"No more yielding than a dream": The Construction of Shakespearein The Sandman

Annalisa Castaldo

College Literature, 31.4, Fall 2004, pp. 94-110 (Article)

Published by West Chester UniversityDOI: 10.1353/lit.2004.0052

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Shakespeare the man holds a uniquelyambiguous position in American cul-ture. Like a few other authors (Jane

Austen springs to mind), Shakespeare’s workscontinue to be available for use by popularc u l t u re and especially popular media.Snippets of his most famous works—mostoften Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet—show up inrock songs, television commercials and printads. But unlike other authors who maintain apopular presence, Shakespeare himself also cir-culates in popular and popularized form. Hehas, as Michael Bristol points out, “achievedc o n t e m p o r a ry celebri t y ” ( 1 9 9 6 , 3 ) . M o rethan merely a great writer, or a collection offamous quotes, he has become a celebrity,recognizable in his own right. While it isdoubtful that most Americans would recog-nize a picture of, s ay, H e rman Melville(another author whose work is often refer-enced by popular culture ) , m a ny people

“No more yielding than a dre a m ” :The Construction of Shakespeare

in The Sandman

Annalisa Castaldo

Annalisa Castaldo is assistant

professor of British Literature

at Widener University, in

Chester, PA.

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would be able to identify Shakespeare in image as well as in word.An inves-tigation into the reasons for Shakespeare’s personal popularity suggests thathis image functions much as his plays do—at once apparently stable and yetcompletely malleable.

It is because Shakespeare is easily identifiable that his cultural value isextremely high. Both in institutional and in popular culture, he is recogniz-able precisely because so many other aspects of culture have proven unstable.This is obvious in popular culture, where the intensity of fads is matchedonly by their brevity (if I mention Survivor will anyone know what I meanby the time this article is in print?). But multiculturalism has swept throughacademia as well as other institutional bastions, dethroning authors oncebelieved vital to an educated citizen. Shakespeare’s position within this high-ly unstable culture is central precisely because his value has remained rela-tively 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 longevi-ty 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 pre-tending nothing has changed. Shakespeare’s very fluidity has led him tobecome, in essence, his own adjective. Foucault argues that an author is notthe real person who wrote the texts; rather, the “author function” must workat a remove from the reality of the writer (1984, 112).This is especially trueof Shakespeare, and not only because his actual authorship is sometimescalled into question. It is that the very idea of Shakespeare as a person circu-lates as freely as his texts, now representing stuffy English literature, now coolCalifornia chic. Either way, familiarity with Shakespeare’s works includes afamiliarity with Shakespeare himself, but in both cases, that familiarity ismore often with the cultural dream of Shakespeare than with the reality. Justas the plays are, in popular culture, rarely presented as just texts, Shakespeareis rarely presented as simply a writer. Rather he is shaped and interpreted bycultural forces, so he is always modern but always eternal. His personality canbecome a representative of some key cultural issue or mirror another writer’svision of self.

What makes the cultural machinery so apparent here is that we haveample documentary evidence of Shakespeare’s life. We have evidence of apractical man who did not make enemies, was generally liked and retiredearly.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

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injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship orgrievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flowsfrom him free and unimpeded.” (1929, 58-59).While I would not want toclaim that only disinterest can produce great literature, it does seem true thatp a rt of Shake s p e a re ’s appeal lies in his personal ambiguity; by losing himself inhis characters , the “ re a l ” S h a ke s p e a re exists in whatever form the reader desire s .

One thing which does seem stable is the view of Shakespeare specifical-ly as a genius. In fact, Jonathan Bate argues that the English definition of“genius” was created specifically to explain Shakespeare—a writer universal-ly 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, asWoolf describes. As just one example, in 1865, two men (on opposite sidesof the Atlantic) published books specifically devoted to measuri n gShakespeare’s genius, and both dwelt at length on Shakespeare’s artlessness,his ability to draw each character from life, and his inspiration, which oftenovercame 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 ownmuch more meager accomplishments. Amadeus is only one exploration ofthis push-pull fascination, suggesting that a highly acclaimed composerwould be driven to contemplate murder when faced with actual (and clear-ly evident) genius.“Big-time achievements are in many ways inimical to theneeds 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 ownnatural feelings of inadequacy.

