"Queen Mab"
Cultural Reference
Act 1,
Scene 4
Lines 51-54
Mercutio
Queen Mab is the queen of the fairies who bring dreams to sleepers at night. While a midwife helps deliver mothers' babies, Queen Mab helps deliver to sleepers dreams of what they’ve always wanted. But her name reveals that she’s not the nice, innocent creature we normally think when we think of fairies — queen was another name for a sex worker, and a mab is a promiscuous woman.