"No more yielding than a dream": The Construction of ...

"No more yielding than a dream": The Construction of Shakespeare in The Sdndman Annalisa Castaldo

Annalisa Castaldo is assistant

s

I hakespeare the man holds a uniquely ambiguous position in American culprofessor of British Literature ture. Like a few other authors (Jane at Widener University, in Austen springs to mind), Shakespeare's works Chester, PA. continue to be available for use by popular culture and especially popular media. Snippets of his most famous works—most often Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet—show up in rock songs, television commercials and print ads. But unlike other authors who maintain a popular presence, Shakespeare himself aho circulates in popular and popularized form. He has, as Michael Bristol points out, "achieved contemporary celebrity" (1996, 3). More than merely a great writer, or a collection of famous quotes, he has become a celebrity, recognizable in his own right. While it is doubtful that most Americans would recognize a picture of, say, Herman Melville (another author whose work is often referenced by popular culture), many people

Annalisa Castaldo 95

would be able to identify Shakespeare in image as well as in word. An investigation into tbe reasons for Shakespeare's personal popularity suggests that his image functions much as his plays do—at once apparently stable and yet completely malleable. It is because Shakespeare is easily identifiable that his cultural value is extremely high. Both in institutional and in popular culture, he is recognizable precisely because so many other aspects of culture have proven unstable. This is obvious in popular culture, where the intensity of fads is matched only by their brevity (if I mention Survivor will anyone know what I mean by the time this article is in print?). But multiculturalism has swept through academia as well as other institutional bastions, dethroning authors once believed vital to an educated citizen. Shakespeare's position within this highly unstable culture is central precisely because his value has remained relatively stable for a very long time; a gold standard, as it were. Or, as Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O'Connar put it, "somewhat like a Dior suit, Shakespeare never ages and eludes all historical implication" (1987, 6). He is, classically, "for all time," and part of his reputation rests on the very longevity that allows for the creation of reputation. But Shakespeare wears well, in part, because he can be accessorized. Culture can keep reinventing Shakespeare to suit its needs, all the while pretending nothing has changed. Shakespeare's very fluidity has led him to become, in essence, his own adjective. Foucault argues that an author is not the real person who wrote the texts; rather, the "author function" must work at a remove from the reality of the writer (1984, 112).This is especially true of Shakespeare, and not only because his actual authorship is sometimes called into question. It is that the very idea of Shakespeare as a person circulates as freely as his texts, now representing stuffy English literature, now cool California chic. Either way, familiarity with Shakespeare's works includes a familiarity with Shakespeare himself, but in both cases, that familiarity is more often with the cultural dream of Shakespeare than with the reality. Just as the plays are, in popular culture, rarely presented as just texts, Shakespeare is rarely presented as simply a writer. Rather he is shaped and interpreted by cultural forces, so he is always modern but always eternal. His personality can become a representative of some key cultural issue or mirror another writer's vision of self. What makes the cultural machinery so apparent here is that we have ample documentary evidence of Shakespeare's life. We have evidence of a practical man who did not make enemies, was generally liked and retired early. What we don't have is a great deal of knowledge of his personal views, as even a cursory glance at the centuries of biographical criticism will show. Virginia Woolf proclaimed: "All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an

96

College Literature 31.4 [Fall 2004]

injury, to pay ofFa score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded." (1929, 58-59). While I would not want to claim that only disinterest can produce great hterature, it does seem true that part of Shakespeare's appeal lies in his personal ambiguity; by losing himself in his characters, the "real" Shakespeare exists in whatever form the reader desires. One thing which does seem stable is the view of Shakespeare specifically as a genius. In fact, Jonathan Bate argues that the English definition of "genius" was created specifically to explain Shakespeare—a writer universally agreed to be worthwhile, but who did not follow the requirements of "art." Like Mozart and Einstein, Shakespeare is regarded not as a craftsman, but as inspired, gifted with an entirely different way of viewing the world, as Woolf describes. As just one example, in 1865, two men (on opposite sides of the Atlantic) published books specifically devoted to measuring Shakespeare's genius, and both dwelt at length on Shakespeare's artlessness, his ability to draw each character from life, and his inspiration, which often overcame the craft of his plots (Kenny 1864, White 1865). But people, in general, have a mixed relationship to the idea of genius. While we admire it, we also resent it and the shadow it casts over our own much more meager accomplishments. Amadeus is only one exploration of this push-pull fascination, suggesting that a highly acclaimed composer would be driven to contemplate murder when faced with actual (and clearly evident) genius. "Big-time achievements are in many ways inimical to the needs of ordinary people and the values of everyday life" (Bristol 1996,6-7). Genius must be reckoned with and explained, in order to control our own natural feelings of inadequacy. There are two main roads which seem to satisfy people. One is that genius springs from maintaining a child's view of the world, from never fuUy growing up. Stories of Einstein's inability to make change or remember to wear socks are examples, as are films such as Charlie or Phenomenon, where mentally underdeveloped men are suddenly gifted with enormous intellectual capacity. Because they vault so quickly to the heights of intellectual brilliance, they maintain their childlike wonder, amazing people with their novel approach to the world. But this type of genius is always seen as disconnected from reality, often requiring a caretaker, and ordinary people can comfortably reject these mental wonders as springing from a lack of maturity and worldliness. As a man who made money from investments rather than writing, and in fact retired as soon as he had enough money to fulfill his desires, Shakespeare hardly fits into this category. There are, to my knowledge, no full-fledged portrayals of Shakespeare as a childlike genius unable to care for


