- What Does Puck Tell Oberon About Titania
- William Blake Oberon Titania And Puck With Fairies Dancing 1786
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, by William Blake, c. 1786. Tate Britain, presented by Alfred A. de Pass in memory of his wife Ethel.
Several years ago I found a dusty book in a used bookstore that had been inscribed as a gift to Ricardo in 1979: “Happy B-day to my favorite horror show lover, off-off-Broadway musician, and a wonderful wonderful friend—wishing you all the best ever—Hells.”
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, Blake, William, c.1786, Watercolour and graphite on paper. Tate Images. This is a Tate Images licensable image titled 'Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing' by Tate Images. Docrabbits Myth and Fantasy art Blake, William 1786- Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Danci. Facebook; Twitter; Email; Embed.
- Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing by William Blake, c. 1786 A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and Hippolyta.
- Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, Blake, William, c.1786, Watercolour and graphite on paper. Tate Images. This is a Tate Images licensable image titled 'Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing' by Tate Images.
- William Blake: Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies dancing. Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing circa 1786 by William Blake 1757-1827: Image title.
The book was full of drawings of faeries, elves, flowers, men kissing sphinxes, skeletons, men dancing with skeletons, and unsettling illustrations of women riding giant birds, all drawn by draftsman and artist Charles Altamont Doyle, father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created them while in an insane asylum called Sunnyside. The book was The Doyle Diary: The Last Great Conan Doyle Mystery: With a Holmesian Investigation Into The Strange And Curious Case of Charles Altamont Doyle, by Michael Baker. I bought the strange thing, of course.
Baker’s introduction to the notebook presents its existence and meaning as a mystery to be solved. Why have so many of Conan Doyle’s biographers only cursorily explored his father failing health? Was Charles Doyle really mad? What influence did his mental health have on Conan Doyle and on his work? To what extent did Charles actually believe in the faeries and elves he drew? And how did his beliefs influence Conan Doyle’s own belief in faeries, spiritualism, and the supernatural? And of course, are there any clues to be found in Sherlock Holmes stories?
It’s a lot of questions for one sketchbook of drawings to solve. And it’s hard to know a person’s heart, mind, and body from their finely rendered illustrations of ladies dressed as flowers. But a few details do reveal themselves.
First, Charles resented being institutionalized. On the first page of his journal he wrote: “Keep steadily in view that this Book is ascribed wholly to the produce of a MADMAN. Whereabouts would you say was the deficiency of intellect? Or depraved taste?” In addition, Charles was tormented. On one page he had drawn a rather terrifying portrait of himself in the mouth of an angry Sphinx, being devoured. Underneath he’s written: note: when i was drawing the royal institution, edinburgh, i was a good deal worried by sphinxes. The drawing is titled horrible fate of the artist worried by a sphinx.
In another drawing, a girl with a worm in her hand telling a giant bird, get away and leave my poor blind worm alone.
There is a portrait of the artist on a fainting couch looking ill and depressed, his angel floating above his body. In another, Charles shakes the hand of a skeletoned grim reaper. The caption? well met.
Among these disturbing images, there are also lovely, romantic Victorian drawings: a tracing of a Sycamore leaf, a pair of slim pixies riding in the antlers of a deer, watercolors of strolls and picnics through the grounds of Sunnyside, unicorns, angels, fair maidens, and dandelion puffs.
Most Arthur Conan Doyle fans know about his trouble with faeries. He was pilloried in the press for writing a book about his belief in the tiny creatures. Specifically, Doyle believed in the veracity of photographs of two young English girls from Cottingley posing with faeries and wood elves. The headline of one American magazine read “Poor Sherlock Holmes-Hopelessly Crazy: Conan Doyle, Who Has been Victimized by Transparent ‘Spirit’ Frauds, Now Offers Photographic Evidence That Fairies Really Exist Just Like the Story Books.” The irony of Doyle’s belief in the supernatural isn’t lost on any fan of Sherlock Holmes. How could the writer of the most famously perceptive, rational, and deductive literary character of all time be so blind, unreasonable, and impassioned about his belief in invisible creatures and other worlds?
Yes, the Charles Doyle diary is a clue. From here, Baker was able to pick up Charles’s trail to not one, but three asylums. He discovered that Charles was an alcoholic, and that his drinking had put him in his first institution and had also gotten him kicked out of it. At some point, perhaps because of withdrawal, Charles developed epilepsy, which was his stated cause of death on his death certificate. These details explain why the Doyle family, fiercely protective of its image, guarded Charles Doyle’s secret history. But the diary hints at something else—at Charles’s belief in faeries. There is a drawing of a chestnut sprig with the caption: i have seen a green lad just like it. And in another, a strange, devilish drawing of a cat woman. He has captioned her: is this a girl or a cat? or both? Written underneath: “I have known such a creature.”
Conan Doyle distanced himself from his father and was noticeably disappointed in him for leaving the family unsupported and vulnerable. Doyle writes in Memories and Adventures that his father’s life was, “full of the tragedy of unfulfilled powers and undeveloped gifts.” In The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, biographer John Dickson Carr explains, “As a boy, it is true, he had never been very fond of Charles Doyle. But in later years he came to understand what he had once considered indolence and weakness, and above all to admire the genius of the paintings on the wall in his study. It was his ambition … to make a collection of all his father’s work, one day, and to exhibit it in London.” Carr also claims that Doyle was sitting at his desk, smoking and staring at his father’s watercolors when he dreamed up Sherlock Holmes.
