“No,” said I. “No more.”
“But she killed me.”
“No she didn’t. A goblin killed you, on the order of Titania.”
“Well that’s hurtful,” said the Puck. “I was going to kill her anyway, for sending the fairies to Oberon’s harem, but Titania kill me? No.”
“Yes. You paid the assassin yourself when you delivered the silver bracelet to the goblin Talos.”
“She said that was for weapons for the Amazons, so I had to appear as a mortal to deflect blame.”
“She lied.”
“But I was her favorite.”
“Not anymore. The Indian boy was her favorite in the end.” I nodded to the boy, who now stood over the dead king and queen, studying them.
The Puck leapt from the balcony, but instead of falling he blinked to a spot by the Indian boy. He leaned in close to the boy, examined him, looked him top to bottom, then looked to Rumour, who was smiling in a self-satisfied way center stage. “Why does this sprout get a hat? I didn’t get a hat.”
“The boy is your son, Puck,” said Rumour.
“Bollocks,” said the Puck. “Did he say that? Did you say that?”
The boy looked at his father like a dog watching a bee working a flower, intrigued by the movement, but relatively sure he was not good to eat.
“Come here, boy,” said Rumour. And the boy blinked to his side. “Could anyone but the progeny of the Puck do that?”
“Blimey,” said the Puck. “A son. With a hat.”
“Yes,” said I. “Magical and a bit thick—the boy is yours. Not so his turban. Puck, mate, you are short of time and there are things you need to put right.”
I jumped onto the stage and waved for the Puck to join Rumour at center stage, while I went to Cobweb. “This is why you were so late?”
“Took a massive fucking frolic to bring him back, dinnit?” she said. “He’d been dead three days.”
“Does he know? Does he know he won’t last?”
“I think he can feel it.” She nodded at the Puck, who was leaning on Rumour as he coughed, which seemed to distress him more than finding he had a son.
I pulled my coxcomb from my head, went to the Puck, and fitted it on his noggin while I whispered in his ear, “This is yours, mate. You traded for it fair and square. Now we have to put this disaster in order. Your best magics, Robin Goodfellow, for this shall be your legacy.”
I patted his back and pushed my way in front of Rumour. “You could have just told me,” I said sotto voce. “Those were not magic fucking words.”
“I didn’t say they were. I said they were the key.”
“You said the lovers were the key as well, and that was utter rubbish.”
“Puck used his second flower on the lovers. There was no flower to give to Theseus to use on Hippolyta. He had no intention of delivering that potion. Had you not been so thick, you would have known he had gone to Turtle Grotto for another purpose. His intent, since hearing Hippolyta’s plan with Oberon to bring the goblin soldiers to the wedding, was to gather the powerful and corrupt and kill them all.”
“Your hat smells of monkey fuck,” I replied. I turned to the audience and raised my hands for quiet.
“What you have seen here you shall remember only as a dream. When you wake, people of Athens, you shall go about your business, your farming and your trades, and give thanks to the forces of nature, and once a year, in the spring, take an offering of fabric, needle and thread, and simple tools, and leave them in the forest to the east. And four times a year, take a hundredweight of silver to the forest in the north, and for this the gods shall protect you from invaders. As now, you may never enter the forest at night, and never shall anyone do harm to a squirrel, for any reason, lest they bring bad harvests onto the city. You will remember goblins and fairies only as stories you tell to delight your children. Further, the working people of Athens shall keep the fruits of their labor, and only give so much of it to the city as is required to pay these offerings and protect the city, not to enrich their leaders or maintain a conquering army.”
I looked at the Puck, who was now holding himself up by bracing himself on Rumour. “Can you enchant them thus?” He nodded. “And change Nick Bottom back to a man?” Again the nod.
“Hippolyta, you shall take your warriors and your ships and return home to your island, never to return to this land again, lest you meet the wrath of the goblins. Do you understand?”
“Can’t we kill her?” said Puck.
