Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-02451-9 - Shakespeare Survey: 65: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Edited By Peter Holland Excerpt More information ‘A LOCAL HABITATION AND A NAME’: THE ORIGINS OF SHAKESPEARE’S OBERON LAURA AYDELOTTE ‘ . but the way is so full of ye fayrey & straunge play The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth as thynges, that such as passe that way are lost, for a way of inquiring into the origins of Shake- in that wood abydyth a kynge of ye fayrey namyd speare’s Oberon. The fairy king of the sources is Oberon’.1 So the French knight, Huon de Bor- an often contradictory character, at once a benefi- deaux, is warned as he continues his journey in cent guide and a darkly powerful threat; a meddle- quest of four teeth and a tuft of the beard of some trickster and a haughtily detached observer Babylon’s ruler, Admiral Gaudys. Literary schol- of human affairs. Understanding these mixed ori- ars looking at mortals lost in another wood full of gins not only provides new insights into the ways fairy and strange things in Shakespeare’s AMid- in which Shakespeare’s Oberon was shaped by his summer Night’s Dream have long identified Sir John predecessors but also suggests that certain aspects Bourchier, Lord Berners’s 1534 English translation of Puck’s character and the relationship between of the French romance Huon de Bordeaux as the Puck and Oberon are indebted to the single fig- source for two aspects of the fairy king in Shake- ure of the fairy king in previous texts. Though speare’s play. Huon is generally recognized as the ample scholarship has demonstrated that a num- source for Oberon’s ‘local habitation’. That is, it ber of English sources contributed to the charac- provides the most likely precedent for his location, ter of Puck, I suggest that continental sources are not only in terms of the wood he abides in when also important for understanding Oberon’s assis- first introduced in both the play and the romance tant, in that Shakespeare shares between Puck and but also his original habitation in an eastern or ‘Indian’ region.2 The other widely accepted con- tribution of Huon to A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1 TheBokeofDukeHuonofBurdeux, trans. Sir John Bourchier, is the name Oberon itself, which first began to Lord Berners (1534), ed. S. L. Lee (London, 1882–87), p. 62. 2 Margo Hendricks, ‘“Obscured by dreams”: Race, Empire become a popular name for the fairy king in the and A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Shakespeare Quarterly, English tradition with the publication of Bern- 47 (1996), 37–60. Hendricks provides the longest critical ers’s translation. However, while these origins of account of Huon asasourceforOberoninacriticalpas- Oberon’s name and geographic origins have been sage on his associations with India. 3 cited and mentioned briefly,3 there has been little For the more significant mentions of Huon as a source for Dream see: Lee, ed., Boke of Duke Huon, ‘Introduction’, space devoted to a serious exploration of the way pp. xlix–li; William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, previous representations of the fairy king Oberon ed. Harold F. Brooks (London, 2004,repr.2006), pp. lix and have influenced or been altered by Shakespeare in lxxxiv; William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dream. ed. Peter Holland (Oxford, 1994,repr.2008), p. 31; Thomas Moisan, ‘Antique Fables, Fairy Toys: Elisions, Allusion, and This article takes a closer look at the Oberon Translation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, in AMidsum- character in Berners’s translation of Huon de Bor- mer Night’s Dream: Critical Essays, ed. Dorothea Kehler (New deaux and at the Oberon of Robert Greene’s 1594 Yo r k , 2001). 1 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-02451-9 - Shakespeare Survey: 65: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Edited By Peter Holland Excerpt More information LAURA AYDELOTTE Oberon many of the features and actions that Ortnit in journeying to Tyre in order to win the are assigned to the fairy king alone in earlier hand of the beautiful daughter of Machorel, King sources. of Jerusalem. This basic plot is clearly related to I begin by looking at the provenance of the name the plotline in Huon de Bordeaux in which Auberon Oberon and the many facets of the character of the aides Huon, not only in retrieving the teeth and fairy king that precede his appearance in Shake- beard hairs5 of the pagan ruler of Babylon, Admiral speare’s play. I then turn to the ways in which Gaudys, in order to return with them to Charle- Shakespeare adapts these conflicting aspects of the magne and restore his tarnished reputation, but