Titania does compromise—or more precisely, capitulate—in the end and give the young Indian boy to Oberon.

Initially, however, Titania refuses Oberon's demand for the Indian boy as his "henchman," explaining eloquently and at length why. She tells Oberon that the mother was a "votaress" in her order. Titania describes what good friends she and the woman were, gossiping together and sitting on Neptune's sands. They would watch boats sailing, the sails billowing as if pregnant, and laugh together. The woman would swim after the sailing merchant ships and also run errands for Titania to "fetch trifles." Because they were so close, when the woman, who was human, died, Titania decided to care for and raise her son. For the sake of the mother, she will not give the boy to Oberon.

Titania's speech is one of the most beautiful and moving in the play, meant to raise Oberon's sympathy for why she is keeping the child. Yet Oberon is unmoved by it. The speech is below:

The fairy land buys not the child of me.
His mother was a votaress of my order:
And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,
Full often hath she gossip'd by my side,
And sat with me on Neptune's yellow sands,
Marking the embarked traders on the flood,
When we have laugh'd to see the sails conceive
And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;
Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait
Following,—her womb then rich with my young squire,—
Would imitate, and sail upon the land,
To fetch me trifles, and return again,
As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.
But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;
And for her sake do I rear up her boy,
And for her sake I will not part with him.