Past that “dinner with the parents” hour, but early enough that there are still people about, a pair of young men are looking about the churchyard at the Church of the Holy Trinity, in Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire. It is dark, and they are peering half heartedly at gravestones, apparently trying to make out the old inscriptions on some of the Victorian era monuments. A large man sits on a nearby bench. He wears a broad brimmed hat.
“Excuse me, sir?” They approach tentatively.
“Yes?”
“Could you perhaps tell us which one might be Shakespeare’s grave?”
“Well, yes, but he and some of his family members are buried together, inside the church.”
The young man looks around at the darkness, the old gravestones, the overhanging trees rustling restlessly in the breeze.
“We have to leave first thing in the morning.”
The young men begin to look slightly apprehensive, suddenly more conscious of the hour. Almost fairy time.
Strange thing, fairy time. When the human world recedes and something else, something tenebrous, holds dominion for a time. Old world explanatory device. Why the world goes topsy turvy, why things occasionally seem inverted. Good luck, bad luck. How seemingly bad people might ascend the ladder of success while good ones sometimes get left behind. The vagaries of what the ancient Chinese called the ‘red dust’. The world in which we live can be wildly inconsistent.
Fairies, that people called “the good people” or the “good neighbours” in order to avoid offending them inadvertently (which offense could bring a whole host of ills and misfortunes that might hound one to one’s grave). That’s part of the strange thing when people analyse Shakespeare’s fairies–especially in terms of that “family romp” play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s fun for the whole family. Frolicsome. Hilarious. With magic, laughter, and madcap lovers caught in comic situations. Bring the kids!
Yes, it can be played that way, of course, and often is. Perennially on the list of Shakespeare’s greatest hits, this hit parade wonder may be one of the most frequently produced shows, and has been made into movies, and inspired music, poetry, and innovation on a number of fronts. Except, of course, that’s only part of the story, and as most partial stories go, this one too is inaccurate.
Catherine Belsey gets it right though. She points out that Shakespeare’s fairies don’t speak like his other characters, because they aren’t like his other characters–not even the non-humans like Caliban or Ariel. In fact, although Ariel tends to be grouped with the fairies at times, he is not exactly like them. Ariel differentiates himself from other characters in The Tempest because he isn’t “human”, as he says himself. The fairies, on the other hand, continue to differentiate themselves from the rest of the characters in Dream because those other characters are “mortal”. The fairies differ from each other too, with Oberon being able to perceive the divine while Puck cannot, but that’s a matter for another post.
This prises open the tin can of folkloric argument. What exactly are fairies then? Souls of the uncommitted or unbaptised dead? Rebellious angels awaiting judgement day? Soulless elemental spirits, more akin to the earth than humankind? Another tribe of people who somehow attained a kind of immortality along the way? Are they good? Bad? Remote and angelic? Devilish and wicked?*
Yes. They are. And they can be.
Nonetheless, when we see the play, we evaluate the fairies on mortal, human terms. Strange that, at the end of the play, Titania does not seem so outraged at Oberon’s trick as we do. But we forget that they are not mortals, and perhaps it is not so easy to judge them by some human, or some mortal criteria. Like the proverbial apple tree judging oranges. What do we know?
Shakespeare remains full of these ‘what can we really know’ moments. Filled with spaces that tend to slip away from precise categorisation. Puck is one of these. As the first fairy describes him:
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he? (AMND, 2.1.33-44)
Farm task frustration blended with bits of luck, Puck seems to represent the vagaries of rural life, often fostering frustrations similar to those supposedly caused by gremlins in WWII aircraft. Of course, gremlins can cause serious harm, as can fairies. The old fairy lore is full of random darkness, the emptiness of moonlit hills where people disappear, children wither to roots, terrible capricious misfortunes descend like lightning strokes upon the lives of simple folk. Or sometimes, conversely, great good fortune comes to someone, only because they did some kindness to the little people.
Fairies may be the rage of storms, or the placidity of water beneath the moon. They may be grim shadow and dancing light. They may be, at least, these aspects within us–the light and dark, and sardonic laughter of our own internal landscapes. For when I look within myself, the winter forest lies there, frozen, glittering in its sleep. Entranced by the remote hooting of the occasional winter owl, I long to sleep there. Lie down and sleep forever.
For when the fairies take mortals, often children, but they take adults as well, they often take them forever. Forever dancing, feasting, laughing in the candlelit halls beneath the hill, under the fairy mound for all time while the outside world changes and passes away. They may leave changelings in the mortals’ place. Strange, twisted bits of string, or aging fairies, or dead birds. Dolls made with peculiar features that are then enchanted to appear like the mortal they replace.
This strange technology would often be used in the past to explain how people may suddenly seem no longer themselves. Unruly children. Changeable adults. Age fading elders. Even community leaders who suddenly would take their seats and make decisions that might seem almost uniformly harmful or unwise.
The point is that, all too often, when A Midsummer Night’s Dream is produced, directors choose to use the fairies as a reflection of the mortal court. We ascribe mortal goals and designations to them. “Oberon wants to humiliate Titania”. “Titania wants the child”. But how might immortals be different from those who only live 70 or 80 years? What might they think about (for they would have covered the grounds of thought we cover in our lives long ago)? How would their tastes evolve? Their humour? How jaded and sardonic might they become? We cannot know.
There’s no prescription for direction. Different directors will always have different tastes and different emphases, and they may focus on different elements. This is the nature of theatre. Dream tends to be funny whether or not the immortals are really considered as such, which is part of the reason that the play remains so popular. It’s difficult to make it not be funny.
Still, it might be good if directors occasionally gave some thought to the possible differences between mortals and immortals, in perspective, taste, and potential motivation. Naturally, some directors do this. But it does seem like the fairies are more often made magical versions of ourselves, and that may risk losing a serious dimension of the play. Even with Shakespeare’s potential modifications, the fairies remain different from us, and not just because they can do some magic.
What we do know is that, whether the good neighbours actually exist or not, the ones in the play are not like us–perhaps even less so than aberrant leaders or fractious children. They are something else. The darkling time falling as the last day dies, and still singing. Still dancing. Still carrying lights across the darkened hills.
*For further descriptions, read Katharine Briggs who wrote numerous fundamental works on fairies. For a look into the shadowy and capricious nature of fairies, read Diane Purkiss–At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies is a good place to begin.