Vertigo’s Books of Faerie

by KV Taylor

The Books of Magic, a now-defunct DC-Vertigo comic series, sprouted from Neil Gaiman’s mystical miniseries of the same name, which I went on about at length in a previous post this month. The book on which I concentrated, Book III: The Land of Summer Twilight, details Timothy Hunter’s[1] journey with Dr. Occult through Faerie. It’s a particularly relevant book for the ongoing series (well, okay, they all are), and directly spawned the stories peopling The Books of Faerie: Auberon’s Tale and The Books of Faerie, still available in trade paperback collections[2].

In order to discuss these pretty little TPBs, I’m going to have to spoil Gaiman’s Books of Magic a touch. Not plot wise, but a single line from Titania that could be interpreted in several ways (imagine that!). It will by no means ruin your enjoyment of the GN if you pick it up, as it has zero bearing on the plot, but you’ve been warned.

While both collections consist of pure Books of Magic pre-history and side-plots, I’m sticking to the history stories — all of which were written by Bronwyn Carlton and drawn by Peter Gross (with Vince Locke in Auberon’s Tale). They amount to a kind of double fanfiction: stories based on Gaiman’s cryptic Titania from BoM, and stories based on a more directly Shakespearian concept of Oberon and Titania. The stories are bent to suit and explain the world of the ongoing BoM books, but stand alone as objects of interest to fae lovers.

I’ll start with Auberon’s Tale, to move chronologically — not in order of publication. It begins with Book I: The Regicide, in which King Magnus, a bit of a drunken idiot with a pureblood fairy superiority complex, insists that he compete in the tourney — against a lovable idiot of a troll. (Note that no one tries to stop him.) Obviously, this ends badly, and seeing as fairies don’t reproduce very often, the kingdom is left without an obvious heir. There is the king’s brother, Duke Huonnor, and there is the son of the king’s older sister, little Auberon. The king’s cousin Obrey and a courtier with a deeper connection to Magnus, Amadan, conspire to set Auberon on the throne as a puppet. You can see them talking in the shadows up there, as a matter of fact, in the doorway behind goofily grinning little Aubie, as his aunt and guardian Dymphna calls him.

 

Even before the sweet, liberal-minded boy can be installed, the machinations begin. Amadan tries to turn Obrey against Auberon, Auberon’s aunt Dymphna becomes engaged to Obrey, Huonnor goes to war with Obrey (who supposedly fights in Auberon’s name), and the whole thing becomes a sticky political mess worthy of the fae. As if it wasn’t enough, Amadan reveals that Magnus was trying to solve the fairy reproductive issue with what some consider less-than-savory experiments.

Anyone familiar with tales of the fae will guess that yes, humans are involved.

It’s a good read, and I think it highlights the slightly more human qualities of the fae here, as opposed to the frighteningly mercurial Gaiman Titania (though Auberon isn’t in BoM), and the sort of otherworldly yet simultaneously earthy fae Shakespeare envisioned. They certainly have the Shakespearean element of jealousy, though. Oh, and as a bonus, you get a really cute short about little Aubie meeting his friend, the magnificent little pink fotch he’s got on a leash on the cover up there.

 

Titania’s story, told in the collected The Books of Faerie TPB, begins with Book I: The Foundling’s Tale. There’s a sort of prologue, in which we see BoM frontman (frontboy?) Tim Hunter confronting a fully grown King Auberon and Queen Titania, claiming to be Titania’s son. Remember that thing I said about spoiling a single line of the Gaiman story? I said in my previous post on BoM that “…Titania’s parting words, for us alone, lead us to believe Tim will always be tied to Faerie in ways he can’t yet imagine.” Because what she said was, “And will you also hatch out worlds, my son?”

Take it how you like–and oh, Gaiman’s left it open–but Bronwyn Carlton’s backstory for Titania takes it literally. This goes one step beyond A Midsummer Night’s Dream‘s adopted Indian boy changeling, but it’s cool that the entire tale works as a nod to it, even as it fills in a gap in the BoM mythos. (The double fanfiction element strikes!)

The story really begins with a little girl called Maryrose being led into Faerie in spite of her gran’s warnings. The then-queen of Faerie, Dymphna, takes her under her wing and keeps her along with her little elf handmaidens, and treats her as a daughter. And then, King Obrey, whose machinations only seem to have gotten more ridiculous (oh yes, Lord Amadan is still there, if in a slightly, ah, altered form), comes home from war… and falls for little Maryrose, never knowing she was once mortal.

