Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Scary Fairies

http://www.baltimoreshakespeare.org/Muse/ScaryFairies.htm

I found this brief article interesting.  It's all about how, prior to Shakespeare, "fairies" were actually scary little beasts that people feared.  It also puts Puck/Robin Goodfellow into a bit of context, for anybody why in the beginning of Dream one of the characters says "Hey, I know you!  You're Robin Goodfellow!"  He is not a Shakespeare creation, although Shakespeare appears to made some changes to his story.

2 comments:

Alan K.Farrar said...

In Our Time did a good discussion on FAERIES back in 2006 (still available for listening on line):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/

And the faeries in Shakespeare tend not to be quite so un-scary as post-Victorian productions make them: Oberon and Titania are both remarkably powerful and destructive - and what they do to bottom is very very ambiguous (in a sexual way).

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