Reborn Through Time Time Travel and Rebirth in King of Shadows by Jennifer Wharton King of Shadows is the culmination of Susan Cooper’s interest in and love of Shakespeare. In this novel, she draws a grand theme out of Shakespeare’s drama and recreates it in a time-slip fantasy, bringing new meaning to the theme and investing it with symbolism. The idea of change and rebirth through sleep and counterfeit death appears in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Although it always has a double meaning, the simplistic view of this theme is as a dramatic convention to continue or complete the play. Just as Shakespeare used sleep and death, fantasy writers have used several views of time travel to advance their plots and character development. Time-slip fantasies have dealt with both major and minor characters in history and often symbolize journeys towards a specific goal. Susan Cooper combines the Shakespearean theme of rebirth and the views of time fantasy to create a novel where the character’s rebirth is symbolized by his travel through time. By using this approach, Cooper’s central character, Nat Field, slips back through time from modern London to Elizabethan England and through this symbolic death is reborn. There are six major examples of counterfeit death and sleep as a means of rebirth in Shakespeare’s plays. Two of these plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, deal only with sleep. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, each character who sleeps awakes to a new set of circumstances. The romantic inclinations of Titania, Lysander, and Demtrius are changed by Oberon as they sleep and for Demetrios, the illusion of love will become permanent. Their respective partners, Bottom, Hermia, and Helena, also awake to changed circumstances and are bewildered by the strange actions of their lovers. The Tempest also uses sleep to mark shifts in the plot. By sending various characters into an enchanted sleep, Prospero is able to orchestrate their reactions. In contrast to these two plays are four that contain counterfeit deaths. Fothergill defines this idea saying, “[there is] a treatment of the death-and-resurrection motif [that is] distinctively Shakespearean….This is the withdrawal into presumed death of the wronged woman, and the penitential bereavement of the man who believes himself responsible” (169). One of the most simplistic examples of this rebirth through death is that of Hero in Much Ado about Nothing. Slandered and abandoned by her lover, she is forced to die as herself and be resurrected and remarried to Claudio to regain her reputation. Like the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hero has no control over her life and her death is controlled by her father and uncle. Shakespeare’s female characters show more development as he perfected his abilities, as is shown in Cymbeline. Here the central character, Imogen, is still a wronged and innocent woman and only her death will change her future. However, unlike Hero, she makes the initial decision to change her life and her discovery of two champions in her brothers is her reward. Another female character, Juliet, also struggles to control her fate. Intially an obedient child, as the play progresses she takes an active role in fulfilling her passions. Juliet seeks to control her fate, but fate is still the ultimate victor. Finally, in A Winter’s Tale the character of the wronged woman becomes an enigmatic figure. Hermione is killed and resurrected by the strong-willed Pauline, but Shakespeare leaves a wide margin for speculation into how active Hermione was in these events. Judging by her spirited defense against her husband’s charges, Hermione is an intelligent and independent woman who would not hesitate to choose her own method of fulfilling the oracle’s prophecy. In each play, there is a character who is in control of the dreams, sleep, and death of the

other characters. However, this control is most clearly seen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. For the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon is the ruler. He causes them to sleep, effects changes with his potion, and reverses or affirms their final situations. A similar figure in The Tempest is the magician Prospero. Although more subtle in his manipulation, it is he who brings the ship to his island, provides a husband for Miranda, and uses the spirits to bring the nobles to repentance. In Much Ado About Nothing, the traditional patriarchal figures control Hero’s fate. However, in Cymbeline this simple approach becomes more convoluted. Imogen’s fate is orchestrated not only by the dominant male figures in her life, father and husband, but also by the Queen, faithful servant, and her husband’s arrogant and greedy friend. Ultimately, it is Imogen who controls her fate, for it is she who makes the initial decision to change her situation. Like Imogen, Juliet is initially controlled by her father and lover, but in her decision to “die” she becomes independent. For Hermione, death itself sets her free from her tyrannical and insane husband. When she returns to life, he has admitted his injustice and, under the tutelage of Pauline, learned to allow others their independence. The False deaths and periods of sleep that are controlled by these various characters perform several roles in each of these plays. First and most common, this theme is used as a dramatic