It’s a more character-driven story than Auberon’s, Maryrose’s journey from innocent to fae courtier, and what she’s willing to sacrifice to be a queen. Almost the moment she achieves this goal, Auberon finally defeats his cousin, Obrey the Usurper, and returns to Faerie to reclaim his crown… and offers Titania a deal, in the name of peace and prosperity for his people. She accepts, and yet, she’s never happy, caught between what she is and what she’s trying to be. Even Tamlin the Falconer can only make her happy for a short time, and that, well, as the above panel implies, spawns a mess.

Naturally it’s more complicated than all that, full of ins and outs and political madness, but that’s the gist. Titania’s tale has that same, slightly more human aspect, which . She’s at once strong and willing to sacrifice, but also swings to vulnerability and regret. Her main conflict stems from the continued emphasis on the importance of fairy blood, and her lack thereof. In that way, it’s this sort of typical fantasy story about queenship, womb control, and domestic complications. She’s not the Titania I expected, but she’s satisfying, if problematic, as a character, all the same.

The other stories in these collections, the side-plots from the ongoing series, are very cool too–and there’s another TPB collection called The Books of Faerie: Molly’s Story (which I’ve not been able to find, but are beyond the scope of this post, anyhow, as they feature the BoM ongoing character, Molly O’Reilly). I like the art; it’s expressive and easy on the eyes, though not perhaps as otherworldly as Charles Vess’s original Land of Summer Twilight work. The covers, reproduced as full-paged panels as with most TPB collections, are uniformly gorgeous.

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[1] Boy with the potential to become the World’s Greatest Magician, hero of both Gaiman’s BoM and the ongoing comic book series, for those not playing along at home.

[2] Side note: these TPB Books of Faerie are how I discovered The Books of Magic in the first place. They were in the bargain bin at my local comic shop and I’m going, “Auberon?! I’m in!”

 

KV Taylor has been a staff member and contributor for Monster Awareness Month, Vampire Awareness Month, and Ghost Appreciation Month, and is very pleased to be on the job again with the fae. Her freaky Appalachian fae novel, Scripped, is forthcoming from Belfire Press this summer.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Peter Hall, 1968)

There’s one thing I particularly like about watching old films, and that’s the credits. Complete, slow enough to read, and at the beginning so we know who’s who to start with. And with this cast, there’s a lot of who’s who to remember.

To name only the highlights, we’ve got Judi Dench (M) as Titania; Helen Mirren (Queen Elizabeth I and II) as Hermia; Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) as Helena; Ian Richardson (Francis Urquhart) as Oberon; David Warner (Lord Downey) as Lysander; and Ian Holm (Bilbo Baggins) as Puck.

Adaptations of this play are usually set in some fantastical fairyland studio set, a glittering or louring magical wood, some evocation of the Wild Wood, the Forest Primaeval. This one isn’t; it’s filmed in a forest. An ordinary, un-tarted-up English forest, with an ordinary English village & country house near it. For me, that only increases its power: it’s a real place, like hundreds I’ve walked through, and that makes it a much rawer and less mediated experience. The film has the same undramatic magic as the English woodlands do.

The fairies, too, display a similar sort of wonderful undramatic magic. They appear and disappear without a fuss—did they blink out of existence, or were they moving too fast to see? Just where did they appear from while we glanced away? When Bottom tries to leave the forest (Out of this wood do not desire to go!), he runs every which way, but Titania is always in front of him, and in Act II, Scene 1 (if you want to check the scenes against the text, there’s a good and very usable copy here) Titania’s court stream in through flickers and jump-cuts like a Wild Hunt, or like a bacchanal riot—or like dozens of children in the woods at night, because that’s what they are. It’s often traditional to cast children as the fairies, for whatever allegedly child-like qualities you want to invoke, but it’s rare to see them actually behaving like real children, rather than a director’s child-like fairy ideal. Clare Dench, as the first fairy we see, is utterly enchanting as she stamps in a pond (drenching Puck) and listens to the stories he spins to make her laugh, and when Titania gathers her court around her to sing her to sleep she behaves more like an indulgent and adoring mother than an imperious queen. In fact, this episode reminded me strongly of Neverland, with Titania playing Wendy and the brave but hopelessly incompetent Cobweb standing guard while she sleeps. When Oberon goes to dose Titania with his magical herb, a minion distracts Cobweb with a branch upside the head; it makes a very comedic ‘clunk!’ sound. In fact, Puck seems to induce sound effects and similar cartoon tropes everywhere he goes, dashing off with a ‘whoosh!’ and returning panting like a labrador, and when he leads the four lovers around in the night and fog they become hopelessly infected with cartoonishness. (There’s textual evidence for it, mind you: Those things best please me that befall preposterously.) Holm’s an amazing non-verbal actor, and his bounding, anarchic, good-hearted Puck is a delight to watch. Puck is the sort of character it’s hard not to play to extremes, because he just works so well that way, but Holm shows a lot of restraint both in his mischief—mazing and wearying Lysander and Demetrius, but without bouncing around or showing off any Weird Shit—and his kindness, in telling tales for a fairy child, and putting Helena and Hermia to sleep with a kiss on the cheek.