“No, we can’t kill her. She did not come here of her own will, she was as much a slave as you. Can you do the spell?”
“Yes. But they should give shoes and hats to the fairies as well.”
“As you wish.”
“Goblins, return to your castle of night, and remember that the stars and the moon are yours, always, and you owe no one obeisance for their silvery shine. Return to this city no more, and never harm your fairy brethren, for their magic sustains you too.”
“And no eating fucking squirrels!” shouted Cobweb.
“Yes, that too,” said I. I turned to the Puck. “The stage is yours.”
The Puck struggled forward but gathered his strength, sucking in great breaths of air, and puffed his chest and prepared to speak. But there came a loud clacking noise before the stage.
Hippolyta looked up at me and shrugged. In front of her, Drool and Peaseblossom were bent over the body of Theseus, and the fairy was forcefully beating the dead duke in the face with an iron candlestick, which was where the racket was coming from.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
The two simpletons looked up with great satisfied grins. “Drool told me about tooth fairies,” said Peaseblossom. “I shall become a tooth fairy.”
“We’ve nearly a bagful,” said Drool, holding up a coin purse that looked suspiciously like it had been fashioned from someone’s scrotum.
“I’m going to get silver for them and give it to the goblins for saving our mates,” said Peaseblossom, holding up a bloody molar.
“That is not how it works,” said I. “That is not how it works at all.”
Rumour cleared his throat loudly and hopped off the stage, deferring to the Puck.
“The magic is done,” the Puck said to me. “They will not remember.” Then he moved to the edge of the stage, and to the audience, said:
“If we shadows have offended,
“Think but this, and all is mended,
“That you have but slumber’d here
“While these visions did appear.
“And this weak and idle theme,
“No more yielding but a dream,
“Gentles, do not reprehend:
“If you pardon, we will mend:
“And, as I am an honest Puck,
“If we have unearned luck
“Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,
“We will make amends ere long;
“Else the Puck a liar call;
“So, good night unto you all.
“Give me your hands, if we be friends,
“And Robin shall restore amends.”
Then the Puck took a great bow, another to the right, another to the left, and the audience, on their feet, applauded, even the Amazons and goblins. And the Puck dropped to one knee. Cobweb ran to him and caught him before he fell, lowering him to the floor. I hopped up on the stage and knelt over the Puck. Cobweb held his head, cradled in her lap, and the players gathered round and watched, heads bowed, as he died.
* * *
Two days later, Drool and I stood at the edge of the city, kitted out for travel, faced down by Nick Bottom and the three fairies.
Bottom shook my hand. “You shall always be our master of the theater. Thank you.”
I slapped his back. “You were a brave player and a good friend,” said I. “I hope Mrs. Bottom forgives you your trespasses.”
“Ah, I don’t mind sleeping out with the animals for a bit. Finding my sense memory, don’t
you know. Her anger is waning. I’ll be back in the house in no time.”
“Good luck, then.”
“Jeff is staying,” said Moth, holding Jeff. “We are in love.”
“But he’s a monkey,” said I.
“Not all the time,” said Moth.
“Yes, all the fucking time.”
“Well, in the daytime we play in the trees together and it’s lovely.”
Jeff, cheeky monkey that he was, nodded and nuzzled into her neck.
“He is his own man,” said I. “Perhaps you could get a hat, to keep his interest when you’re a fairy.”
“She can have mine,” said Cobweb. She removed her bycocket hat and fitted it over Moth’s eggshell-colored hair.
“I bought you these,” I said, pulling a pair of shoes from my satchel and handing them to Cobweb. “I think they’ll fit.”
She took them, turned them around in the air, examined them. “I am ruined now,” she said.
“Yes,” said I.
“And I have these,” said Peaseblossom, holding up her nut-sack full of teeth. “For I am now a tooth fairy.”
“Yes,” said I. “How many do you think you have?”
“Don’t be a twat, Pocket,” said Cobweb. Then, as she eyed her shoes suspiciously, she said, “Where will you go?”