There are two main roads which seem to satisfy people. One is thatgenius springs from maintaining a child’s view of the world, from never fullygrowing up. Stories of Einstein’s inability to make change or remember towear socks are examples, as are films such as Charlie or Phenomenon, wherementally underdeveloped men are suddenly gifted with enormous intellec-tual capacity. Because they vault so quickly to the heights of intellectual bril-liance, they maintain their childlike wonder, amazing people with their novelapproach to the world. But this type of genius is always seen as disconnect-ed from reality, often requiring a caretaker, and ordinary people can com-fortably reject these mental wonders as springing from a lack of maturity andworldliness.As a man who made money from investments rather than writ-ing, 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, nofull-fledged portrayals of Shakespeare as a childlike genius unable to care for

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himself, although he is often shown as momentarily too focused on his workto be aware of the world around him.

A second, more common, explanation for genius is that it results fromextraordinary suffering. Much of popular culture is dedicated to teachingpeople that great talent and success result from (or at least lead to) terriblegrief, emotional and sometimes physical pain, and isolation.The greater thetalent, the greater the suffering, so once again, the average citizen can happi-ly back away from the demands of genius. The problem, of course, is thatShakespeare does not fit this equation either. Documentation suggests a fair-ly quiet life. He was well liked, retired early, and died in his bed. Even his sup-posed affair with the Dark Lady (which only exists in poetic reconstruction)would involve only a rather ordinary broken heart. Any rock star can pro-duce tragedies greater than that. At the time, Marlowe, the bisexual hereticand 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 isto find intense suffering in Shakespeare’s life, despite the documentary evi-dence, and often this re-creation of Shakespeare’s emotional life—the verything Woolf saw as opposed to the creation of great literature—is the thingthat makes Shakespeare so appealing, since what causes the emotional pain isas ambiguous and malleable as his plays.

One form of mass media which deals regularly with this issue of theindividual who suffers because of special powers or gifts is the comic book.Alone among art forms, comics give equal weight to text and images, pro-viding both immediate effect and intellectual engagement. David Carrierpoints to the importance of the introduction of words into a previously pure-ly visual medium.“The speech balloon is a great philosophical discovery . . .[it] defines comics as neither a purely verbal nor a strictly visual art form, butas something radically new” (2000, 4). Moreover, because comics are drawn,they provide a chance to illustrate the fantastic and unreal much more effec-tively than other visual media (as is obvious with every attempt to film acomic). Most casual observers are only familiar with superhero comics,which feature fairly simplistic artwork, musclebound men and women withgravity defying breasts, but comics range from careful realism (such as DickTracy) to postmodern surrealism (such as some Japanese cartoons which arenot even laid out sequentially). This lack of imposed reality also leads to apersistent metatextuality, as characters regularly cross over into other uni-verses, address the reader directly and even realize that they are controlledand created by an outside force.

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In addition, comics are a continuing series, which allows for the slowunfolding of ideas, sometimes over years. Films, even those with plannedsequels, require a beginning, middle and end and sequels are separated fromeach other by years.Television shows are hampered by the dual needs to fitinto a specific time slot and season length, and to please sponsors. Comics,on the other hand, are a monthly continuing form with no required panelor page length. Comics are therefore capable of attacking big questions gen-erally thought to be confined to literature, including the price paid by anindividual who lives a life other than average. In some ways, comics (as wasconveyed fairly well by the 2000 movie version of X-Men, which starred twoShakespeareans in lead roles) are mainly about the difficulty of being other,whether that otherness is having a superpower, becoming a vigilante after themurder of one’s parents, or simply being different.This is why comics havetraditionally appealed to teenagers, although their appeal is spreading. In theirflexible 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, thereis a series which involves the character of Shakespeare himself. Sandman,written by Neil Gaiman, uses Shakespeare to explore the idea that genius isitself a responsibility which leads to burdens almost too great to bear, an ideawhich reflects both the modern view of genius and the life of Gaiman as hecreated the comic. Launched in 1988, the comic broke new ground in sev-eral ways. First, it was neither completely mainstream nor completely alter-native. Mainstream comics are corporately owned, aimed at children andteenagers and follow the adventure/detective format, while alternativecomics are usually individually written and published, aimed at adults andreflect a specific, individual vision of the world.While Sandman is owned byDC Comics, it has a decidedly darker, more adult slant, and its popularityactually led to the establishment of the Vertigo imprint, a group of titleswhich 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 thatSandman’s vision was entirely his, most clearly indicated by DC’s unprece-dented step of allowing the title to end at the height of its popularity becauseGaiman felt it was finished.

