Issue 13: "Men of Good Fortune"

Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, and Steve Parkhouse

• Fourth part of long storyline The Doll's House (but see below)
• Fifth story reprinted in trade paperback The Doll's House
• Audible Act I Chapter 10 (this story is out of sequence compared to the issue order)
• Netflix Episode 6 (second half)

General: This story is unusual, in that it bears the onus of being "The Doll's House part 4", but has no direct relationship to the larger story, being a side trip into the past.

Neil Gaiman visited Perth in April 1996, and said there was a major anachronism in "Men of Good Fortune" which no-one had ever called him for (up until then, at least). Now it looks like there are several: Ahasueres, the medieval French, "John Ball has rungen your bell", Henry VI part I as Shakepeare's first play. I wonder which one Gaiman had in mind, if any of those?

Elizabeth Rowe says:

I would argue that "Men of Good Fortune" has a thematic relevance to the first two long stories of Dream. You could almost say that it bridges the two. The end of the first long story depicts Dream as depressed over the outcome of his escape, revenge, and quest to regain his tools. Although Endless, he's evidently vulnerable to at least some human emotions. Even though Death consoles him by reminding him of his responsibilities and making him think about the relationship of sleep and death to each other and their meaning to humanity, the next long story begins with another vulnerable Dream, one who is susceptible to love. This is evidently not allowed by the nature of things (at least as far as the African tale-tellers believe). However, a deviation from the natural order that _is_ allowed and that serves a similar emotional purpose is recounted in "Men of Good Fortune". As Hob finally realizes (and Dream finally admits), he is granted a reprieve from death because Dream needs a friend.

"Men of Good Fortune" can also be argued to have a structural relationship with the second long thread, in that the two have contrasts that seem to me to be significant. The relationship with Nada (love) was destructive (at least for Nada!) and suspect, as it was apparently engineered for malicious reasons by Desire (and Despair?). The relationship with Hob (friendship) is positive (for both parties) and trustworthy, as it was set up by Dream (and presumably Death, who was there at the time). A further contrast is found between Hob's fate and what happens to Lyta, Rose, and Unity; one imagines that the latter is more typical of Dream's relationships with humans--it is impersonal and dictated by the requirements of Dreaming.

1389

Page 1#

• Panel 1

  The Audible version adds a bit more dialog, and scene setting before the first panels open.
  

  The year, as we can deduce from page 5 panel 4, is 1389. Note the background chatter prominently placed throughout the story. The theme of each snippet is repeated at least once, across a time frame of many centuries. This supports the contention that the theme of the story is uttered by Hob on page 23.

  Note that a poll tax, in England, is a flat tax assessed on an individual basis. In the USA, a poll tax is a tax to be paid in order to vote, and has been declared unconstitutional.

  John Ball and Wat Tyler were leaders of the Peasant's Revolt in 1381. They were captured and killed by the authorities (the aristocracy); the rebellion only lasted a week or so as an organized force. John Ball is at least one source for the quote "When Adam dug and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?"

  The two Popes are Urban VI and Clement VII. Pope Gregory XI moved the papacy from Avignon back to Rome in 1377. Then he died, and a mob of people gathered outside the Vatican and insisted that the next pope be Italian; Urban VI was chosen. Several French cardinals, after leaving Rome, got together and elected their own pope, Clement VII, who based himself in Avignon. The split in the church lasted until 1417.

• Panel 2

  These are Dream and Death, in what I take to be period costumes of people of somewhat higher social class than the patrons of panel 1.

• Panel 3

  First known appearance of Hob (Robert) Gadling, who appears throughout this issue as well as later in the series. The Black Death was the name of an outbreak of bubonic plague which killed one third the population of Europe at its greatest extent. "Buckingham" apparently refers to Thomas of Gloucester, earl (or duke) of Buckingham, son of Edward III and uncle to the king, Richard II. Thomas sought to dominate Richard II, and had the upper hand at this time, but lost power in 1390. I still have yet to identify a specific campaign of Gloucester in Burgundy, which is a province in France.

  The Hundred Year's War was at an ebb during Richard II's reign, so the Burgundy campaign may have been part of the struggle between Burgundy and Orleans for control of the French throne, at that time held by Charles VI, "The Mad". Perhaps Buckingham led an English unit allied with one or the other side.

