Volume three of The Sandman by Neil Gaiman is a bit of breather. Volume One, Preludes and Nocturnes, is a relatively straightforward quest, starting with Morpheus, the Sandman, the Dream-King, Onieros, Prince of Stories, etc. (and in fantasy in general, the more names one has, the more badass one is) escaping 72 years of imprisonment and regaining his power. It also introduces the Sandman universe and seams it into the DC comics universe, while introducing the concept of the Endless—Morpheus and his siblings, greater than gods, who make up the components of human consciousness. It’s pretty much one coherent narrative.
The same thing goes with Volume Two, The Doll’s House [spoilers to follow, so if you haven’t read it yet, skip the next four paragraphs]. Morpheus collects the rest of his escaped subjects—Brute, Glob, the Corinthian, and Fiddler’s Green (a.k.a. Gilbert, Rose’s knight-errant) and finishes cleaning up the mess from his long imprisonment, even as we meet Lyta and her still-unborn child, both of whom will become essential later. The Doll’s House is an intense detective tale within a tale: Rose seeks her brother Jed, a quest that takes her ultimately to the Cereal Convention where she is attacked, saved by Morpheus and, thanks to Gilbert, reunited with her kid brother.
Outside of Rose’s quest is the more subtle detective tale as Morpheus tracks down exactly what Rose is. On one hand, she’s a dream vortex and therefore a dire threat to the Dreaming. Without knowing it, Rose is such a threat that her existence menaces the universe. To protect the Dreaming (that is, the ability of people to dream) Morpheus is empowered to kill her, indeed required to kill her, and it’s only the intercession and impending death of Rose’s grandmother Unity, that saves Rose’s life.
But why Rose is a dream vortex and how Unity is able to intercede nags at Morpheus, until he figures it out—that Unity was the vortex until she contracted “sleepy sickness” and slept the entire time that Morpheus was imprisoned and, while a virgin, had a baby. So who was the father? Morpheus’ sibling Desire. Why? Desire has a long plan and a powerful grudge.
The Doll’s House itself is a doubled image: the children’s toy house that Unity leaves to Rose, who is still very young although capable and strikingly self-sufficient, and the Threshold, Desire’s fortress, shaped like Desire itself and looking very much like a doll. Desire’s house—the doll’s house.
The volume is so intense you almost miss the two sidebar stories: Nada’s downfall and Hob’s refusal to die. Both Nada’s story and Hob’s tie in to later events but, on a first reading, they don’t seem to be connected to anything. Nada’s tale is a deep breath before the spellbinding events of Rose’s odyssey start, and “Men of Good Fortune,” our introduction to Hob Gadling, gives us a breather in the inexorably ratcheting tension.
So we come to Dream Country, which is itself a breather sandwiched between The Doll’s House and Season of Mists, another powerhouse narrative.
Dream Country is a series of four independent short stories, each one about ancient myths and how myths linger, how they adapt as time passes and the world changes. The name of the volume derives from the last of the stories, “Façade,” the only story in which Morpheus does not appear. In it, Rainie, “Element Girl” of the Metamorphs, has become an isolated, depressed and anthropophobic shut-in whose greatest wish is to die. Having been made mythic, though, death is not a simple matter for Rainie. Death tells her, “Mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country….” [1, p.109]. Ra, the Egyptian sun god, changed Rainie into Element Girl, and only Ra can undo what has been done to her.
“Façade” is the only story not involving Morpheus and yet, it’s all about Morpheus. In many ways it’s the key to the whole series. In order to deal with other people, Rainie crafts masks for herself out of silica, masks that harden and fall off after a day or so. Because they’re part of her, she can’t bring herself to dispose of them, and her apartment is cluttered with them. Surveying them, Death says,
You people always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they’ve served their purpose. But you’ve got to learn to throw things away eventually. (p. 105)
Stick a pin in that. It’ll come back later.
The other three stories are more conventional Sandman stories. Even during breathers, Gaiman advances the overall plot by introducing and arranging elements that will eventually assemble into a grand vision.
“Calliope” is a fairly harsh satire about writers and what they’re willing to do for success. For release, the imprisoned muse Calliope calls upon the three Fates, who tell her,
There are few of the old powers willing or able to meddle in mortal affairs in these days, Calliope. Many gods have died, my daughter, while aspects of other gods have been lost forever. Hehh, only the Endless will never die—and even they are having a difficult time of late...” (p. 19)
We learn that Calliope had a son, fathered by Morpheus. Any guesses about who that son might be? Hint: Calliope is the muse of epic poetry, renowned for the harmony of her voice. And her son will be an important player in the drama to come.