himself, although he is often shown as momentarily too focused on his work to be aware of the world around him. A second, more common, explanation for genius is that it results from extraordinary suffering. Much of popular culture is dedicated to teaching people that great talent and success result from (or at least lead to) terrible grief, emotional and sometimes physical pain, and isolation. The greater the talent, the greater the suffering, so once again, the average citizen can happily back away from the demands of genius. The problem, of course, is that Shakespeare does not fit this equation either. Documentation suggests a fairly quiet life. He was well liked, retired early, and died in his bed. Even his supposed affair with the Dark Lady (which only exists in poetic reconstruction) would involve only a rather ordinary broken heart. Any rock star can produce tragedies greater than that. At the time, Marlowe, the bisexual heretic and possible spy who died romantically in a duel at the height of his career, certainly seemed to outshine Shakespeare in the category of suffering author. The latter's average craftsman life has led some to believe that Shakespeare (the man) was not "Shakespeare" (the writer). But another common move is to find intense suffering in Shakespeare's life, despite the documentary evidence, and often this re-creation of Shakespeare's emotional life—the very thing Woolf saw as opposed to the creation of great literature—is the thing that makes Shakespeare so appealing, since what causes the emotional pain is as ambiguous and malleable as his plays. One form of mass media which deals regularly with this issue of the individual who suffers because of special powers or gifts is the comic book. Alone among art forms, comics give equal weight to text and images, providing both immediate effect and intellectual engagement. David Carrier points to the importance of the introduction of words into a previously purely visual medium. "The speech balloon is a great philosophical discovery . . . [it] defines comics as neither a purely verbal nor a strictly visual art form, but as something radically new" (2000, 4). Moreover, because comics are drawn, they provide a chance to illustrate the fantastic and unreal much more effectively than other visual media (as is obvious with every attempt to film a comic). Most casual observers are only familiar with superhero comics, which feature fairly simplistic artwork, musclebound men and women with gravity defying breasts, but comics range from careful realism (such as Dick Tracy) to postmodern surrealism (such as some Japanese cartoons which are not even laid out sequentially). This lack of imposed reality also leads to a persistent metatextuality, as characters regularly cross over into other universes, address the reader directly and even realize that they are controlled and created by an outside force.

College Literature 31.4 [Fall 20041

In addition, comics are a continuing series, which allows for the slow unfolding of ideas, sometimes over years. Films, even those with planned sequels, require a beginning, middle and end and sequels are separated from each other by years. Television shows are hampered by the dual needs to fit into a specific time slot and season length, and to please sponsors. Comics, on the other hand, are a monthly continuing form with no required panel or page length. Comics are therefore capable of attacking big questions generally thought to be confined to literature, including the price paid by an individual who lives a life other than average. In some ways, comics (as was conveyed fairly well by the 2000 movie version of X-Men, which starred two Shakespeareans in lead roles) are mainly about the difficulty of being other, whether that otherness is having a superpower, becoming a vigilante after the murder of one's parents, or simply being different. This is why comics have traditionally appealed to teenagers, although their appeal is spreading. In their fiexible form, their mass appeal and their combination of words and images, comics might be considered a worthy successor to the Elizabethan stage. While there have been comic book versions of Shakespeare's plays, there is a series which involves the character of Shakespeare himself. Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman, uses Shakespeare to explore the idea that genius is itself a responsibility which leads to burdens almost too great to bear, an idea which reflects both the modern view of genius and the life of Gaiman as he created the comic. Launched in 1988, the comic broke new ground in several ways. First, it was neither completely mainstream nor completely alternative. Mainstream comics are corporately owned, aimed at children and teenagers and follow the adventure/detective format, while alternative comics are usually individually written and pubhshed, aimed at adults and reflect a specific, individual vision of the world. While Sandman is owned by DC Comics, it has a decidedly darker, more adult slant, and its popularity actually led to the establishment of the Vertigo imprint, a group of titles which are more psychological and literary than average mainstream comics, and which manage to attract a non-comic reading audience (Pustz 1999,84). And despite Gaiman's repeated praise of his collaborators, it is apparent that Sandman's vision was entirely his, most clearly indicated by DCs unprecedented step of allowing the title to end at the height of its popularity because Gaiman felt it was finished. Another difference is the main character. Instead of a superhero (as in mainstream comics) or a real person (as is often the case in alternative comics), here the protagonist is Dream (also called Morpheus, although never, despite the series' title. Sandman), one of seven Endless. The Endless— Dream, Death, Destiny, Desire, Despair, Delirium, and Destruction—are the embodiments of essential characteristics of life. They control and create these