convention to change the direction of the plot. Jennifer Lewin defines the periods of sleep specifically as a dramatic convention, saying, The idea that sleep is the great reconciler of significant theatrical problems reflects a solution within the play [The Tempest] that an earlier play, Midsummer Night’s Dream, situates at its very end in an address to the audience: Think but this, and all is mended,/That you have but slumber’d here/While these visions did appear. Another use of this device is in creating or symbolizing change in a character’s personal identity or in her outward circumstances. As Fothergill says, “the faked death and subsequent resurrection can…reverse the currents of feeling over a whole network of relationships” (155). Finally, a false death or period of sleep can be used when the gradual accretion of tragic events has caused a character’s life to become so imbued with tragedy that there is no apparent remedy. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sleep is a dramatic convention marking the changes in each romantic duo. For Demetrius, the change will become permanent. But the audience may use sleep and its dreams to resist the effects of the play and thus change in their lives. Sleep fulfils the same purpose in The Tempest, marking the changes in plot as the characters experience Prospero’s powers. In Cymbeline, the plot has become so complicated that only a temporary removal of the main character will allow resolution. Imogen’s death marks the change in her circumstances; she no longer needs to fear those in power and the slanders against her because she is dead (, the plot has become so complicated that only a temporary removal of the main character will allow resolution. Imogen’s death marks the change in her circumstances; she no longer needs to fear those in power and the slanders against her because she is dead (Cymbeline 4.2.261-283). However, her brothers’ song is also symbolic of a broader view of events, wherein she no longer needs to fear because she is once more favored and loved, not only by her husband and father but also by her new protectors, her brothers. For some characters, such as Hero and Imogen, a new life and the resolution of their tragedies await them after they are resurrected. For others, like Juliet, their counterfeit death is a preparation for true death. In A Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare further refines the theme of death and rebirth by making Hermione’s death secondary to her change in circumstances. Instead, it is Leontes who is most affected. In the final scene, Hermione is reborn through Leontes’ dream of

her as a living statue, with Paulina as the Prospero performing the necessary magic. This parallels her death when Leontes killed her through his false dreams and Paulina caused him to believe Hermione to be dead. Each of these characters is changed or affected by their death. Whether they are controlled by another figure or attempt to rule their own fate, they all affect the story through their experiences of death and resurrection. This theme of rebirth and change can also be seen in the various uses of time travel throughout children’s literature. Time travel is based on three general views of time. A traditional, Judeo-Christian view is of time as a linear movement, progressing from point to point. This view is used most often in time-slip novels, where a character will move between specific points in history in the same location. The cyclical view of time can also be utilized in these stories. Finally, a view of time as simultaneous, as Townsend explains, “events in different times could in a sense be simultaneous, just as events in different places can be simultaneous” is reserved almost exclusively for parallel and multiple world fantasies (“Slippery Time” 83). The time-slip fantasy in children’s literature was pioneered by Rudyard Kipling and E. Nesbit. Each of these authors created a distinctive approach to time fantasy, and both continue to influence modern writers. E. Nesbit’s characters are usually on a quest back into time, as in The House of Arden, or they are exploring out of curiosity. They meet major historical characters, such as Sir Walter Raleigh, and influence history (House 132-154). In contrast to this technique, Rudyard Kipling believed strongly in the importance of ordinary people and the continuity of history. Linda Hall says, “he looks between the cracks of the great events of the past to winkle out the unsuspected influence of ordinary individuals” (307). The children in Puck of Pook’s Hill are more of an audience than active participants. Puck reveals their past to them and they draw insights into their present through it. Like Kipling, Susan Cooper will emphasize the continuity of history and community in her fantasies, saying, “Continuity is the only thing that can reconcile our tiny lives to their large surroundings” (“Long Ago” 96). The final elements in time fantasies are the mechanics. All time fantasies require a medium of travel. E. Nesbit often uses a quasi-magical creature such as the Psammead, while Kipling employs the grander mythical force of Puck, symbol of magic and history in England. A second mechanical problem is the effect of variables in history. To change or not to change? E. Nesbit solves this difficulty by allowing her characters to introduce change, and then explaining how their actions created the events we