“We have no master but the road, love. We shall wander looking to bring laughter and joy to all we meet.”
“We are fools,” said Drool.
“Fancy a frolic before you go?” said Moth.
“Thank you, lamb, but I think not. We already waited until sundown so we could say goodbye.”
We hugged them each, except Jeff, who is a shit and tried to bite Drool. Cobweb clung to my neck for a long time and, truth be told, I did not want to let her go when I did.
“Farewell then,” said I, and I turned and headed down the road.
“Ta,” said Drool.
I was determined I would not look back, and did not, until Drool said, “Pocket.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. Cobweb was following along behind us, taking awkward and tentative steps in her new shoes.
“What are you doing?” I called.
“I’m coming with you.”
“We may never come back this way.”
“I know. But I have never been anywhere but here. I would see other places.”
“There probably won’t be other fairies. You won’t be able to frolic.”
“I have frolicked before.”
“But you’re a squirrel.”
“Not all the time.”
“But a great crashing lot of the time. The time when it’s not dark.”
“In the day I shall ride on your shoulder and listen to you tell stories of wonder and adventure. Besides, you fancy me, Pocket of Dog Snogging.”
“Fuckstockings,” said I, defeated. “Come along, then.”
Afterword
A Fool in the Forest
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is my favorite Shakespeare play—it’s the only one I’ve ever made it all the way through without thinking about things I’m going to eat—and you, sir, have besmirched this delightful, spirited sex comedy with murder, goblins, and gratuitous squirrel shagging. You, sir, you cad, you dilettante, you scrofulous scribbler of unscrupulous satire, have made a sow’s ear from a perfectly lovely silk purse. Why? Why, why, why?”
Okay, harsh, but fair.
Why?
I picked A Midsummer Night’s Dream because it’s my favorite too! It’s everybody’s favorite (except for Shakespeare scholars and people who still believe in love). It’s the most performed of all of Shakespeare’s plays, largely, I’d guess, because the plot is so silly and the setting so flexible. Sure, the script says “Athens,” but it’s no Athens anyone has ever seen. There’s no historical period referenced at all, and most of the play is set in the fairy wood, which can be anywhere, really. Once we’re into the wood (and we more or less have to accept that the fairy wood is “but a dream”), the possibilities bloom. I’ve seen productions of MSND where the motif was punk, glitter rock, punk-glitter-rock, Victorian country house, Bollywood London, and even one high school production where the fairy wood was the city dump and the fairies wore bin bags as costumes (clever cost-cutting move for wardrobe). In fact, it was the fungible nature of the fairy wood that made me want to send Pocket there in the first place. I found him in a false medieval Britain (Fool) and moved him to a historical thirteenth-century Venice (The Serpent of Venice), largely because I wanted to tell a story about a water monster in the canals, so I thought, how could I challenge my oh-so-articulate fool? It would be easy enough to get him from the last story to a thirteenth-century Athens, but then what? Since the fairy wood could be anywhere, why not, I thought, make it 1940s San Francisco? Golden Gate Park, to be specific. Have fairies and fools talking tough in the mean streets of Fog City, playing with the language and the extreme discomfort of Pocket dealing with cars and firearms and floozy fairy queens that would as soon stick a shiv in you as take your hat. So I send a rough outline off to my editor, like I do, to make sure we’re all on the same page, and she comes back to my agent with, “Maybe not this next book. We’d like to see a one-off this time.”
This is a first for me. So I call.
“So,” I say, “I hear you guys would like something different?”
“Just right now,” she says. “You can do a Shakespeare book after this if you want. What else do you have?”
Well, what I have is a giant bucket of nothing, but I have been researching the bejeezus out of 1940s San Francisco. So I say, “I could do a kind of noir thing set in San Francisco in the 1940s. Sort of a Maltese Falcony kind of thing. Or another whale book. Or, uh . . .”
“Yes, do that,” she says.
“Do what?”
“The Maltese Falcony kind of thing.”