Another difference is the main character. Instead of a superhero (as inmainstream comics) or a real person (as is often the case in alternativecomics), here the protagonist is Dream (also called Morpheus, althoughnever, despite the series’ title, Sandman), one of seven Endless.The Endless—Dream, Death, Destiny, Desire, Despair, Delirium, and Destruction—are theembodiments of essential characteristics of life.They control and create these

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characteristics, interacting not only with humans, but with gods, demons, andother life forms.Thus the focus of this comic is inherently more meditativeand ambiguous than comics which feature a clear cut good and evil. Even acomic such as Batman, with its tormented vigilante hero, presents battlesagainst opponents who want to destroy humanity or take over the world.Sandman, on the other hand, is free to spend entire issues contemplating thenature of reality and responsibility without straightforward villains.

Another important difference between Sandman and other comics is inthe literary, allusive style in which it is written. Comics, especially morerecent ones, have always referenced each other, and Sandman is no exception.In fact, a portion of Sandman’s readers was drawn to the comic specificallybecause of the regular use of obscure DC characters (Pustz 1999, 85). ButGaiman also makes a huge number of historical and literary references to,among others, Greek, Egyptian, and Norse myth, the Bible, Milton, AThousand and One Arabian Nights and, of course, Shakespeare. Shakespeareplays an integral part in the mythology and texture of Sandman. He is not themost referenced literary figure—the myth of Orpheus is retold in great detailas it is revealed that Dream is Orpheus’s father—but Shakespeare as a char-acter and a cultural symbol carries a significant part of the burden of theseries’ meditation on the character and meaning of dreams. For Gaiman,dreams (and he means both sleeping dreams and waking wishes) are both theshadow and seed of reality. Shakespeare, as a character, discovers through hislife and the course of the series the necessary loss tied to a life of bringingdreams to life. He becomes, in essence, a human Dream, losing his freedombecause humanity has need of his gifts.And Shakespeare also becomes a sym-bol of Gaiman himself, an author suddenly caught up in a cultural phenom-enon much larger than he ever expected, and which he is no longer entire-ly sure he desires.

Shakespeare appears in only three issues, but two are wholly devoted tohis plays and his life, and the second of these holds pride of place as the finalepisode of the entire seri e s . Gaiman does use quotes from popularShakespeare plays, in the way popular culture often does to give an institu-tional culture sheen to its creation, but Gaiman’s main interest in Shakespeareis not the plays, but the character of Shakespeare himself. For Gaiman,Shakespeare is a human parallel to Dream, an embodiment of something fargreater than a single person, the bearer of something vital to humanity, andbecause of that, a person weighed down and ruled by responsibilities fargreater than usual.

It is the very human Shakespeare we meet first.The opening six episodesof Sandman are concerned with Dream’s capture by a magician in 1964, hisescape in 1988 and the rebuilding of his realm. In issue 7, a new multi-part

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story, A Doll’s House begins, which introduces a recurring character, Rose,and an escaped nightmare/serial killer. However, Part 4 (Issue 12) of A Doll’sHouse is not part of this story. Instead, exactly in the middle of this seven partseries is a stand-alone episode which introduces Shakespeare, as well as HobGadling, 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 isbecause everyone does it.You all just go along with it. It’s rubbish, death. It’sstupid. I don’t want anything to do with it” (3). Amused, Dream and Deathstrike a bargain, and, with Death’s promise not to take Hob until he desiresit, Dream approaches Hob and suggests that they meet each century, in thesame place and on the same day.

The scene is set for a meditation on learning what is truly important inlife, as Hob rises and falls from “Sir Robert Gadling” to a poor drunkard whois only allowed into the tavern because he is a guest of the well-dressedDream, and finally settles into middle class stability.He becomes a printer andthen a slaver, until he learns from Dream that “it is a poor thing to enslaveanother” (Gaiman 1990, 20). Finally, in 1889, he makes the observation thatDream 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 vio-lently, 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 twenti-eth century locked in a glass box, powerless. It is the change that results fromthat imprisonment which is Gaiman’s chief interest.Throughout the series,characters comment on Dre a m ’s changes, which he at first denies and neve rcompletely accepts. G r a d u a l l y, he realizes that the isolation of impri s o n m e n timposed by another has made his self-imposed isolation, based in his senseof duty, i n t o l e r a bl e.