Page 2#

• Panel 2

  One of these is Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of Canterbury Tales. Chaucer lived from c. 1340-1400. He is evidently writing The Canterbury Tales at this time; historical sources say that it was written soon after 1387. The other, from panel 3, is named "Edmund", but is not Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene, who was born in c.1552. He may be the writer of Piers Plowman, which is generally considered to be the work of William Langland. At least one version of the full name of the work is The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, together with Vita de Do-wel, Do-bet, et Do-best, secundum Wit et Resoun. Plowman was published in three editions in the fourteenth century, the first in 1362, the second in 1378, and the third (after this scene) in 1398. Plowman is a tale to instruct the reader in morals. At least one Edmund of this period was another of Richard II's uncles, the Duke of York, although he is not likely to be in a working class tavern.

  "Langue des travaillistes" is "language of the socialists". Here we should probably assume that Gaiman meant "travailleurs", which means "workers". English is the language Edmund means, since the English were the lower classes under the French-speaking Norman upper classes. "La belle francais" is "the beautiful French." "Filthy tales..." is an accurate description of The Canterbury Tales.

  As I just happen to have a friend who knows medieval French (and boy, are the corporations knocking on her door with job offers for that skill!), I asked her to correct "Edmund's" modern French into fourteenth century Anglo-Norman. Recall that spelling had not been formalized yet. "Travailleurs" would go to "traveillieur" or "travilleur". "Francais" would probably go to something like "fraunces".

• Panel 3

  The first background chatter I associate with Geoffrey; the second is a recurring punchline to an obscene joke. Does anyone know the rest of the joke?

• Panel 4

  "Flux" refers to cholera, for which diarrhea is a symptom.

Page 3#

• Panel 2

  We will come back to Dream's comment in a later issue. It is a fairly common theme in fantasy literature that elves, sprites, and the like once inhabited this reality, but went to another reality as the weight of humanity began to press on them.

• Panel 4

  The Wandering Jew is an old legend. Ahasueres was a name for him which may not have been used until 1602; another name for him is Cartaphilus. Ahasueres is also the name of the king of Persia in the Book of Esther; he marries Esther, and is generally portrayed as a bumbling fool. The Wandering Jew cursed Jesus (or refused to soothe him by giving him water in another version) as he hung from the cross, and was told by him to "tarry [here] until I come again"; that is, live on Earth until the foretold Second Coming of the Lord. This legend was used as one possible origin of the Phantom Stranger (a DC mystic character) in Secret Origins #10.

• Panel 6

  "Swive," from context, means "have sex with".

Page 4#

• Panel 7

  Death calls Dream "little brother". In Sandman #24, in contrast, she calls him "big brother". He is little, as he is younger; he is big, as he is physically larger. Geoffrey Chaucer was indeed an important diplomat at King Richard's court.

  "Tu juges mal la nature humaine" translates as "you judge human nature badly." "Tu juges mal" would remain much the same, but "la nature humaine" is most likely incorrect, however, and is probably "humanite (accent grave)" or possibly "la nature des homs" (hommes is spelled "omes," "umes," "humes," "homes," "homs," "ums," "hons," "hums," "ommes," "honmes," "huems," "ouemes," and rarely "hommes.")

• Panel 8

  A spittard is a young deer. This is the same John Ball as referenced above; the quote may be from "The Dream of John Ball", by William Morris, although its appearance here would be anachronistic. It would appear that restrictions on Saxon hunting rights were being put into place by the Norman aristocracy; this was a sore spot for many years, as may be seen in the story of Robin Hood.

Page 5#

• Panel 4

  "King Dick" is presumably Richard II, the last Plantagenet king, who ruled from 1377-1399. Evidently, he's fairly "thick", or stupid. "Year of our Lord" is, of course, the English translation of the Latin Anno Domini, or A.D.

1489

Page 6#

• Panel 1

  Jump ahead to 1489. This is Hob again.

• Panel 2

  Hob is talking with Dream, whose skin is miscolored in this panel in the original comic.

Page 7#

• Panel 3

  Chimblies are chimneys, as Hob says. Rheum is a cold or runny nose. Catarrh is much the same.

• Panel 4

  From reading Hellblazer, I interpret "brilliant" to mean, roughly, "pleasing" or "excellent". It seems quite modern for Hob to be saying it in 1489.

Page 8#

• Panel 2

  York and Lancaster are two noble houses who contended for the throne of England in the War of the Roses. Henry VII was the first Tudor king of England, presumably named Richmond before he assumed the throne.

• Panel 4

  Gutenberg did invent typography and made movable type into an industry in the 1400s.

1589

Page 9#

• Panel 1

  Jump ahead to 1589.