Ian Richardson makes a good Oberon, clearly very manly in his body language, but not showing any performative masculinity at all. Titania shows an honest, uncomplicated sensuality, but (despite spending the entire film dressed in a half-dozen leaves) comes over as protective and motherly rather than at all sexual. Her wonderful speech in II.1 (ll.450-486) is strongly felt, passionate but not fierce, and for every moment of it she has her eyes fixed either on Oberon or to camera. There’s a lot of fourth-wall-breaking in this film; practically every soliloquy is delivered straight to us. Oberon, in an interesting contrast, spends most of his lines gazing off into the middle distance while green leaves wave behind him. Unlike many versions of this couple, there’s clearly real and genuine affection between them. I’m not sure how that chimes with Oberon slipping her a roofie and getting her screwed by a mortal, and she cries real tears when he shows her that her dream did happen after all, but hey. I’ve seen weirder relationships, and their kink is not my kink. Their subsequent dance is really sweet, a montage of kisses and hands sliding over hands, and they show visible affection in the final scene. When they’re together, there’s nothing courtly going on; this is a family, and it shows.

So much for the fairies; now, the mortals, and lord! what fools these mortals be.

Mirren makes an adorable, lively, giggling, gambolling, bouncing Helena, teasing Lysander when he tries to repudiate his love for her, and only switching to fury when they make fun of her height. Rigg’s Helena is quite a contrast, and not just because this film reverses the usual short-brunette/tall-blonde colour-matching. They play off each other really well, and you can quite believe that they spent their childhoods together. Warner’s Lysander, on the other hand, is simultaneously threatening and sleazy, flirting enough with Helena that his later declaration of love doesn’t surprise her; Demetrius is threatening and gormless. Theseus, on the other hand, is sleek and dark, and incapable of saying anything without making it sound extremely sinister, to the point where I had to double-check that he wasn’t played by Anthony Ainley or Roger Delgado. (He even has the little beard. He wasn’t, of course, but Michael Jayston, who plays Demetrius, was the Valeyard. Just so you know.)

The mechanicals are classic British working class, ranging from nice but thick (Snout) to Quince’s twinkle-eyed grandfatherly wide-boy, who reminds me of several tradesmen I’ve known, and Bottom’s lovable rogue, forever acting out to impress his mates. I can’t find a great deal to say about the mechanicals; they do the job well, and it’s a pleasure to watch, but there are no surprises. I’m always a bit irked by the play’s portrayal of some of the working classes as thick, but that’s 1960s Britain for you. Progressive in patches.

The actors certainly got realistically dishevelled after their time in the woods, with messy hair and huge splotches of real mud; this is not Hollywood dirt! The costuming was fairly eclectic, based on unremarkable 1960s clothing, but with a few touches to make it look Elizabethan (swords, cloaks), Athenian (Theseus’s natty wrinkled-polycotton-sheet and doily ensemble, and Hermia’s sandals) and generically warlike (Hippolyta’s leather minidress and boots). Bottom’s ass’s head is a typical product of fine British television engineering, from the same era that produced Basil Brush. The only other item that’s worth much of a mention is Lysander’s flowered shirt, and that can safely be classed under “eldritch abomination”. Let us never speak of it again.

Overall, this is a wonderful film, and I’m delighted to have had this opportunity to review it for you all! The only thing I’d take issue with is the ending. Holm’s delivery of Puck’s final speech really surprised me; it’s very fast and enthusiastic, as though Hall wanted to end the play on an emotional upbeat. I think I can see his reasoning, but I’m not convinced that was the right way to do it. Any thoughts, O my friends and fellow appreciators?

‘Tis almost fairy time!

by Fae Awareness staff member Sam Kelly

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (full text, Wikipedia) takes place almost entirely in the wild wood, which in Shakespeare’s day—before electric light industrialised logging, and the Ramblers’ Association—was still something to fear: a place of transformative change, a haunt of boar and brigand and quite possibly giant spider too. The tutelary genius of the forest is Puck, the provocative night-haunt, taunter of peasants, performer of everyday mischiefs. He’s utterly capricious rather than consistently malicious, though – his mischief, whether embarrassing or lethal, is born from the same source as the help he gives those who respect him. He may well be watching from behind any bush, perched in any tree, or talking to you in the likeness of a friend – and his master, Oberon, has motives both grand and utterly petty. His jealousy is understandable on a human scale (if repellent), but so is Titania’s maternal jealousy and her concern for the world. Because the fairies in Dream are very intimately linked to the land, their discord over Titania’s adopted changeling child causes the weather and the seasons to go completely screwy.