Where does Shakespeare fit into this story of friendship and long life? Attheir second official meeting, in 1589, Hob and Dream overhear “WillShaxberd” talking to Marlowe and lamenting his inability to write plays asgood as Marlowe’s. In fact, Marlowe critiques Shakespeare’s first attempt(here Henry VI Part I), mocking the line “bad revolting stars.” This rivalrywith 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 reputationdid outshine Shakespeare’s) but from a desire to see Shakespeare in develop-ment and thereby connect him to every struggling artist and novice. Ratherthan being presented from the outset as a genius who need not “blot a line”

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Shakespeare is often represented as tormented by a desire to write better thanhe can. In Shakespeare in Love we see the young Will at what appears to bethe sixteenth century equivalent of a psychiatrist, lamenting his writer’sblock. In Sandman, Dream asks Hob if Shakespeare is any good and receivesthe answer, “No. He’s crap. Now, that chap there . . . next to him . . . He’s agood playwright” (Gaiman 1990, 12). Shakespeare’s suffering begins earlywith the desire for genius, before that genius manifests itself.

Shakespeare, however, is not and cannot be just a struggling youngwriter. His destiny is always already apparent, and while a film about, say,Thomas Kyd (a contemporary of Shakespeare’s and author of arguably themost beloved Elizabethan play, The Spanish Tragedy), might conceal the endresult of his life’s work, no one is in any doubt about Shakespeare’s eventualrise to greatness. Popular culture uses such as Shakespeare in Love and Sandmanhave no desire to dethrone Shakespeare; indeed, they have a great stake in hisrecognition factor.The question then is how the struggling writer goes from“bad revolting stars” to “to be or not to be,” how Shaxberd becomesS h a ke s p e a re. In Shakespeare in Love, another modern example ofShakespeare’s suffering, it is love, and more specifically, tragically denied love,which changes Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter into Romeo and Juliet. Inthe Sandman comics, it is partially Shakespeare’s desires, and partially thedesires of Dream which effect the transformation. Gaiman uses Shakespeare’slife to meditate not only on the power of dreams, but also on the responsi-bilities, regret, and loss which come from achieving a dream. Just as, inShakespeare in Love, Shakespeare must lose Viola to become a great writer,Gaiman presents Shakespeare as a man who gives up all true connections toeveryday life for eternal glory and comes to regret the bargain.

But the loss and regret are far in the future, both for Shakespeare and forDream. In 1589, Dream approaches Shakespeare after the latter has declaredthat he “would give anything to have [Marlowe’s] gifts, or more than any-thing to give men dreams, that would live on long after [he is] dead” (Gaiman1990, 12).The King of Dreams asks for a reiteration of that desire. “Wouldyou write great plays? Create new dreams to spur the minds of men? Is thatyour will?” ( 1 3 ) . When Shake s p e a re responds that it is, D ream leads himaway to talk and the reader is left alone with Hob and his simpler pleasure sof white bread and ale.

Dream carefully duplicates Shakespeare’s exact demands: to write greatplays (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 hisdesires, usually sexual, and his identity. So thou, being rich in Will, add to thyWill/One will of mine to make thy large Will more (Sonnet 135, 11-12).

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Gaiman, on the other hand focuses on Shakespeare’s lack of “will” in becom-ing “Will.”To become that Will, the one who writes great plays, Shakespearemust give up his will and become a conduit for stories that exist outside ofhim and outside of time. Shakespeare, as will later be revealed, does notunderstand the cost, and readily agrees.And so, through supernatural means,he will become a greater playwright than Marlowe, because Marlowe writesonly from his own perspective. Shakespeare will now be granted the abilitynot 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 KingLear. “The idiots have given it a happy ending” (Gaiman 1990, 18). Dreamresponds that the new ending will not last. “The Great Stories will alwaysre t u rn to their ori ginal form s ” ( 1 8 ) . S c h o l a rs know, of cours e, t h a tShakespeare was actually the one to change the ending. Both Holinshed andThe Mirror for Magistrates restore Lear (or Leir) to his throne, with Cordeliahis 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 asan originator and creator, rather than an adaptor. Few people outsideShakespearean scholars know Holinshed’s Chronicles or The Mirror forMagistrates and the remark Hob makes is thus perfectly reasonable. And asHob, throughout this issue, stands for the common man, embodying thereader’s point of view, it is right that he should neglect the past that he actu-ally lived through in favor of the more traditional view of Shakespeare’s rep-utation.1

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 kindof deal? His soul?” (Gaiman 1990, 18). Dream’s response is, as usual, brief andambiguous. “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 tothe story of Rose Walker and Dream’s quest to recover nightmares whichhave escaped into reality during his 80 years of imprisonment.This arc is sep-arate from the Hob Gadling story, but it is worth pausing for a moment toconsider why so careful a writer as Gaiman injected this stand-alone issueinto the midst of this specific storyline.

