Oberon is the King of the Fairies and lives outside the
Athens world created by Shakespeare. You should know that Shakespeare gave this play's
city scenes a classical Greek setting and drew on classical source material, but its
characters are drawn from a purely Elizabethan time and
place.
Although Shakespeare changed some of the common
assumptions about Fairies (and the society of his day did, for the most part, believe
that faires were actual real beings), he draws heavily on the beliefs of his day. I
suspect that, though they saw the world as being influenced by a number of gods living
on Mount Olympus, the ancient Greeks did not believe in fairies, per
se.
It was quite common for Shakespeare to take an ancient
or exotic setting and/or source material for one of his plays and then simply create
characters and situations that were drawn completely from his Elizabethan world.
Shakespeare was not interested in creating historically accurate characters or
locations, but rather holding the mirror up to his audience, so that they might see
themselves reflected in the behaviour of the characters they watched
onstage.
So, Oberon is not an Athenian aristocrat, he's a
Fairy. He may indeed be royalty (He is the King.), but he's not Athenian in any way.
For that matter, one would be hard pressed to find much beyond the names of the actual
aristocrats in this play -- Theseus and Hippolyta -- that bears any significant
relationship to ancient Greek/Athenian behaviours. They hunt and have a wedding feast
with a play for entertainment -- common past-times for upper class Elizabethan
England.
Shakespeare creates the characters in
Midsummer (including Oberon) as he does for all of his plays, from
his experience of life as he knows it.
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