“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet”: ambiguous three-way authorship in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman #19, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the interchangeable relationship between three author figures in the nineteenth individual instalment of Neil Gaiman’s popular Sandman comic book, titled ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, arguing that just as this metafictional story blurs the boundaries between theatrical/comic book fiction and reality, it also portrays an abstraction of authorship between Shakespeare, Morpheus, and Gaiman, as each figure blends into one another while influencing the shape of the narrative; as a result, each of these authors demonstrates the tangible and transformative power of a singular storyteller. Drawing from Gaiman’s history of portraying Shakespeare in Sandman – and his goal throughout the series of enshrining single impactful authorship through his fictionalised take on Shakespeare – I will propose that in actuality, all three authors engage in a cyclical creative relationship with one another, which affects the perception of the comic book story’s origin, with each author acting as inspiration for one another on both a diegetic and metatextual level. This culminates in the story’s visual layout and meta-performance of Dream, in which their three authorial influences become momentarily indistinguishable, complicating Gaiman’s ideal of single authorship.