A Doll’s House concerns two things. The apparently central issue isDream’s recovery of The Corinthian, a nightmare which has escaped into thereal world and has, apparently, inspired the rise of serial killers. But there aretwo entire episodes after the recapture of the Corinthian which deal with agirl named Rose Walker who is a “vortex,”: a person who creates chaos bybreaking down the barriers between dreaming minds.We learn that once, along time ago, Dream did not succeed in stopping a vortex and an entire

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world was destroyed. We also learn, for the first time, two other importantthings about the world Gaiman has created. One is that Dream is almostunnaturally concerned with duty and responsibility.The other is that, pow-erful as he might seem to be, there are rules that even he and the otherEndless must obey. Nothing is free, especially power.

Rose Walker does not in fact die. Instead, her grandmother takes on theburden of the vortex and in the end we discover that Desire, who hatesDream, has engineered Rose’s creation as the vortex and is Rose’s grandfa-ther.A hint of the trouble that would have created is given at the end, whenDream confronts Desire.“Was I to take the life of one of our blood, with allthat would entail?” (Gaiman 1990, 16:22).As the series unfolds, we find thatDream, because of his dedication to his responsibilities, is forced to kill amember of his family (his son, Orpheus) and thereby allow the Furies tohunt him down and kill him.

This seems rather far astray from the life of Shakespeare, a man who mar-ried, had children, made his money shrewdly by investing in the playhouserather than simply writing for profit, and, when he had made enough moneyto buy his father a coat of arms, retired from writing and lived his last fewyears in Stratford. But Gaiman creates Shakespeare as the human mirror ofDream, suffering loss and bowed under responsibility as Dream is. However,unlike Dream, Shakespeare is unaware of the reasons and consequences of hisdesires.These ideas are hardly clear from Shakespeare’s first appearance, butthey are fleshed out in the issue devoted to his second appearance, in issue1 9 , which is entirely concerned with Shake s p e a re and is called “ AMidsummer Night’s Dream.”

Before turning to that issue, however, it is worth noting another reasonfor Shakespeare’s appearance at this moment.When Gaiman began writingSandman, as noted above, it created a new tone and focus for a mainstreamcomic.There was no way for Gaiman or DC Comics to know if it would bea successful series and, if so, how successful.At first, there were problems. SamKeith, the penciler, left after three issues, feeling creative difference, andGaiman wrote in the collected paperback edition of Preludes and Nocturnes(the first six issues), “I had never written a monthly comic before, and was-n’t sure that I would be able to.” (1994b,Afterword).As he began the secondarc, then, Gaiman was feeling pressure to live up to his vision, while also feel-ing 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, aswell as an unexpectedly large audience. In May of 1990, a favorable article inRolling Stone prompted DC Comics to hurry the publishing of A Doll’sHouse in trade paperback (Gaiman 1996, insert). Interestingly, in the intro-duction to the graphic novel, Clive Barker writes “Hero and author are here

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synonymous. For the time you spend in these pages, Mr. Gaiman is theSandman” (1990, 7). Then, in October of 1991, “A Midsummer Night’sDream” won the World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the firstcomic to win an award in the category of prose fiction. In addition to recog-nition came a huge reading audience (in 1993 “The High Cost of Living”became the best selling mature audience comic of all time), an avalanche oftie-ins (in addition to the usual posters and t-shirts, there were Sandman stat-ues, watches, tarot cards, and trading cards) and vastly increased expectations.

Whether the stories would have taken a different turn if it had remaineda tiny, cult series is, of course, unknown.And it is clear from the interweav-ing of stories—characters mentioned in early issues reappearing in moredetail later—that Gaiman had some overall picture in mind. But it also seemsclear that the more adulation Sandman received, the more Gaiman wroteabout the responsibility brought about by dreams achieved, the lossesrequired to achieve them, and a desire to drop everything and walk away.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” begins this trend, and it is a wonderfulexploration of the power and cost of achieving dreams. It is in this issue thatthe bargain Dream offered Shakespeare is fully explained.We discover that inexchange for being able to write great works, Shakespeare has promised towrite two plays for Dream, one at the beginning of his career and one at theend, both celebrating dreams.The first half of the bargain is discharged whenShakespeare, in 1593, writes A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, on June 23rd,he and his company perform it for Dream and the Faerie.