know of today. Kipling sidestepped the issue through his focus on the common people instead of influential figures who affected official historical records. These mechanics and views of time travel provide a foundation for the symbolical use of time in fantasy. Two of the themes that can be expressed through time travel and are used in Susan Cooper’s novels are time travel as a journey and as a medium of change in character or circumstances. Townsend speaks of the theme of a life journey by saying, “to speak of the life journey is to speak also of death, for without death the phrase would have no meaning” (“Life Journey” 139). Many of Cooper’s earlier fantasies incorporated thjis view and were separate from the restrictions of time. However, in King of Shadows she has adhered strictly to the limitations of time, as Nat moves between definite points in a linear view of history. Nat’s journey is very strongly a life journey, best described by Townsend when he says, “the life journey is a hero journey. Although we may not feel very heroic, we are all embarked on the heroic quest, to live lives that have meaning for ourselves and for others” (“Life Journey” 147). Time travel as a medium of change, an idea that can also be expressed through the language of thresholds, is another strong element in time fantasies. Tim Wynne-Jones defines

thresholds in literature as “the physical manifestation of change” (49). Cooper describes her own view of thresholds in fantasy saying, All of us who write fantasy are creating…variations on a single theme: We have a hero— or heroine—who has to cross the threshold from his familiar world into the unknown. In search of some person or thing or ideal, he has a series of adventures…his goal, his quest. And having achieved it, he comes home again a wiser person, better prepared for the longer journey which is now ahead of him, the adventure of living his life. (“Fantasy” 62) For Nat, the terrifying transition between his world and Elizabethan England represents the change from his hold self to a new self-identity. Susan Cooper combines several views of time fantasy in King of Shadows. Nat Field has been chosen as a member of The Company of Boys, an American theater company going to London to perform Shakespeare plays. As Nat is drawn into his character of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he struggles to forget his personal tragedies. However, one night he is mysteriously pulled from his modern host family to Elizabethan England and Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. As he continues to rehearse and perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Nat grows through his own emotional pain and gains new understanding of himself. Wrenched back into his own time, he learns to incorporate his sense of self into the illusion of the theater as he gives his final performance of Puck. In King of Shadows, Cooper combines the techniques of both Nesbit and Kipling. Like Nesbit’s children, Nat sees historical personages such as Queen Elizabeth. However, it is kipling’s emphasis on the ordinary people of history that most permeates this story. Shakespeare is translated from an influential historical personage to a realistic man, warm and caring, and Nat becomes a member of the community of the Globe Theater through his common interests and ambitions. In the conclusion, Nat’s role in the scheme of history is revealed as he realizes that it was his role to keep Shakespeare from dying of plague. However, this Nesbitian device is overshadowed by the changes in Nat, the ordinary person. Nat’s experience, while taking him out of his world cannot take him out of himself. He does experience culture shock, but the focus of his experience is his own inner conflics and changes. The political and historical events are background scenery to the drama of Nat’s evolving self-identity. Shakespeare himself has a major role in this resolution and in the illusions that are an important aspect of Nat’s story, as shown in the choice of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the central play. In her review, Jennifer Brabander emphasizes this connection saying, “Like the novel, the play tells of two worlds: one of fantasy and one of fact, one of immortality and one of death” (735). In the scene that gives Cooper’s novel its title, Puck is apologizing for putting the potion in Lysander’s eyes. However, he is also emphasizing the role of illusion in the changes occurring while the characters are asleep. He says, “Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook,” thus showing Oberon’s role as orchestrator of those illusions (Midsummer 3.2.47). For Nat Field, Shakespeare is the “king of shadows,” leading Nat through the shadow and illusion of his own experience. Cooper emphasizes the fact that Shakespeare’s appeal is not in his skill as an actor, but in his ability to create belief and in his own personality. He is a figure outside of the illusion he creates on the stage. The second Oberon figure, Burbage/Babbage is a more manipulative character. Like Shakespeare, he creates illusion in the theater and in Nat’s life. Nat describes his power of illusion saying “[he] was so completely an actor that sometimes you couldn’t tell where the division was between performance and real life” King 2). However, he is more powerful in the physical world because he can cause the illusion of Elizabethan theater to become real.