characteristics, interacting not only with humans, but with gods, demons, and other life forms. Thus the focus of this comic is inherently more meditative and ambiguous than comics which feature a clear cut good and evil. Even a comic such as Batman, with its tormented vigilante hero, presents battles against opponents who want to destroy humanity or take over the world. Sandman, on the other hand, is free to spend entire issues contemplating the nature of reality and responsibility without straightforward villains. Another important difference between Sandman and other comics is in the literary, allusive style in which it is written. Comics, especially more recent ones, have always referenced each other, and Sandman is no exception. In fact, a portion of Sandman's readers was drawn to the comic specifically because of the regular use of obscure DC characters (Pustz 1999, 85). But Gaiman also makes a huge number of historical and literary references to, among others, Greek, Egyptian, and Norse myth, the Bible, Milton, A Thousand and One Arabian Nights and, of course, Shakespeare. Shakespeare plays an integral part in the mythology and texture of Sandman. He is not the most referenced literary figure—the myth of Orpheus is retold in great detail as it is revealed that Dream is Orpheus's father—but Shakespeare as a character and a cultural symbol carries a significant part of the burden of the series' meditation on the character and meaning of dreams. For Gaiman, dreams (and he means both sleeping dreams and waking wishes) are both the shadow and seed of reality. Shakespeare, as a character, discovers through his life and the course of the series the necessary loss tied to a life of bringing dreams to life. He becomes, in essence, a human Dream, losing his freedom because humanity has need of his gifts. And Shakespeare also becomes a symbol of Gaiman himself, an author suddenly caught up in a cultural phenomenon much larger than he ever expected, and which he is no longer entirely sure he desires. Shakespeare appears in only three issues, but two are wholly devoted to his plays and his life, and the second of these holds pride of place as the final episode of the entire series. Gaiman does use quotes from popular Shakespeare plays, in the way popular culture often does to give an institutional culture sheen to its creation, but Gaiman s main interest in Shakespeare is not the plays, but the character of Shakespeare himself For Gaiman, Shakespeare is a human parallel to Dream, an embodiment of something far greater than a single person, the bearer of something vital to humanity, and because of that, a person weighed down and ruled by responsibilities far greater than usual. It is the very human Shakespeare we meetfirst.The opening six episodes of Sandman are concerned -with Dream's capture by a magician in 1964, his escape in 1988 and the rebuilding of his realm. In issue 7, a new multi-part

100


story, A Doll's House begins, which introduces a recurring character. Rose, and an escaped nightmare/serial killer. However, Part 4 (Issue 12) o(A Doll's House is not part of this story. Instead, exactly in the middle of this seven part series is a stand-alone episode which introduces Shakespeare, as well as Hob Gadling, a man who does not die. "Men of Good Fortune" begins in 1389, in an English tavern. Dream, pushed by his sister Death, is visiting the waking world because, as she says, "I just think maybe it would be good for you to see them on their terms, instead of yours" (Gaiman 1990,1).While there, they overhear Hob Gadling, a foot soldier, explaining his ideas on death. "The only reason people die is because everyone does it. You all just go along with it. It's rubbish, death. It's stupid. I don't want anything to do with it" (3). Amused, Dream and Death strike a bargain, and, with Death's promise not to take Hob until he desires it. Dream approaches Hob and suggests that they meet each century, in the same place and on the same day. The scene is set for a meditation on learning what is truly important in life, as Hob rises and falls from "Sir Robert Gadling" to a poor drunkard who is only allowed into the tavern because he is a guest of the well-dressed Dream, andfinallysettles into middle class stability. He becomes a printer and then a slaver, until he learns from Dream that "it is a poor thing to enslave another" (Gaiman 1990, 20). Finally, in 1889, he makes the observation that Dream does not meet him to learn what happens when a man does not die, but for friendship."I think you're lonely" (23). Dream rejects this notion violently, but in the next panel, it is 1989 and he has kept his meeting with Hob. We know, even if Hob does not, that Dream has spent much of the twentieth century locked in a glass box, powerless. It is the change that results from that imprisonment which is Gaiman's chief interest. Throughout the series, characters comment on Dream's changes, which he at first denies and never completely accepts. Gradually, he realizes that the isolation of imprisonment imposed by another has made his self-imposed isolation, based in his sense of duty, intolerable. Where does Shakespeare fit into this story of friendship and long hfe? At their second official meeting, in 1589, Hob and Dream overhear "WiU Shaxberd" talking to Marlowe and lamenting his inability to write plays as good as Marlowe's. In fact, Marlowe critiques Shakespeare's first attempt (here Henry VI Part I), mocking the line "bad revolting stars." This rivalry with Marlowe is also presented in Shakespeare in Love and in both instances, it seems to spring not only from fact (in 1589 Marlowe's literary reputation did outshine Shakespeare's) but from a desire to see Shakespeare in development and thereby connect him to every struggling artist and novice. Rather than being presented from the outset as a genius who need not "blot a line"