• Panel 3

  The man with the broken leg is Christopher "Kit" Marlowe, a prominent dramaturge of the late 1500s. His companion is none other than Wild Man Will Shakespeare, himself. The two are known to have been friends, and Marlowe may have been the ``poet'' referred to in Shakespeare's sonnets, of whom the playwright was jealous. The play Will refers to here is, I believe, Marlowe's play Faustus. Note that Shakespeare speaks in iambic pentameter, which is the form of his sonnets and long sections of his plays. An iamb is a foot with one short or unstressed syllable followed by one long or stressed syllable. Pentameter simply requires five iambs in a line. In reading or speaking iambically, the stresses are not overemphasized as one might naively expect.

Page 10#

• Panel 1

  This is Hob again.

• Panel 4

  A venison pasty is a pastry shell filled with deer meat. It is correctly pronounced with a short 'a'.

• Panel 5

  William Caxton was the first English printer. He died in 1491, but Hob is referring to events of 1489. Henry Tudor, here, is probably Henry VIII, the most famous Tudor king.

• Panel 6

  Hob is describing a method of escaping detection as an immortal. It is a commonly-used method in science fiction.

• Panel 7

  "Fat Henry" is undoubtedly Henry VIII, who established the Church of England, and confiscated the Roman Catholic monasteries.

Page 11#

• Panel 1

  The longer lived a species is, the less fertile it is. Perhaps the same holds true for individuals such as Hob.

• Panel 4

  It would appear that Marlowe was homosexual and Shakespeare quite heterosexual. I cannot directly confirm this. Shakespeare's orientation is a subject of much debate; several of his sonnets appear to be directed to a young boy. "Buss" means "kiss". At this point in time, female roles in the theater were played by boys or young men. "Horned" may refer to a crescent-shaped portion of anatomy that modern actresses don't have.

• Panel 5

  Shakespeare was an actor most of his career.

• Panel 6

  (Comets were thought to portend doom; the "crystal tresses" are the "tail" of the comet, here compared to the straps of a scourge.) Quoted are the opening lines to The First Part of King Henry the Sixth, which were in actuality probably penned by Elizabethan pamphleteer Thomas Nashe, one of Shakespeare's two likely collaborators on the play (and another good friend of Kit Marlowe). Henry VI Part I is generally NOT believed to be Shakespeare's first play - the rather ludicrous Titus Andronicus is. The well-known badness of parts of Titus will have suggested this Shakespeare- makes-a-deal plotline to Gaiman, just as it will have made the plotline more credible to readers who assume that the excerpt is from Titus: but it's telling either of Shakespeare's skill or of our aesthetic passivity that, to find text on which we could venture an negative opinion, Gaiman had to go (rather shamelessly) to a later play and (quite unwittingly) to another writer (who's by the way quite good when in his own element.)

Page 12#

• Panel 1-2

  Presumably the quote from the play Faustus is accurate. We may note that Beelzebub is a name of the devil, or the name of a major demon.

• Panel 5

  "Bent" may perhaps have meant "homosexual" in 1589; it certainly meant this in Nazi Germany (as may be seen in occasional issues of The Desert Peach ). We get "straight" for heterosexuals in analogy. Nowadays, "bent" is often used to mean "crooked", although it can still refer to homosexuals.

Page 13#

• Panel 1

  Shakespeare did not spell his name the same way twice.

• Panel 6

  Beware hubris, Hob. Also, "foreshadowing: your guide to quality literature", to quote "Bloom County".

1689

Page 14#

• Panel 1

  Jump ahead to 1689. Note the background chatter.

• Panel 3

  This translates, roughly, as "You fucking shitheads! Get out of my way!"

Page 15#

• Panel 1

  This is Hob, considerably reduced by circumstance.

Page 16#

• Panel 1

  Oliver Cromwell, and Parliament, took over England for a while during the 1600s. The monarchy was eventually restored. Hob picked the losing side.

1789

Page 17#

• Panel 1

  Jump ahead to 1789. Hob is speaking, off-panel, describing one form of the "triangle trade" that was being run at this time.

• Panel 2

  First known appearance of the woman, Lady Johanna Constantine. She appears later in the series. She is, by implication, of the same line as John Constantine, and is, like him, a callous manipulator, and in touch with the odder side of life.

• Panel 4-5

  The French Revolution has begun in 1789, following the successful revolt of most of the British colonies in America six years earlier. "Odd's life" means "God's life"; the alteration was to avoid taking God's name in vain.

Page 18#

• Panel 1

  King Lear is one of Shakespeare's plays, Goneril one of Lear's daughters. Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) was a famous English actress. About this time a director/scholar did convert Lear into a comedy to promote his own ideas of morality. As Dream "predicts", the modification did not last more than a few decades.