fairy king in the characters of Oberon and Puck. also in winning the Admiral’s beautiful daugh- This exploration of Oberon’s origins helps to shed ter, Esclarmonde. Though Shakespeare’s Oberon light on the question of what ‘sort’ of spirits they does not provide assistance with the same sort of may be. I conclude by looking to Oberon’s ‘local romantic quest, he nonetheless falls in with a tra- habitation’, or rather his lack thereof, demonstrat- dition of fairy kings helping mortals to meet their ing that Shakespeare’s Oberon, rather than being a match. fixedly ‘Eastern’ figure, has a global identity that he The observation that the fairy king acts as a owes to the source texts, and that Oberon’s mixed matchmaker for the humans he encounters may geographic origins and shifting location, like his not be very revealing in and of itself, but it does mixed associations with dark and light, are also raise the more complex issue of how he interacts important for understanding his relationship with with and is viewed by members of the non-fairy Puck and the status as ‘wanderer’ that the two char- world in these narratives. The fairy king is notably acters share. a variable character who is alternately represented as dark, threatening and potent and as a light, help- 1. oberon before dream ful character, fond of jests and jolly entertainment. Within the Germanic and French romances, this The name ‘Oberon’ derives from the French name split between a friendly and harmless fairy king and for the fairy king, ‘Auberon’, which in turn comes a powerful and fearsome fairy king is most clearly directly from the name of the Germanic elf king, located in his physical appearance. When Ortnit ‘Alberich’.4 ThelinefromAlberichtoOberon first meets Alberich, he mistakes him for a harm- can be traced, not only through the etymology less child, but is quickly put in his place when the of the name but through shared narratives, events dwarf packs a very powerful punch that knocks and features associated with the fairy king as he him flat.6 The Auberon (‘Oberon’ in the Berners developed from the medieval Alberich to the Eliz- translation) of Huon de Bordeaux is described as ‘but abethan Oberon. One common thread between of .iii. fote, and crokyd shulderyd, but yet he hathe all three incarnations of the fairy king is his asso- an aungelyke vysage, so that there is no mortall ciation with the East, which I will look at more man that seethe hym but that taketh grete pleasure closely at the end of this article. Another com- mon thread is his position as a matchmaker who assists or interferes with the love matches of mor- 4 tals. Though Alberich may now be most famous Lee, ed., Boke of Duke Huon, ‘Introduction’, pp. xxix–xxxi. Lee provides a more extensive account of not only the Ger- as the dwarf from the Niebelungenlied that inspired manic but the possible Welsh and Celtic origins of both the Wagner’s opera cycle, he was also a prominent name and figure of Oberon the fairy king. character in the early thirteenth-century romance, 5 As has been noted elsewhere, this is the probable source for Ortnit, in which the diminutive elf king Alberich Benedick’s reference to ‘fetch you a hair off the Great Cham’s beard’, in Much Ado About Nothing (2.1.251), a thing he would encounters the hero Ortnit in the woods, where rather do than exchange three words with Beatrice. various struggles and trickery ensue between the 6 Ortnit and Wolfdietrich: Two Medieval Romances,trans.J.W. two of them before Alberich goes on to aid Thomas (Columbia, SC, 1986), p. 8. 2 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-02451-9 - Shakespeare Survey: 65: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Edited By Peter Holland Excerpt More information THE ORIGINS OF OBERON to beholde his fase’.7 Later he is referred to as ‘the through and who delights in feasting and entertain- fayrest creature that ever nature formed’.8 ing in high style. More importantly, the ambiguity This seemingly contradictory state of being both as to whether the fairy king is friendly or fearsome a deformed hunchbacked dwarf and the fairest is heightened in Huon. The old man who first creature formed by nature extends to the contra- warns Huon about Auberon first expresses fear of dictory nature of the fairy king’s actions in relation a terrifying magical being who will prevent them to the humans he meets. The figure of Alberich, in from ever leaving the woods again and ‘wyll make Ortnit and elsewhere, is certainly the most playful meruelous tempestes with thonder and lyghtenyn- incarnation of the fairy king and relates the most ges so that it shall seme to you that all the worlde clearly to an impish folklore figure like the English sholde pereshe’.10 Atthesametimeheindicates Puck.