Woven into and around the performance are the themes of responsibil-ity and regret that briefly showed in Shakespeare’s first Sandman appearance.Shakespeare claims that he “half regret[s]” the bargain he has made withDream (Gaiman 1991, 16). Dream himself tells Oberon and Titania that heis not sure he has done the right thing in giving Shakespeare the ability towrite great works. But Gaiman’s strongest example of the price due fordreams fulfilled is in the character of Hamnet, Shakespeare’s young son. InGaiman’s telling, Anne Hathaway has forced Shakespeare to take Hamnetwith him as he travels the provinces. Hamnet reveals that it is the first timehe 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 ifhe died, his father would just write a play about it, called Hamnet. “All thatmatters 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 generallyunknown. But Gaiman takes advantage of the coincidence by closing theissue 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

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Titania and Oberon to fight over, this time played by Hamnet. The realTitania is intrigued by the boy and we see her giving him, at the unhistori-cal interval, the attention his father does not.The implication is strong thatHamnet’s “death” is actually a real case of fairies taking a child, but with nogoblin changeling left in its place. In the course of the issue, then,Shakespeare is revealed to have lost his friend, as Dream tells him thatMarlowe is dead, and soon is to lose his son. Like Dream’s, his isolation isenforced by his responsibilities as a vessel for the great stories, truths that willlive on after historical facts are dust. Reality is necessarily less important thanhis dreams, his writing.

The difference between historical fact and “truth” is highlighted byOberon, who objects to the play because “things never happened thus”(Gaiman 1991, 21). Dream’s response is to state a central idea both toGaiman’s entire conception of the Sandman universe and A MidsummerNight’s Dream.“Things need not have happened to be true.Tales and dreamsare 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 alreadybeen demonstrated by King Lear. Most of Shakespeare’s sources are not “fac-tual” as we in modern America would recognize them. Even the historicaldetails from Holinshed’s Chronicles are not verified in the way historianstoday would consider valid. But the background, the “pre-story” from whichShakespeare drew is now mostly “dust and ashes, and forgot” except byscholars. Shakespeare has gradually become a creator of tales as well as a greatwriter. His versions have, in fact, become the “great stories” not because theyare mythical connections to a greater reality, but because they have helped toshape 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 sin-gle author courses or, if part of a great books or drama class, regularly standin for the entire literature of the Renaissance. Gaiman is correct when hechooses this moment to have Dream reveal to Shakespeare that Marlowe isdead. Having been surpassed or superceded, Marlowe disappears almost com-pletely from the history, the reality, of most modern culture.

Shakespeare and Dream are further paralleled when Shakespeare ignoreshis son’s desire to talk about Titania (he is watching the play) and Dream ishimself ignored by Titania as he meditates on whether his bargain withShakespeare was right (she is also absorbed in the play).The creation of thetwo—Dream’s inspiration and Shakespeare’s words—thus comes betweenand cuts off direct communication between individuals. Neither Hamnet norDream receives the reassurance he seeks, precisely because the play itself is sopowerful. Gaiman thus suggests that dreams, while a necessary and valuablepart of life, have the disconcerting ability to take the place of real life.This

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observation is complicated, of course, because for Dream, dreams are “reallife” and for Shakespeare, dreams are what enable his continued existence.The twenty-first century reader knows Shakespeare as a person only becauseof the ability of his plays/dreams to live on.

The concern Gaiman is expressing is in some ways the opposite of whatthe characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream claim. Soon after Titaniaignores Dream’s concern about his choice, the moment of Hippolyta’s disap-proval of the play is staged, with Theseus’s rejoinder of “The best in this kindare but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them”(Gaiman 1991, 21). But Gaiman’s point seems to be that imagination andp l ays are ve ry powerful things indeed, not shadows at all. T h ro u g hShakespeare’s increasing isolation, Gaiman suggests that dreams, while vital toa worthwhile existence, can easily take the place of reality and make a nor-mal life impossible.

It is this topic which dominates Shakespeare’s final appearance, in theissue which closes the entire series. Before turning to the issue itself, it is nec-essary to understand a bit of what happens between “A Midsummer Night’sDream” (issue 19) and “The Tempest” (issue 75). Although there are manyarcs and stories, the main drive of the entire series is Dream’s gradual real-ization that he is tired of his responsibilities and his growing awareness of hisdesire to lay them down.We are introduced to the seventh, missing Endless,Destruction, who abandoned his post centuries ago. Dream is given the keyto an emptied Hell and is further burdened with the need to find a newowner for it. Finally, Dream is brought back into contact with his son,Orpheus, who exists only as a head which cannot die. Dream finally grantsOrpheus 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 attackhim, and eventually Dream dies, although he is replaced by a new Lord ofthe 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, justbefore 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 pass-ing and the introduction of the new king of dreams.And then there is “TheTempest.” The story necessarily takes place in 1610, long before Dream’sdeath and even his imprisonment, but for the reader this story follows ratherthan precedes the knowledge of Dream’s fate. Once again, Gaiman evokesthe popular beliefs of Shakespeare’s life over the historical facts. DespiteShakespeare’s continuation of his writing (albeit with Fletcher), The Tempesthas 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

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Dream, two characters who find that they are too much ruled by the respon-sibilities that make them who they are.