Titania: These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer’s spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb’d our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud 460
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men’s morris is fill’d up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

Mortals – and particularly, their rituals and traditions – are an important part of this process, too. The fairy king’s jealousy of a mortal (adopted rather than stolen as in the “traditional” changeling myth) began it; the lack of hymns and carols angers the moon; and in the end, they cannot be reunited without the chance intervention of a brash bumbling mortal artisan. Since 1970, the play is often performed doubled: the same actors who portray the fairy court portray the court of Athens, with Theseus as Oberon and Hippolyta as Titania, showing the ambiguous way in which the fairy realm mirrors and echoes the mortal one. (Puck is also often doubled with Philostrate, the chamberlain & master of ceremonies in Athens.)

Speaking of ambiguity: Dream is even easier than most of Shakespeare’s plays to queer. Puck, particularly, is a focus for this, since his character’s protean enough that almost any kind of actor can play him: cis, trans, androgynous, very masculine, and very feminine actors have all done it well. Productions where there is no implied sexual (and/or kink) relationship between Oberon and Puck are increasingly in the minority, and a lot of directors choose to bring out sexual tension between Helena and Hermia as well. (To be fair, you have to work quite hard not to.)

One other thing about fairies that modern productions of Dream makes really clear is that they are scary. Utterly, hypnotically, beautifully, terrifyingly scary. The kind of scary that could kiss you and make you never want to leave their bed, send a storm to destroy your crops in the field, lure your husband into a bog, and then abruptly leave you at the edge of the wood to make your own way home. And then, for good measure, balance a bucket of vitriol on the top of your bedroom door and send a really nice card at Christmas.

The scariness in recentish productions is not a new thing, but rather a return to older ideas of fairies; there’s been a big tendency to think of the Dream fairies as tiny, twinkly, sparkly things, like Tinkerbell without the jealous malice. This is partly down to Mendelssohn, whose saccharine, twinkling, swooping overture (composed in 1826 at the age of seventeen) set the artistic tone for almost every depiction of fairies in the English-speaking world for nearly a hundred years. Shakespeare’s original text was deeply unfashionable at that point—very crude and bawdy, and not nearly polished and artificial enough for the English stage. Nobody had performed Dream, except in rather bitty and sanitized adaptations, for decades; until Madame Vestris in 1840, nobody would. Mendelssohn’s Overture formed the core of his incidental music for the production, and has never fallen out of popularity since. (Vestris played Oberon, as it happens.)

After then, we had a succession of ever more complex sets and productions, culminating in Beerbohm Tree’s signature “stage full of crap” post-Victorian production of 1900, popular enough to be revived in 1905 and 1911 with live rabbits scampering about the stage. In 1914, Harley Granville Barker finally threw off the Victorian obsession with vast amounts of tat (preferably patterned and/or sparkly tat made in huge gloomy factories by small children) and presented an apron stage with futuristic columns and fairies painted gold.

Even without the gold paint, fairies present some staging problems – Shakespeare explicitly presents some of them as very small, enough so to dress in a snake’s shed skin or to make a coat from a bat’s wings, and of course you can’t do that with actors except by making the scenery much larger. Since Oberon & Titania are explicitly large enough to sleep with mortals, that’s not entirely a helpful approach on stage. Incidentally, the changeling boy (again, adopted, not stolen, as with the “standard” view of fae changelings) is sometimes played as a babe in arms, sometimes as a handsome young man – partly it depends on just how much the director wants to queer the performance. Children are often used to play the smaller fairies (including Puck, sometimes) but that doesn’t have to make them any less scary… we all know just how nasty and unpleasant children can be.

Like any good comedy, Dream ends with a wedding – in fact, three weddings and a reconciliation, alchemically restoring order to the discord-wrecked world. Weddings can’t just happen with a kiss, however, and after Will Kemp’s big dance number as Bottom the fairies return, blessing the house and its marriage-bed. Depending on your interpretation, Puck’s closing words are either innocently twee; a plea for the audience not to riot, they’ll get their money back; or utterly, utterly sinister. Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s interpretation, in Sandman: Dream Country, aims quite thoroughly for the last, but then as Peaseblossom says: “I am that merry wanderer of the night? I am that giggling dangerous totally bloody psychotic menace to life and limb, more like it.”