Fairies in Literature
Fairies inspire the artistic imagination, making appearances in many works of literature as well as visual art. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare used fairies as agents of trickery for comic effect and to smooth the way for the human lovers to unite at the end of the play. The appearance of fairies in the play also heightens the mood of magic, and allows Shakespeare to examine themes of romance and fantasy or confusion.
Titania and Oberon, the queen and king of the fairies, appear to be somewhat amoral. On the one hand, their quarrel is over the possession of a kidnapped human child. On the other hand, Oberon attempts to use magic to correct the unkindness of one the human lovers, Demetrius, toward Helen, the woman who loves him.
While the names Titania and Oberon fit with the purported Athens setting of the play, the character Puck carries ties to the fairy lore of the British Isles. His name is reminiscent of the Irish concept of a pooka, a mischievous nature spirit. One of Titania’s fairies asks Puck if he is “that shrewd and knavish sprite/ Called Robin Goodfellow” who “frights the maidens of the villager”’ and “misleads night-travelers, laughing at their harm.” Puck says yes and adds to his resume, explaining that he beguiles horses, “neighing in likeness of a filly foal” and tricks women by disguising himself as a stool so they will sit on him and “Then slip I from her bum, down topples she.”
The fairy queen Titania is accompanied by three servants, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, and Cobweb. The names are redolent of the natural world. That and the fact that, unlike Puck, these minor fairy characters do not participate in the quarrels and underhanded games of Titania and Puck, makes them appear more innocent. Many productions of the play show these minor fairy characters as winged sprites, sometimes with the roles undertaken by children.
While Shakespeare’s concept of fairies seems to contain both positive and negative elements of fairy lore, other writers have exclusively emphasized one aspect of fairies. In John Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci, as the title (French, The Beautiful Woman Without Pity) implies, the fairy woman is dangerous. She uses her physical beauty and false words of love to ensnare the knight in the poem so that he is left “alone and palely loitering in a withered landscape where no birds sing.”
Keats’ poem was written in 1819. By the following century, J.M. Barrie presented a completely different view of fairies. In his novel The Little White Bird, he offers this explanation of fairies: “When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.” In Peter Pan, his fairy character, Tinkerbell, far from being the almost vampiric figure of Keats’ poem, who seems to drain her victims of life force, derives sustenance from people’s belief in fairies. Each artist, and perhaps each era, interprets fairies in a different light. How each individual, how each age, view fairies shows us where and how we expect to experience the magic they represent.