Annalisa Castaldo lOi

Shakespeare is often represented as tormented by a desire to write better than he can. In Shakespeare in Love we see the young Will at what appears to be the sixteenth century equivalent of a psychiatrist, lamenting his writer's block. In Sandman, Dream asks Hob if Shakespeare is any good and receives the answer, "No. He's crap. Now, that chap there . . . next to him . . . He's a good playwright" (Gaiman 1990, 12). Shakespeare's suffering begins early with the desire for genius, before that genius manifests itself. Shakespeare, however, is not and cannot be just a struggling young writer. His destiny is always already apparent, and while a film about, say, Thomas Kyd (a contemporary of Shakespeare's and author of arguably the most beloved Elizabethan play. The Spanish Tragedy), might conceal the end result of his life's work, no one is in any doubt about Shakespeare's eventual rise to greatness. Popular culture uses such as Shakespeare in Love and Sandman have no desire to dethrone Shakespeare; indeed, they have a great stake in his recognition factor. The question then is how the struggling writer goes from "bad revolting stars" to "to be or not to be," how Shaxberd becomes Shakespeare. In Shakespeare in Love, another modern example of Shakespeare's suffering, it is love, and more specifically, tragically denied love, which changes Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter into Romeo and Juliet. In

the Sandman comics, it is partially Shakespeare's desires, and partially the desires of Dream which effect the transformation. Gaiman uses Shakespeare's life to meditate not only on the power of dreams, but also on the responsibilities, regret, and loss which come from achieving a dream. Just as, in Shakespeare in Love, Shakespeare must lose Viola to become a great writer, Gaiman presents Shakespeare as a man who gives up all true connections to everyday life for eternal glory and comes to regret the bargain. But the loss and regret are far in the future, both for Shakespeare and for Dream. In 1589, Dream approaches Shakespeare after the latter has declared that he "would give anything to have [Marlowe's] gifts, or more than anything to give men dreams, that would live on long after [he is] dead" (Gaiman 1990, 12). The King of Dreams asks for a reiteration of that desire. "Would you write great plays? Create new dreams to spur the minds of men? Is that your will?" (13). When Shakespeare responds that it is. Dream leads him away to talk and the reader is left alone with Hob and his simpler pleasures of white bread and ale. Dream carefully duplicates Shakespeare's exact demands: to write great plays (like Marlowe) and to create dreams (a word both use) that will live on. Gaiman also follows Shakespeare's own footsteps and puns on "will." Shakespeare, in his sonnets, puns frequently on "will" as a way to link his desires, usually sexual, and his identity. So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will/One will of mine to make thy large Will more (Sonnet 135, 11-12).

102


Gaiman, on the other hand focuses on Shakespeare's lack of "will" in becoming "Will."To become thatWiW, the one who writes great plays, Shakespeare must give up his will and become a conduit for stories that exist outside of him and outside of time. Shakespeare, as will later be revealed, does not understand the cost, and readily agrees. And so, through supernatural means, he will become a greater playwright than Marlowe, because Marlowe writes only from his own perspective. Shakespeare will now be granted the ability not just to write plays, but also to embody the dreams of mankind. The reader does not hear about Shakespeare for two more meetings. Then, in 1789, Hob mentions to Dream that he saw a production of King Z^ar. "The idiots have given it a happy ending" (Gaiman 1990, 18). Dream responds that the new ending will not last. "The Great Stories will always return to their original forms" (18). Scholars know, of course, that Shakespeare was actually the one to change the ending. Both Holinshed and TTte Mirror for Magistrates restore Lear (or Leir) to his throne, with Cordelia his heir. It is in recognition of this dramatic change that Kent speaks the line "Is this the promised end?" (5.3.262). But most people view Shakespeare as an originator and creator, rather than an adaptor. Few people outside Shakespearean scholars know Holinsheds Chronicles or The Mirror for Magistrates and the remark Hob makes is thus perfectly reasonable. And as Hob, throughout this issue, stands for the common man, embodying the readers point of view, it is right that he should neglect the past that he actually lived through in favor of the more traditional view of Shakespeare's reputation. Hob goes on to ask about the source of Shakespeare's gifts. "That lad. Will Shakespeare.You did some kind of deal with him, didn't you? What kind of deal? His soul?" (Gaiman 1990,18). Dream's response is, as usual, brief and ambiguous. "Nothing so crude" (18). The two are interrupted at this point, and we hear no more of Shakespeare in this issue. The series then returns to the story of Rose Walker and Dream's quest to recover nightmares which have escaped into reahty during his 80 years of imprisonment.This arc is separate from the Hob Gadling story, but it is worth pausing for a moment to consider why so careful a writer as Gaiman injected this stand-alone issue into the midst of this specific storyline. A Doll's House concerns two things. The apparently central issue is Dream's recovery ofThe Corinthian, a nightmare which has escaped into the real world and has, apparently, inspired the rise of serial killers. But there are two entire episodes after the recapture of the Corinthian which deal with a girl named Rose Walker who is a "vortex,": a person who creates chaos by breaking down the barriers between dreaming minds. We learn that once, a long time ago. Dream did not succeed in stopping a vortex and an entire

