‘Complex, Dangerous, Sexual Beings’: The Centuries-Old Origins of Current Fairy Fiction

In recent years, fantasy books have started to turn our image of delightful, beautiful winged mini-humans into something much darker and more sexual. But “fae,” as these books often refer to them, first appeared in sinister tales, only becoming more child-friendly in the Victorian era. Neil Armstrong traces how the fairy tale has come full circle in this fascinating history piece.

There are echoes of this type of folk tale in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in the mid-1590s. Titania, the queen of the fairies, under an enchantment, falls for a weaver called Bottom who has had his head changed to that of a donkey by Puck, the Fairy King’s mischievous and sometimes cruel lieutenant (a puck is a type of fairy, related to the Irish “pucca“, and a puck can also be addressed as Robin Goodfellow). Titania has four attendants: Moth, Peaseblossom, Cobweb and Mustardseed – and many productions emphasise the fairies’ erotic potential. A 1999 RSC production directed by Michael Boyd was so sexually charged that a school party left at the interval.