In the final issue of The Sandman, we find Shakespeare writing at homein Stratford, aware that this play is the second half of the bargain he madelong ago, and eager to finish it and stop writing.Throughout the issue therea re re m i n d e rs of what his dreams cost him and those around him. He is chid-ed by his wife for his lack of sense, and by his daughter, for his long absences.Ben Jonson comes to visit and argues that Shake s p e a re had to borrow plotsbecause he never live d .“ I ’ve lived life to the full.W h a t ’ve you done,Will? . . .A little acting, a little wri t i n g ” (Gaiman 1996, 1 3 ) . S h a ke s p e a re protests thathe has lived a full life and that to understand people, one need only be a per-son. But later, in his meeting with Dream, Shakespeare reveals that he doesnot 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, andI was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it a little, for now Icould write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark ladyand I wept, in my room, alone. But while I wept, somewhere inside Ismiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stageof 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 hereis stressed much more strongly.At the end of his life, Shakespeare regrets thechoices he made and the life he lived (or didn’t live).

In this final issue, Gaiman is most clear about his feeling of kinship withShakespeare and his belief that the two of them share parallel paths. LikeShakespeare, Gaiman finds himself praised for creating something complete-ly new and innovative while uneasily aware that most of the plots and char-acters, and much of world view, is borrowed from sources now obscured byhis creation. Gaiman did not create the character the Sandman; he was anunpopular DC character from the 30’s. Indeed, his first suggestions for amonthly series, before hitting on Sandman, all involved “sundry establishedDC characters I thought it might be fun to revive from limbo.” (Gaiman1994b,Afterword).

Gaiman refers to this tendency in Shakespeare, and by extension, him-self, twice. First, Ben Jonson mockingly asks Shakespeare where the latestplay comes from: “Have you been raiding poor Holinshed again? Or doesP l u t a rch bear the brunt of your depre d a t i o n s ? ” (Gaiman 1996, 1 3 ) .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 Sea-Venture in the Bermudas last year.The story is merely the sort of story allparents tell to amuse their children. There is some of me in it. Some of

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Judith. Things I saw, things I thought. I stole a speech from one ofMontaigne’s essays and closed with an unequivocally cheap and happy end-ing. (Gaiman 1996, 35)

Here Gaiman, through Shakespeare, is admitting that his creation is a collab-orative process. Some of the story is “me” and “things I thought” but some,perhaps most, comes from outside. It is appro p riate that Gaiman admits this inan issue that is, to a large extent, simply an illustrated ve rsion of The Te m p e s t.

Another direct re f e rence to his own past comes when Gaiman hasS h a ke s p e a re describe his plays to Dre a m .“I cannot even read them with pleas-u re. I begi n , but I see no art . Just art i f i c e.” (Gaiman 1996, 2 1 ) . This dire c t l yechoes Gaiman’s wo rds in the afterwo rd of Preludes and Nocturn e s,just as he andhis characters we re becoming fa m o u s . “ R e reading these stories today I mu s tconfess I find many of them aw k wa rd and ungainly . . .” ( 1 9 9 4 b, u n p a g e d ) .

If the final episode allows Gaiman to acknowledge his debts and admithis uncertainties, his protagonist is almost punishingly remote. Dream is aus-tere and distant, just as characters throughout the series have described himbefore his imprisonment. He is not the Sandman the readers have come toknow, and that, perhaps, is the point.When the play is finished, Dream claims,“[i]t remains only for me to thank you and to wish you well in your life tocome” (Gaiman 1996, 29). Shakespeare objects that no master would end acontract so abruptly and, presented with an obligation, Dream, as always, ful-fills it. But when Shakespeare demands an explanation for the bargain,we seethe change Dream will undergo (but as yet has not) as he first refuses andthen accepts Shakespeare’s right to know his reasons.