Annalisa Castaldo 1O3

world was destroyed. We also learn, for the first time, two other important things about the world Gaiman has created. One is that Dream is almost unnaturally concerned with duty and responsibility. The other is that, powerful as he might seem to be, there are rules that even he and the other Endless must obey. Nothing is free, especially power. Rose Walker does not in fact die. Instead, her grandmother takes on the burden of the vortex and in the end we discover that Desire, who hates Dream, has engineered Rose's creation as the vortex and is Rose's grandfather. A hint of the trouble that would have created is given at the end, when Dream confronts Desire. "Was I to take the life of one of our blood, with all that would entail?" (Gaiman 1990,16:22). As the series unfolds, we find that Dream, because of his dedication to his responsibilities, is forced to kill a member of his family (his son, Orpheus) and thereby allow the Furies to hunt him down and kill him. This seems rather far astray from the life of Shakespeare, a man who married, had children, made his money shrewdly by investing in the playhouse rather than simply writing for profit, and, when he had made enough money to buy his father a coat of arms, retired from writing and lived his last few years in Stratford. But Gaiman creates Shakespeare as the human mirror of Dream, suffering loss and bowed under responsibility as Dream is. However, unlike Dream, Shakespeare is unaware of the reasons and consequences of his desires. These ideas are hardly clear from Shakespeare's first appearance, but they are fleshed out in the issue devoted to his second appearance, in issue 19, which is entirely concerned with Shakespeare and is called "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Before turning to that issue, however, it is worth noting another reason for Shakespeare's appearance at this moment. When Gaiman began writing Sandman, as noted above, it created a new tone and focus for a mainstream comic. There was no way for Gaiman or DC Comics to know if it would be a successful series and, if so, how successful. At first, there were problems. Sam Keith, the penciler, left after three issues, feeling creative difference, and Gaiman wrote in the collected paperback edition of Preludes and Nocturnes (the first six issues), "I had never written a monthly comic before, and wasn't sure that I would be able to." (1994b, Afterword). As he began the second arc, then, Gaiman was feeling pressure to live up to his vision, while also feeling confined by the dictates of a schedule and the needs of collaborators. It was shortly after this that Sandman began to win real critical favor, as well as an unexpectedly large audience. In May of 1990, a favorable article in Rolling Stone prompted DC Comics to hurry the pubhshing of A Doll's House in trade paperback (Gaiman 1996, insert). Interestingly, in the introduction to the graphic novel, Clive Barker writes "Hero and author are here

104


synonymous. For the time you spend in these pages, Mr. Gaiman is the Sandman" (1990, 7). Then, in October of 1991, "A Midsummer Nights Dream" won the World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic to win an award in the category of prose fiction. In addition to recognition came a huge reading audience (in 1993 "The High Cost of Living" became the best selling mature audience comic of all time), an avalanche of tie-ins (in addition to the usual posters and t-shirts, there were Sandman statues, watches, tarot cards, and trading cards) and vastly increased expectations. Whether the stories would have taken a different turn if it had remained a tiny, cult series is, of course, unknown. And it is clear from the interweaving of stories—characters mentioned in early issues reappearing in more detail later—that Gaiman had some overall picture in mind. But it also seems clear that the more adulation Sandman received, the more Gaiman wrote about the responsibility brought about by dreams achieved, the losses required to achieve them, and a desire to drop everything and walk away. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" begins this trend, and it is a wonderful exploration of the power and cost of achieving dreams. It is in this issue that the bargain Dream offered Shakespeare is fully explained. We discover that in exchange for being able to write great works, Shakespeare has promised to write two plays for Dream, one at the beginning of his career and one at the end, both celebrating dreams. The first half of the bargain is discharged when Shakespeare, in 1593, writes A Midsummer Night's Dream and, on June 23'''', he and his company perform it for Dream and the Faerie. Woven into and around the performance are the themes of responsibility and regret that briefly showed in Shakespeare's first Sandman appearance. Shakespeare claims that he "half regret[s]" the bargain he has made with Dream (Gaiman 1991, 16). Dream himself tells Oberon andTitania that he is not sure he has done the right thing in giving Shakespeare the ability to write great works. But Gaiman's strongest example of the price due for dreams fulfilled is in the character of Hamnet, Shakespeare's young son. In Gaiman's telling, Anne Hathaway has forced Shakespeare to take Hamnet with him as he travels the provinces. Hamnet reveals that it is the first time he has seen his father for more than a week. When one of the players insists "I would be proud of him, were he my father" (13), Hamnet responds that if he died, his father would just write a play about it, called Hamnet. "All that matters to him . . . all that matters is the stories" (13). Of course, Hamlet is not based on a variation of Shakespeare's son's name, but, like King Lear, on a number of sources now unread and generally unknown. But Gaiman takes advantage of the coincidence by closing the issue with a mention of Hamnet's death in 1596, at age eleven. Further, Gaiman has (as so many modern productions do) an actual Indian boy for