What Does Puck Tell Oberon About Titania
I’m no Doyle expert, but here’s where my mind goes: Conan Doyle’s belief in faeries was an act of revelation and forgiveness, a veiled acknowledgement of his father’s secret world. Maybe he just couldn’t suppress his love anymore.
A.N. Devers is a writer, an editor, and a teacher. Her work has appeared in Bust, Departures, Slice, The Southampton Review, Time Out, Tin House, and the Washington Post and online at Electric Literature, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review, among other publications.
In Shakespeare’s time, fairy tales and the myths of magic were a major part of the culture and the stories were a main source of entertainment for the people of England. Elizabethans spent their unoccupied hours, in the cold, sat around a fire and this is where the story-telling flourished. Shakespeare himself probably grew up listening to these tradition tales and drew from these oral, folk and fairy tales.
William Blake Oberon Titania And Puck With Fairies Dancing 1786
Fairy tales were essential in the harsh times that Elizabethans lived in, one full of disease, poverty and death, because it provided emotional support and joy for story-tellers and listeners alike. In the article, “Behind the Happily-Ever-After: Shakespeare’s Use of Fairy Tales and All’s Well That Ends Well” by Ciara Rawnsley, she dives into the purpose and meaning of Fairy Tales at this time in history. Rawnsley references Bruno Bettelheim when addressing the emotional importance of these stories where he says, “For those who immerse themselves in what the fairy tale has to communicate it becomes a deep quiet pool which at first seems to reflect only our own image, but behind it we soon discover the inner turmoils of our soul- its death, and ways to gain peace within ourselves and with the world, which is the reward of our struggles” (144). These fairy tales were a way for people to cope with their own struggles and they were able to learn from them and use that information to self-reflect on their own desires and fears.
However, Fairy tales, upon the basis of its name, are false stories. Rawnsley writes, “Fairy tales, by definition, contain a strong make-believe content: they recount fantasies and wishes, not truth”(144). Many view these tales as escapist fantasies and roll their eyes at the “happily-ever-after” endings. However, looking deeper into the character’s journey, there are dark and primal desires and themes that are hidden not so below the surface, things that are very adult in nature. The anxieties that are delved into and explored are very real and not associated with the make-believe of fairy tales because we as adults can all recognize those emotions within ourselves.
In addition, fairy tales act as a form of wish fulfillment, allowing us an outlet to explore our desires and dreams. In this way, there is an escapist element because you are able to put away reality for a while and immerse yourself in the fantasy where anything is possible. Fairy tales also provide a secure place to confront our subconscious and conscious fears, insecurities, anxieties and such. The characters in the stories are externalizing the emotional struggles that one may be feeling, providing the space for one’s issues to be hashed out and then cleanly put away after the story ends. Rawnsley writes that, “Fairy tales contain certain recurrent emotional situations: jealousy; hate; fear of death, rejection and abandonment; anxiety over sex, courtship and marriage; the desire to prove oneself, be recognised, be loved and so on”(145). All of these elements are a part of the human psyche and fairy tales act as form of releasing these deep-rooted feelings. Not only are the emotions revealed, but through these tales we are able to see the primitive nature of humans and our deep desires. Scholars and psychologists have recognized in the content of fairy tales, “just how violent, sexual, and potent their basic emotional subtexts are” (145). Take Little Red Riding Hood for example, it can be viewed as a cautionary tale for children to listen to their parents but actual substance of the tale is darker in the adult’s perspective compared to the child’s. The story represents one of a young girl being curious of her sexuality and thus being seduced by a predator (wolf/man).
While The Winter’s Tale may not have as many elements of fairy tales compared to other Shakespeare plays, the themes and magical aspects within the play dealing directly with the characters. The ignorance and jealousy of King Leontes is a basic element of fairy tales, his insecurities are laid out for the audience to see and is covered by his anger and denial. In the transition from the first part of the play into the later section, Shakespeare personifies Time, it is given lines and is a being rather than a concept. This contributes to the magical theme of the play, in which reason and reality are absent. One of the most fairy tale-like events of the entire play is when Hermione is brought to life from a statue. There is magic enacted by Paulina accompanied by music and Leontes’ Queen transformed from her inanimate state into her living, breathing form. Leontes, who refused to believe anyone that his daughter was indeed his and that his wife did not commit adultery, at the end of the play has to, ignore reason and let himself believe in the magic Paulina possesses. Paulina tells Leontes, “It is requir’d / You do awake your faith” (5.3. 94-95) and as he trusts Paulina and takes the leap of faith, he is rewarded as he is reunited with his Queen.
Works Cited
Rawnsley, Ciara. “Behind the Happily-Ever-After: Shakespeare’s Use of Fairy Tales and All’s Well That Ends Well.” Journal of Early Modern Studies, 2013, http://www.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-jems/article/view/12632