In the end, Shakespeare questions why Dream would want such a playas The Tempest and Dream responds,“I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I want-ed a play about a king who drowns his books and breaks his staff and leaveshis 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 myown” (36). Dream’s uncertainty about whether he has done the right thing,expressed in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” becomes more clearly anuncertainty not about Shakespeare’s life, but his own existence. And just asDream eventuall y, although centuries in the future, will give up his re s p o n-s i b i l i t i e s , S h a ke s p e a re awa kens from his meeting with Dream and know s ,“ i tis ove r. . . .The bu rden of wo rd s . I can lay it dow n , n ow ” ( 3 7 ) .

Gaiman no doubt picked Shakespeare because he knew that most, if notall people, would recognize him and know salient facts about his life. Butgiven 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 artistwho died young and dramatically, who lived an exciting life, such asMarlowe, might have seemed a more obvious choice as a mirror of the King

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of Dreams. But Gaiman is not interested in exploring the relatively straight-forward idea that dreams are positive fantasies we have to escape reality. ForGaiman, dreams are dangerous whether or not we achieve them because, asDream says, “the price of getting what you want, is getting what once youwanted” (1991,19).

Gaiman also saw the apparent paradox that out of Shakespeare’s fairlyordinary life came extraordinary writing, stories that have lasted. Gaiman ishardly the first to feel that a glover’s son from Stratford is somehow misplacedas the greatest writer of all time.While others have sought to prove that thewriter we know as Shakespeare was not William Shakespeare of Stratford,Gaiman suggests instead that Shakespeare had talent, but it was the combi-nation 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 himthe play s , D ream is clear that his was not the only talent at wo r k . “ You had agift, and the talent. . . .And because you wanted it . . . so much” (1996, 32).Gaiman presents Shakespeare as not extraordinarily talented, but extraordi-narily eager. His genius lies in his focus, which allows Dream to use him asa “vessel.”

G a i m a n ’s uneasy relationship with the material he hasborrowed/stolen/obscured is worked out through Shakespeare’s relationshipwith Dream, so it is interesting to note that several of the writers who penintroductions to the trade paperbacks extol Gaiman in exactly the languageused for Shakespeare. About the stories, Gene Wolf writes, “ . . . [Y]ou willunderstand yourself and the world better for having read them . . . .” (Gaiman1993, unpaged).And in the introduction to Brief Lives, Peter Straub describesGaiman as,“on a plane all his own . . . Gaiman is a master, and his vast, roomystories, filled with every possible shade of feeling, are unlike everyone else’s.”(Gaiman 1994, unpaged) And while this is manifestly untrue in terms of thestories, it has a grain of truth in that the way Gaiman (and Shakespeare) pres-ent their twice-told tales is what makes them matter.

Gaiman’s presentation of Shakespeare is more nuanced than Shakespearein Love but both spring from the same cultural well. Shakespeare’s charactercontinues to speak to us, just as his plays do, and to be infinitely plastic, bend-ing to fit the current needs of a writer or a culture.At one point a characterasks Dream if he is always so pale and the King of Stories responds “Thatdepends on who’s wa t c h i n g ” ( 1 9 9 3 , 2 1 ) . It seems that like Dre a m ,Shakespeare’s character depends mainly on who’s watching.

N o t e s1 The argument could be made that a foot soldier such as Hob might ve ry we l l

h ave been illiterate and there f o re unawa re of the non-dramatic texts pre c e d i n g

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S h a ke s p e a re ’s ve rsion of King Lear.But interestingly Gaiman circ u m vents that,by hav-ing Hob take up, in 1489, the new trade of pri n t i n g . I strongly doubt that Gaimanwanted or expected the audience to understand from this that Shake s p e a re ’s ve rs i o nof any stories overwhelmed the memories of even those whose livelihood dependedon texts.But this sort of incidental intertextuality is precisely the way Gaiman wo r k s .

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. NewYork: Pantheon Books.Gaiman, Neil. 1990. The Sandman:The Doll’s House. NewYork: D.C. Comics.———. 1991. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” The Sandman 19. New York: D.C.

Comics.———. 1993. The Sandman: Fables and Reflections NewYork: D.C. Comics.———. 1994a. The Sandman: Brief Lives. New York: D.C. Comics.———. 1994b. The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. NewYork: D.C. Comics———. 1995. The Sandman:The Kindly Ones 67. NewYork: DC 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. The Life and Genius of Shakespeare. London: Longman, Green,

Longman, Roberts and Green.Pustz, Matthew J. 1999. Comic Book Culture: 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. 1929. A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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