Titania and Oberon to fight over, this time played by Hamnet. The real Titania is intrigued by the boy and we see her giving him, at the unhistorical interval, the attention his father does not. The implication is strong that Hamnet s "death" is actually a real case of fairies taking a child, but with no goblin changeling left in its place. In the course of the issue, then, Shakespeare is revealed to have lost his friend, as Dream tells him that Marlowe is dead, and soon is to lose his son. Like Dream's, his isolation is enforced by his responsibilities as a vessel for the great stories, truths that will live on after historical facts are dust. Reality is necessarily less important than his dreams, his writing. The difference between historical fact and "truth" is highlighted by Oberon, who objects to the play because "things never happened thus" (Gaiman 1991, 21). Dream's response is to state a central idea both to Gaiman's entire conception of the Sandman universe and A Midsummer Night's Dream. "Things need not have happened to be true.Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot" (21). In the case of Shakespeare's plays, this is true, as has already been demonstrated by King Lear. Most of Shakespeare's sources are not "factual" as we in modern America would recognize them. Even the historical details from Holinshed's Chronicles are not verified in the way historians today would consider valid. But the background, the "pre-story" from which Shakespeare drew is now mostly "dust and ashes, and forgot" except by scholars. Shakespeare has gradually become a creator of tales as well as a great writer. His versions have, in fact, become the "great stories" not because they are mythical connections to a greater reahty, but because they have helped to shape our culture's knowledge about itself. In this way, Shakespeare (that is, the plays) has become cut off and isolated. The plays are often taught in single author courses or, if part of a great books or drama class, regularly stand in for the entire literature of the Renaissance. Gaiman is correct when he chooses this moment to have Dream reveal to Shakespeare that Marlowe is dead. Having been surpassed or superceded, Marlowe disappears almost completely from the history, the reality, of most modern culture. Shakespeare and Dream are fiirther paralleled when Shakespeare ignores his son's desire to talk about Titania (he is watching the play) and Dream is himself ignored by Titania as he meditates on whether his bargain with Shakespeare was right (she is also absorbed in the play). The creation of the two—Dream's inspiration and Shakespeare's words—thus comes between and cuts off direct communication between individuals. Neither Hamnet nor Dream receives the reassurance he seeks, precisely because the play itself is so powerful. Gaiman thus suggests that dreams, while a necessary and valuable part of life, have the disconcerting ability to take the place of real life. This

106

College Literature 31.4 [fall 2004]

observation is complicated, of course, because for Dream, dreams are "real life" and for Shakespeare, dreams are what enable his continued existence. The twenty-first century reader knows Shakespeare as a person only because of the ability of his plays/dreams to live on. The concern Gaiman is expressing is in some ways the opposite of what the characters of A Midsummer Night's Dream claim. Soon after Titania ignores Dream's concern about his choice, the moment of Hippolyta's disapproval of the play is staged, with Theseus s rejoinder of "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them" (Gaiman 1991, 21). But Gaiman s point seems to be that imagination and plays are very powerful things indeed, not shadows at all. Through Shakespeare's increasing isolation, Gaiman suggests that dreams, while vital to a worthwhile existence, can easily take the place of reality and make a normal life impossible. It is this topic which dominates Shakespeare's final appearance, in the issue which closes the entire series. Before turning to the issue itself, it is necessary to understand a bit of what happens between "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (issue 19) and "The Tempest" (issue 75). Although there are many arcs and stories, the main drive of the entire series is Dream's gradual realization that he is tired of his responsibilities and his growing awareness of his desire to lay them down. We are introduced to the seventh, missing Endless, Destruction, who abandoned his post centuries ago. Dream is given the key to an emptied Hell and is further burdened with the need to find a new owner for it. Finally, Dream is brought back into contact with his son, Orpheus, who exists only as a head which cannot die. Dream finally grants Orpheus the boon of death, but in doing so he opens the gate to the Furies, who are charged with vengeance in the case of family murder. They attack him, and eventually Dream dies, although he is replaced by a new Lord of the Dreaming. Dream knows all along that his actions will lead to his death, but he does not, and perhaps cannot, shirk his responsibilities. As he says, just before going to meet the Furies, "We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves" (Gaiman 1995, 24). After the death of Dream, there is The Wake, a mourning of Dream's passing and the introduction of the new king of dreams. And then there is "The Tempest." The story necessarily takes place in 1610, long before Dream's death and even his imprisonment, but for the reader this story follows rather than precedes the knowledge of Dream's fate. Once again, Gaiman evokes the popular beliefs of Shakespeare's life over the historical facts. Despite Shakespeare's continuation of his writing (albeit with Fletcher), The Tempest has popularly been seen as his swan song, and Prospero as a self portrait. Gaiman uses this belief to round out the stories of both Shakespeare and