When Morpheus escapes from his own prison, he visits Calliope’s captor. “She has been held captive for more than sixty years. Stripped of all possessions. Demeaned, abused, and hurt. I….know how she must feel” (p. 27). When her captor, Richard Madoc, refuses to free her, saying he needs the ideas she gives him, Morpheus gifts him with a dizzying catalog of writing prompts that land him in a mental institution. Deep justice, but a pretty damning view of the writer and his craft.
“You have changed, Onieros,” Calliope tells Morpheus. “In the old days you would have left me to rot forever, without turning a hair….” (p. 33). Yes, Morpheus is changing, although his evolution is uneven (he did leave Nada in hell, after all). But Morpheus is changing. And mythology fades over time. When he asks Calliope what she will do with her freedom, she tells him she’ll “return to the minds of humanity, I suspect. My time is over, and this age of the world is not my age” (p. 33). Even so, she is the muse of epic poetry, and will live in the minds of poets.
The other two stories in the volume are among Gaiman’s most famous and beloved short stories, “The Dream of a Thousand Cats,” which testifies to the power of dreams to effect change in the world, as Morpheus tells the Siamese that just one thousand cats dreaming the same dream will change reality itself. Charming story; you must wait for The Sandman Overture to lock this puzzle piece in place, but when it does, it really makes sense. And it’s great to see how Morpheus appears depending on whose eyes we’re looking through: Nada sees him as an African tribal king, the Siamese sees him as a giant black cat with red flames in its eyes.
And then there’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” winner of the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Novella. Half of the story’s success is due to Charles Vess’ exquisite pencil work (which has always made me wonder why Vess didn’t illustrate the whole series, but then maybe his work wouldn’t seem as remarkable). While the story fits snug within the Sandman epic, like “The Dream of a Thousand Cats” it also stands alone. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is a delicious mashup of Shakespeare and Gaiman, crosscutting between backstage drama à la Noises Off and the first performance of what is arguably Shakespeare’s most beloved play, premiering before a most unusual audience—the Faerie Court itself, led by Titania and Auberon, who plan to leave the mortal plane forever and never return. Their mythology will fade away, but if Morpheus has his way, we’ll remember them forever.
Not only is the story highly original, complex and delightful, entwining Shakespeare with keen observations about late sixteenth century theatre, fairy lore, and eternal truths about actors and their audience, and parents and their children, it addresses the central paradox of fiction, that is, that fiction tells the truth—the eternal truth—about the human condition and, as such, is more reliable than history, which can be twisted.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream also advances the Sandman story line in critical ways. It establishes Shakespeare as Morpheus’ apprentice, as Morpheus tells Titania that
Will is a willing vehicle for the great stories. Through him they will live for an age of man; and his words will echo down through time. It is what he wanted. But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart’s desire, their dream...But the price of getting what you want, is getting what once you wanted. And had I told him? Had he understood? It would have made no difference. (p. 81)
Part of the price, Gaiman implies, is the human cost of isolation. It’s entirely accidental that his writing will cost Shakespeare his son Hamnet, whom Titania sees and covets.
Ann Shakespeare made Will take their son on the road with his troupe this year; Hamnet is lonely and isolated, and the gulf between father and son is unbridgeable. They might as well be speaking different languages. Hamnet tells Tommy,
He doesn’t seem like he’s really there any more. Not really. It’s like he’s somewhere else. Anything that happens he just makes stories out of it. I’m less real to him than any of the characters in his plays. Mother says he’s changed in the last five years, but I don’t remember him any other way. Judith—she’s my twin sister—she once joked that if I died, he’d just write a play about it. Hamnet.” (p. 75)
Ouch.
While the actors are dressing, Condell, who plays Titania, wins a compliment from Hamnet and says, “For that, you shall have a strawberry,” (p. 66), which Gaiman explains foreshadowed “a key scene that occurs later, when the real Titania offers Hamnet some Faerie fruit” (2, p. 78). As you know, the eating of faerie fruit brings mortals into Faerie, which parallels the Midsummer Night Titania who has taken the Indian child for her train. The play’s Titania is a faithful friend; the real Titania is acquisitive and self-involved.
More directly for the Sandman story, Auberon’s jester Puck decides at the last moment not to return to Faerie, but to seek his amusement in the mortal world. Given that the other fairies consider him a “giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menace-to-life-and-limb” (1, p. 72) , Puck’s escape is a portentous event.
And predictably, tragically, in the the final panel we read
Hamnet Shakespeare died in 1596, aged eleven.
Robin Goodfellow’s present whereabouts are unknown (p. 86)
That can’t be good.
Next week, the storytelling machine kicks back into high gear, with Season of Mists.
References
1. Neil Gaiman, Dream Country. NY: Vertigo, 1991. All quotations from the stories are from this edition.
2. Hy Bender, The Sandman Companion. NY: Vertigo, 1999.
Previous Sandman Diaries
Preludes and Nocturnes (Vol. 1)
The Doll’s House (Vol. 2)