Fairies, Fractious Women and the Old Faith: Fairy Lore in Early Modern British Drama and Culture by Regina Buccola (review)

REVIEWS 198 for scholars examining both the basis for Old English versification and the implications of metrical analysis for our understanding of early English poetic craft. SCOTT KLEINMAN, English, California State University, Northridge Regina Buccola, Fairies, Fractious Women and the Old Faith: Fairy Lore in Early Modern British Drama and Culture (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press 2006) 293 pp. Regina Buccola begins her study of the role fairy lore plays in early modern drama and culture by discussing how strong a presence it had in the consciousness of the Renaissance theatergoer. She then shows how fairy lore portrayed (and empowered) women; how fairies were a medium through which the desires of the lower classes were expressed, particularly those of women. She goes on to outline the link between fairy lore and Catholicism, which was a view held by prominent Protestant critics of the period. She describes how fairies were a prevalent part of the early modern public consciousness and “the ways in which they served as touchstones for shifting early modern attitudes with respect to gender roles, class positions, and state-sponsored institutions such as the church” (21). In her Introduction, Buccola shows that fairies and fairyland were most closely associated with the female gender, while fairies themselves were sexually ambiguous creatures that were considered most active in times of change and instability. For example, fairies interrupted the lives of mortals (particularly women) at transitional periods of their lives such as childbirth, sleep and marriage. Fairies were also considered to inhabit a realm outside of earth, heaven, and hell; they were morally ambiguous creatures who were neither considered angels nor demons in the public’s imagination. Despite their ambiguous status, English Protestants ultimately linked fairies with the desires of the female gender and the Catholic faith, which was considered an effeminate religion that promulgated superstition among its practitioners. With this context in mind, Buccola approaches the texts in question: Shakespeare ’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Cymbeline , and All’s Well that Ends Well; and Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist. She recasts some previously held assertions of the female characters within these plays and sheds a refreshing and informative light on this neglected yet essential area of cultural study. By reading the plays through the spectacles of contemporary fairy lore (a point of view that was culturally ingrained, and thus came very naturally to an early modern audience), Buccola adroitly tackles problems and misreadings previous critics have had with characters such as Imogen from Cymbeline or Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and gives invaluable insight into the role female characters played within the world of the text as well as the implications they had on early modern culture. In the first chapter Buccola discusses the social implications and criticisms of Shakespeare’s most overtly fairy-laden play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Buccola shows how the action of the play takes place in a luminal realm (the forest just outside Athens) which allows for the initially pathetic character of Helena to invert her position, with the aid of Oberon, by the end of the play. Hermia is granted her desire to marry Lysander. Thus “the lovers in A Midsum- REVIEWS 199 mer Night’s Dream are ultimately united by a fairy force aligned with the female desires of both Helena and Hermia” (81). Although fairies are not present in the Merry Wives of Windsor, their images are evoked in the final act in which Falstaff is publicly humiliated at the hands of Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. Buccola shows that through the efforts of the Windsor wives, Falstaff is rendered effeminate in the play (he dons the disguise of the Witch of Benford) and through the fairy disguises, The Page’s daughter Anne marries the man she desires rather than the grooms chosen by her parents. Anne, in many ways, is the next generation of the Windsor wives who get their way despite the patriarchal influences within their household and community. Buccola also clears up why the Parson Hugh Evans wears a fairy costume to help Mistress Page and Mistress Ford ensnare Falstaff. She points out that most fairy lore came out of Wales...