Annalisa Castaldo 1O7 Dream, two characters who find that they are too much ruled by the responsibilities that make them who they are. In the final issue of The Sandman, we find Shakespeare writing at home in Stratford, aware that this play is the second half of the bargain he made long ago, and eager to finish it and stop writing. Throughout the issue there are reminders of what his dreams cost him and those around him. He is chided by his wife for his lack of sense, and by his daughter, for his long absences. Ben Jonson comes to visit and argues that Shakespeare had to borrow plots because he never hved. "I've lived life to the full.What've you done,Will? . . . A little acting, a little writing" (Gaiman 1996, 13). Shakespeare protests that he has lived a full life and chat to understand people, one need only be a person. But later, in his meeting with Dream, Shakespeare reveals that he does not feel, in his own heart, that he has truly lived: I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died, and I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady and I wept, in my room, alone. But while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of the Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own. (Gaiman 1996, 34) This is the theme that sounded in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" but here is stressed much more strongly. At the end of his life, Shakespeare regrets the choices he made and the life he lived (or didn't live). In this final issue, Gaiman is most clear about his feeling of kinship with Shakespeare and his belief that the two of them share parallel paths. Like Shakespeare, Gaiman finds himself praised for creating something completely new and innovative while uneasily aware that most of the plots and characters, and much of world view, is borrowed from sources now obscured by his creation. Gaiman did not create the character the Sandman; he was an unpopular D C character from the 3O's. Indeed, his first suggestions for a monthly series, before hitting on Sandman, all involved "sundry established D C characters I thought it might be fun to revive from limbo." (Gaiman 1994b, Afterword). Gaiman refers to this tendency in Shakespeare, and by extension, himself, twice. First, Ben Jonson mockingly asks Shakespeare where the latest play comes from: "Have you been raiding poor Holinshed again? Or does Plutarch bear the brunt of your depredations?" (Gaiman 1996, 13). Shakespeare responds that it is mostly his, but later, when speaking to Dream, he describes a more complicated creative process. It is a topical piece—I took the inspiration for it from the wreck of the SeaVenture in the Bermudas last year. The story is merely the sort of story all parents tell to amuse their children. There is some of me in it. Some of

108


Judith. Things I saw, things I thought. I stole a speech from one of Montaigne's essays and closed with an unequivocally cheap and happy ending. (Gaiman 1996, 35) Here Gaiman, through Shakespeare, is admitting that his creation is a collaborative process. Some of the story is "me" and "things I thought" but some, perhaps most, comes from outside. It is appropriate that Gaiman admits this in an issue that is, to a large extent, simply an illustrated version of The Tempest. Another direct reference to his own past comes when Gaiman has Shakespeare describe his plays to Dream. "I cannot even read them with pleasure. I begin, but I see no art. Just artifice." (Gaiman 1996, 21). This directly echoes Gaiman's words in the afterword o( Preludes and Nocturnes, just as he and his characters were becoming famous. "Rereading these stories today I must confess I find many of them awkward and ungainly ..." (1994b, unpaged). If the final episode allows Gaiman to acknowledge his debts and admit his uncertainties, his protagonist is almost punishingly remote. Dream is austere and distant, just as characters throughout the series have described him before his imprisonment. He is not the Sandman the readers have come to know, and that, perhaps, is the point.When the play isfinished.Dream claims, "[i]t remains only for me to thank you and to wish you well in your life to come" (Gaiman 1996, 29). Shakespeare objects that no master would end a contract so abruptly and, presented with an obligation. Dream, as always, fulfills it. But when Shakespeare demands an explanation for the bargain, we see the change Dream will undergo (but as yet has not) as he first refuses and then accepts Shakespeare's right to know his reasons. In the end, Shakespeare questions why Dream would want such a play as The Tempest and Dream responds, "I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I wanted a play about a king who drowns his books and breaks his staff and leaves his kingdom" (Gaiman 1996, 35). He believes he will never leave his island. He describes himself as the Prince of stories, "but I have no story of my own" (36). Dream's uncertainty about whether he has done the right thing, expressed in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" becomes more clearly an uncertainty not about Shakespeare's life, but his own existence. And just as Dream eventually, although centuries in the future, will give up his responsibilities, Shakespeare awakens from his meeting with Dream and knows, "it is over. . . .The burden of words. I can lay it down, now" (37). Gaiman no doubt picked Shakespeare because he knew that most, if not all people, would recognize him and know sahent facts about his life. But given the amount of backstory Gaiman is capable of weaving into an issue, he did not need to pick such a well known writer. And at first glance, an artist who died young and dramatically, who Hved an exciting life, such as Marlowe, might have seemed a more obvious choice as a mirror of the King


