A Midsummer Nights's Dream: Summary of Act 2, Scene 1

The scene starts out with a two fairies having a conversation, the purpose of which is to inform us that the King and Queen of the Fairies (Oberon and Titania) are mad at each other because Titania has a little Indian boy for her 'changeling' and Oberon wants the boy to be his squire. And plus they're always jealous of her. Oh, and Robin (IMPORTANT CHARACTER ALERT) is a trickster and is Shakespeare's twisted form of comic relief.

So then Oberon and Titania walk in from opposite sides of the stage, and they start arguing right away. Somehow they get from the Indian boy to accusing each other of cheating and sleeping around (both of these accusations are accurate, by the way) and so Titania, full of righteous anger, tells Oberon that their fights are messing up the natural order of things and the human world is suffering. Only she takes longer to say it. Oberon says that everything will be fine again if he can just have the Indian boy as his squire. Titania informs him that she is taking care of the Indian boy as a favor to his dead mother, who was one of her best friends. Oberon totally changes the subject (not at all suspicious!) and asks Titania how long she'll be staying in the woods, she answers, they bicker a bit more, and then she books. Oberon calls over Robin (AKA Puck) and tells him in a very roundabout way to go get a flower that can be put on a sleeping person's eyelids to make them fall madly in love with the next living person / animal they see. He wants to put it on Titania's eyelids and make her fall in love with some freaky thing so that he can have the Indian boy. But isn't the whole point of getting the Indian boy to make sure that Oberon is number 1 in Titania's attention? And wasn't he just being really jealous of her sleeping with Theseus? (Even though he slept with Hippolyta...) So wouldn't making her fall in love with some nasty thing totally defeat the purpose? Whatever... The point is, Oberon is a great husband.

So all of a sudden, Demitrius the worthy gentleman and Helena burst in, and Oberon watches invisibly because he's really polite. Demetrius the worthy gentleman tells Helena basically that she makes him sick and he hates her and if she keeps following her he'll murder her. Helena is troubled by this, but tells him he can hit her and yell at her, but PLEASE just let her stalk him. She's getting pretty pathetic. Demitrius the so-called worthy gentleman ditches her. Helena follows.

Robin, AKA Puck, comes back right then, and Oberon takes the flower from him, planning to carry out his plan on Titania, and make Demetrius love Helena, who he feels sorry for.