Shakespeare’s theme of rebirth and change through death is shown in two aspects in Cooper’s novel. Nat’s counterpart is passing through a near-death experience and Nat’s interaction with Shakespeare is interspersed with flashes of the experiences of the Elizabethan Nat field, who has been transferred to a modern London hospital with Bubonic plague. Like his double, Nat has to move through physical and emotional illness before he can return to his own time. However, the more important imagery in the novel is the climactic transference of Nat from modern London to Elizabethan England. The strange vision Nat has of a hand, pulling him into the world, is a symbol of the movement between times. Tim Wynne-Jones explains time travel as a means of rebirth when he expands the idea of thresholds in literature by saying, “if one is not the same person who closes the door as the person who entered it then that other person must have died” (54). Shakespearean characters such as Imogen and Hermione must die in order for their husbands and lovers to discover their true characters. For Nat Field, his death is the instrument through which he discovers himself. Like the characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, an all-powerful “magician” controls Nat’s movements between time. However, unlike the characters that Oberon blatantly manipulates or those more subtly influenced by Prospero, Nat Field is not a passive figure. He quickly accepts the changes in his situation and, while submitting to the control of the mysterious figure moving him through time, explores his own situation and relationships in order to find healing and a rebirth of self. Through the theater, he discovers identity and through the human contact of Shakespeare and his friends he is reborn through a catharsis of his emotional pain. At the beginning of the novel, Nat is disconnected and struggling to maintain the Shakespearean illusion that he thinks will help him control his life. By the end, he has formed continuity through his contacts with the past, learned to incorporate illusion and reality into his perspective on life, and taken control of his identity. Although the parallels between the historical Burbage and modern director Babbage hint at a continuance of interference in Nat’s life, he has learned to work with and create through the events in his life, rather than allowing himself to be controlled by them. Nat’s connections with The Tempest and his actions as he savors his experiences assure the reader that it is ultimately Nat, not Burbage/Babbage who has changed history. When the modern production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream finally begins, Nat has become free to live iin illusion without losing his identity. Like Imogen, Nat no longer needs to fear. In this conclusion, Nat is still in a world of fantasy and illusion, just as Pick hitnts to his audience at the end of the play. However, Nat also has connected to the reality of himself and his community as well as acknowledging his sense of continuity with Shakespeare. Instead of seeking to become part of the illusion, as he desires at the beginning of the story, “It would be better in the company; I wouldn’t be Nat there, I would be Puck” he is now the center of the illusion (King 13). The world that he lives in as an actor is circling around the solid center of his self-identity. Through her combination of the Shakespearean theme of rebirth through death and time fantasy techniques, Susan Cooper has created a unique and intense experience. Her replacement of Shakespeare’s counterfeit death device with time travel translates the theme of rebirth into a modern setting and adds significance to the symbolism of Nat’s movement through time. In addition, she has reinterpreted the issues of independence and control in Shakespeare’s portrayal of the changing lives of female protagonists. Throught he character of Nat Field, Susan Cooper

translates and creates an individual and cathartic experience of Shakespeare and his drama.

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