of Dreams. But Gaiman is not interested in exploring the relatively straightforward idea that dreams are positive fantasies we have to escape reality. For Gaiman, dreams are dangerous whether or not we achieve them because, as Dream says, "the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted" (1991,19). Gaiman also saw the apparent paradox that out of Shakespeare's fairly ordinary life came extraordinary writing, stories that have lasted. Gaiman is hardly the first to feel that a glovers son from Stratford is somehow misplaced as the greatest writer of all time. While others have sought to prove that the writer we know as Shakespeare was not William Shakespeare of Stratford, Gaiman suggests instead that Shakespeare had talent, hut it was the combination of that and Dream's bargain which vaulted him above other writers. When Shakespeare asks Dream, at the end of the series, why Dream gave him the plays. Dream is clear that his was not the only talent at work. "You had a gift, and the talent. . . .And because you wanted it . . . so much" (1996, 32). Gaiman presents Shakespeare as not extraordinarily talented, but extraordinarily eager. His genius lies in his focus, which allows Dream to use him as a "vessel." Gaiman's uneasy relationship with the material he has borrowed/stolen/obscured is worked out through Shakespeare's relationship with Dream, so it is interesting to note that several of the writers who pen introductions to the trade paperbacks extol Gaiman in exactly the language used for Shakespeare. About the stories. Gene Wolf writes," . . . [Y]ou will understand yourself and the world better for having read them ...." (Gaiman 1993, unpaged). And in the introduction to Brief Lives, Peter Straub describes Gaiman as, "on a plane all his own ... Gaiman is a master, and his vast, roomy stories, filled with every possible shade of feeling, are unlike everyone else's." (Gaiman 1994, unpaged) And while this is manifestly untrue in terms of the stories, it has a grain of truth in that the way Gaiman (and Shakespeare) present their twice-told tales is what makes them matter. Gaiman's presentation of Shakespeare is more nuanced than Shakespeare in Love but both spring from the same cultural well. Shakespeare's character continues to speak to us, just as his plays do, and to be infinitely plastic, bending to fit the current needs of a writer or a culture. At one point a character asks Dream if he is always so pale and the King of Stories responds "That depends on who's watching" (1993, 21). It seems that like Dream, Shakespeare's character depends mainly on who's watching. Notes ^ The argument could be made that a foot soldier such as Hob might very well have been illiterate and therefore unaware of the non-dramatic texts preceding

no

College Literature 31.4 [Fall 2004] Shakespeare's version of King Lear. Jiut interestingly Gaiman circumvents that, by having Hob take up, in 1489, the new trade of printing. I strongly doubt that Gaiman wanted or expected the audience to understand from this that Shakespeare's version of any stories overwhelmed the memories of even those whose livelihood depended on texts. But this sort of incidental intertextuality is precisely the way Gaiman works.

Works Cited Bate, Jonathan. 1997. The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Picador. Bristol, Michael D. 1996. Big-Time Shakespeare. London: Routledge. Carrier, David. 2000. The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1984 "What is an Author?" In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books. Gaiman, Neil. 1990. The Sandman.The Doll's House. New York: D.C. Comics. . 1991. "A Midsummer Night's Dream" The Sandman 19. New York: D.C. Comics. . 1993. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections New York: D.C. Comics. . 1994a. The Sandman: Brief Lives. New York: D.C. Comics. . 1994b. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. New York: D.C. Comics . 1995. The Sandman:The Kindly Ones 67. New York: D C Comics. 1996. The Sandman 75: "The Tempest." New York: D.C. Comics. Howard, Jean E, and Marion O'Connor, eds. 1987. Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. New York: Methuen. Kenny, Thomas. 1864. Hie Life and Genius of Shakespeare. London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green. Pustz, Matthew J. 1999. Gomic Book Gulture: Fanboys and True Believers. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. White, Richard Grant. 1865. Memoirs of the Life of William Shakespeare with an Essay Toward the Expression of His Genius. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Woolf,Virginia. 1 9 2 9 . ^ Room of One's Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.