“Okay,” I say, having absolutely no idea what the hell I’m going to do.
And that is how big-time publishing is done.
I know you hear about screenwriters doing this all the time—pitching a Gothic horror novel set in Empire-era England, and the producer saying, “Great, can you set it in L.A. in the 1970s, and can it be about a dog?” And you go, “Sure thing.” But in the book business, this was new for me. So I said, “Okay.” Then I went off to write a book that I cleverly titled Noir, so you would know that what you were getting was not derived from a Shakespeare play. Which brings me back to a book set in the world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Now that I’ve used up all my 1940s San Francisco research and tough-guy talk, and I’m left with a deadline and a dream, I think, I’ll just dive into the history of Shakespeare’s source material and see what I can find.
See, of Shakespeare’s thirty-six plays, thirty-three of them are derived from other sources: Italian love stories, or history, or myth, or in some cases, just lifted from someone else’s play (King Lear). Unfortunately for me, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not one of the thirty-three. Sure, Hippolyta is first mentioned in Greek mythology as the daughter of Ares, the god of war, and the queen of the Amazons, and is killed by Heracles for her girdle, killed by Theseus at her wedding, or killed by another Amazon fighting beside Theseus at her wedding, but generally, her role in mythology is to have a magic girdle, become a prisoner of war, and get killed at a wedding.
Theseus, on the other hand, is an epic hero, and appears in the Odyssey, where he slays the Minotaur; jilts Ariadne, who gave him the thread to get out of the Minotaur’s maze; kidnaps Helen of Troy (whom they just called Helen when she was at home in Troy); and generally does a lot of fighting and questing stuff—so, a great backstory, but the Theseus of myth is clearly not the staid and formal character Shakespeare portrays in MSND. So he offers little help in expanding the story, except to serve as another noble from whom Pocket could “take the piss.”
The fairies, I thought, surely they will offer some unexplored gem of myth that I can festoon with knob jokes!
And while Oberon, it turns out, appears first in a thirteenth-century French heroic song, Huon de Bordeaux, as Auberon, a fairy king who helps Huon (the knight who kills Charlemagne’s son) work off his crime with quests, about Oberon’s character we are told almost nothing except he is the son of Julius Caesar and Morgan le Fay. Really? Ancient Britain? So the Oberon of myth is what we in literature call “a frog fart in a wind storm,” and, although interesting, he isn’t as interesting as Shakespeare’s Oberon, who sets up his wife to shag a were-donkey over a little Indian boy with whom he is inexplicably obsessed.
And Titania doesn’t show up in literature at all, it appears, until Shakespeare names her in the play in 1595, although the entire MSND play may have been inspired by the success of Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queene, which was written for Queen Elizabeth five years before, and which met with great approval by the queen and other dignitaries in court who were mentioned in the poem. It might be noted, however, that while Spenser’s fairy queen, Gloriana, is a chaste and virtuous virgin (the hero of book II, Guyon, is the leader of the Knights of the Maidenhead—I’m not making that up), which is why Elizabeth I loved her, Shakespeare’s Titania is an egregious floozy, which is why audiences love her. So there were possibilities, but nothing quite as fun as what was already in the play. (It should be noted, though, that the first and second moons of the eighth planet are named for Titania and Oberon and even now they are chasing each other around Uranus.)
The other characters are numerous and almost indistinguishable from one another, and the lovers are mostly annoying, although the magic potion Puck puts in the boys’ eyes was a fun device, a version of which I used in Fool, the first of Pocket’s adventures. The lovers are made doubly annoying by a habit of Shakespeare’s that we learn not to do on the very first day of Famous Novelist School, which is giving characters names that start with the same letter. It’s so annoying and often confusing that I even found myself having to look back to the character list at the beginning of the play to keep Helena and Hermia straight. On the stage, where each character is represented by a different actor, not a big deal, but on the page, where they are but names, a huge pain in the ass. So I found no backstory to expand there.
Shakespeare for Squirrels Page 23