When Karin J Robinson was researching her first novel—currently out on submission—she noticed a few familiar things in a very old work…
I contend that William Shakespeare has written the first romantasy, hundreds of years before the modern fantasy novel was invented.
This text, Shakespeare’s proto-romantasy, was so odd and unprecedented at the time it was written that it has no obvious predecessor. But it has endless descendants. In fact, I believe that it was this play that cleared the space that is now being explored not only by today’s bestselling romantasy writers but by a huge swathe of modern fantasy, from CS Lewis to Susannah Clarke.
Of course, I am talking about A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Do you realise how strange this play is?
Let’s recap the key points of the plot, briefly. In ancient Athens, the Greek hero Theseus and the Amazon queen Hippolyta are about to get married when two young couples appear. Hermia and Lysander are in love, but Hermia’s father wants her to marry Demetrius instead. Meanwhile, Helena wants to marry Demetrius but he only has eyes for Hermia. All four young lovers sneak off into the forest to pursue their passions away from authority. Meanwhile, in the forest Titania and Oberon, the King and Queen of the fairy kingdom are at loggerheads with each other.
Obviously, what this situation calls for is the chaotic intervention of a magical love potion, so the King’s servant (everyone’s favourite character, the snarky Puck) finds a flower which can make people fall in love with the first person they see when they wake. Cue mass hysteria as the human men all fall for Helena instead of Hermia and, naturally, Titania becomes infatuated with a weaver wearing the head of a donkey.
The whole thing is bonkers. Gloriously bonkers.
(Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash)
Something borrowed, something fae
What are the sources for this story? There are many. And also, none. Shakespeare borrows bits and pieces from mythology and from Ovid’s metamorphoses to create something entirely new.
Writing during the renaissance at a time not very far removed from the medieval Mystery Play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream operates in a much looser, less respectful key. It feels free to rip characters, creatures and themes out of their mythological context and put them in service of its own interests, much as todays’ authors create the dragons and vampires and fae that serve their needs.
The setting is baffling. The play tells us we are in or near Athens, but the forest where most of our action takes places is populated by English flora and fauna. And we move back and forth between ancient Greek mythology and native British folklore. But even the British faery folklore comes with a twist.
Because at Shakespeare’s time, the fae were imagined as tiny creatures rather than human-sized, as they are here. You can see this in Mercutio’s speech from Romeo and Juliet, where he describes the fairy Queen Mab as, “in shape no bigger than an agate-stone/ On the fore-finger of an alderman.” Here, Titania is, to put it bluntly, tall enough to lie down with a human and have all their genitals line up just fine.
My first novel was set in a world inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I shamelessly borrowed Titania for my own gorgeous, shallow, powerful, infuriating Fae Queen. So, when I was in the throes of drafting it, determined to do justice to my influences, I went to the British Library to study the pre-Shakespeare origins of the character.
But it turns out Shakespeare was the first to use the name Titania for a fae queen. Oberon, or Auberon as he was usually spelled, existed in other stories, in other forms. But Titania was his own invention.
(Photo by Alice Alinari on Unsplash)
All of this is world building. This is a built world. Not a mythological retelling or a conventional high romance, or a history, but an original work of fantasy fiction in a romantic mode.
Romantasy tropes as seen in Shakespeare
Let’s review some of the common romantasy tropes that Shakespeare makes use of in his story.
Second worlds: The wildness of the forest is a recurring theme in the literature of the period, including Shakespeare’s other plays. As You Like It is a particularly similar parallel as it also includes characters who flee to the forest. But the comparison proves the difference, because there the forest is simply a version of our real world in which some rules are relaxed. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it operates as a full secondary world, infused with magic, where the fairies rule.
Enemies to lovers: Titania and Oberon’s mutual rage registers a crackling energy right from their first encounter. “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” Oberon tells his estranged wife, and their feud powers the plot and shakes the kingdom. When they come together again at the end you barely need the excuse of the magic flower to see that their arguments were always foreplay.
Forbidden love / Forced marriage: The two human couples are in a classic romantasy plot that keeps the lovers apart by forbidding a desired marriage and insisting upon another. This common trope doesn’t just create obstacles for our lovers, but also puts them in conflict with the power structures and rules of their world.
Sex on the page: This play has a surprisingly high “spice factor”, and it takes an explicitly pro-sex stance. When Hermia and Lysander settle down to sleep in the darkened forest, Hermia remembers her Athenian morality and sends her lover away (“Lie further off!”) until the wedding. It’s that act of chastity that makes it possible for the potion to turn his affections towards Helena instead. Her suffering comes from denying her urges. By contrast, when Titania seduces the ass-headed Bottom in her flowering bed, neither of them has the slightest interest in propriety, even though she is married to someone else and he finds himself in bed with a total stranger. And the play doesn’t close the door behind these lovers. After they’ve been put to bed, it takes care to come back to them for a mid-session interlude where she kisses his “large, fair ears my gentle joy.”
Interspecies pairings: Titania and Bottom’s tryst occurs across species in two ways; fae to human but also, at the moment of consummation, fae to donkey.
(Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash)
Banter: Verbal sparring between all of the characters is a constant in this play, as is Puck’s gleefully ironic commentary on the shenanigans, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
Morally grey characters: There are no heroes in this story – every character, both human and fae, behaves unwisely and believes things that aren’t true. In the forest, we watch them display all the wrong emotions from misplaced rage to petulance, mindless infatuation and vanity.
This is a remarkably modern play, in so many ways. Or perhaps the lesson here is that publishing’s latest, hottest trend is actually a rather ancient mode of storytelling.
Either way, we should all be grateful that A Midsummer Night’s Dream imagined this world into existence. I know I am.
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