'Mistress Squash' and 'Master Peascod,' inventing relatives with the ease of a man who finds fairies fundamentally unalarming.
Their names are a small cluster of plant and insect imagery that fills out the play's woodland world: midsummer flowers, spider silk, moth wings, mustard seed. They are dismissed in Act 4, Scene 1 when Titania wakes from the enchantment. They have no opinions about any of what has happened to them.
Key Scenes
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed's Key Quotes
“Hail, mortal!”
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, Act 3, Scene 1
Themes
Other Characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream
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