  I take "Great Stories" to mean a class of tales fundamental to human nature (including, no doubt, "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again" and the mixed-up twins farce).

Page 19#

• Panel 4

  We have not yet met Jack Constantine. He is the fourth known true Constantine, the others being Kon-stan-teyn, the founder of the line, seen in Hellblazer Annual #1; Lady Johanna, seen here and in a later issue; and John himself, seen every month in Hellblazer, in Sandman #3, and irregularly in Swamp Thing. I exclude John's father, sister, and niece, as they do not follow the Constantine pattern of nasty lives ending in nasty deaths. Recently, another Constantine, a pirate, has appeared in Swamp Thing; this one is much nastier and lacks the subtlety of the true Constantines, as well as their orientation toward the occult.

• Panel 6

  We have seen Dream pull this trick before, in Sandman #1.

Page 20#

• Panel 4

  Dream's is a description much more eloquent than mine of the Constantine pattern.

• Panel 5

  Nightwalkers are probably vampires, but may be some other sort of undead.

• Panel 6

  Queen Bess is Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603).

1889

Page 21#

• Panel 1

  Jump to 1889.

• Panel 2

  The lady here is Lushing Lou, who was a real Victorian prostitute, described by Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor in 1851.

  "Bloody Jack" is Jack the Ripper, of course. The Ripper killed five prostitutes in London in 1888 and was never caught. The Alan Moore-Eddy Campbell series From Hell is a look at the historical legend in comic book form. Gotham by Gaslight features the Batman versus the Ripper.

• Panel 3

• Panel 4

  Lovely slang here. According to Green's Dictionary of Slang, chickaleary is an adjective that means artful, knowing. It is usually used as chickaleary cove, which means an artful, knowing, 'clever' fellow. The word may have originated from a combination of cheeky, leery and cove, and was popularized by a music-hall song.

• Panel 5

  This song was actually sung by Lushing Lou, according to Mayhew's writing.

Page 22#

• Panel 2

  The "pox" is probably syphilis, here.

• Panel 4

  Lady Johanna's mission for Dream is chronicled later in the series. Blood is Jason Blood, the human host of the Demon, Etrigan. See Sandman #4. At this time, Blood is amnesiac, unaware of either Etrigan or his own immortality.

• Panel 5

  We saw Mad Hettie in Sandman #3. She has also appeared in a John Constantine sequence in Swamp Thing.

Page 23#

• Panel 2

  Aha! The theme to the entire issue!

• Panel 6

  And on the subject of change...

1989

Page 24#

• Panel 1

  Jump to 1989. Every bit of background chatter that's gone before appears again, even down to the dirty joke!

• Panel 4

  Note that before, Dream always wore formal attire, but here is wearing quite casual clothing. This perhaps represents a personality change as a consequence of his imprisonment. Alternately, what was formerly a formal situation has become a casual meeting between friends, or the clothing of the upper class has gone from formal to casual and Dream is merely up-to-the-minute.

  If it's not obvious, this is the prior engagement referred to in the last issue.

Credits

• Originally collated and edited by Greg Morrow.
• Tom White twhite@mozart.AMD.COM gave the year of the Ripper murders (and misremembered the final date of the American Revolution!).

• Ian Lance Taylor ian@airs.com identified Ball and Tyler, elucidated the conundrum of the two Popes, wrote about some of the French politics of 1389, and discussed English hunting rights.

  He also researched The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, and tried to find "Edmund". With Connie Hirsch fuzzy@athena.mit.edu and Jeffrey Porten porten@eniac.seas.upenn.edu, he identified flux. With Jeffrey and Viktor Haag vehaag@crocus.waterloo.edu, he investigated the Wandering Jew.

• Michele Koch (private communication) undertook to translate "Edmund" into accurate fourteenth century Anglo-Norman.

• Alex (Chaffee?) chaffee@reed.edu spotted Shakespeare's poetry. Ian and Alex explicated the torture King Lear underwent.
• Tom Galloway tyg@caen.engin.umich.edu added some historical information about "actresses" and Robert Kelly rkelly@triton.unm.edu chimed in with a typically sleazy remark :-)
• Ian and Tom G. identified and interpreted the play that Marlowe so disliked. Tom G. also revealed a penchant for demonology and the undead and noted the French Revolution and Good Queen Bess.
• Jeffrey had more to say, this time about the etymology of "bent", and Dream's choice of clothing. William Sherman sherman@math.ucla.edu and Mike 'The One and Only' Killans mcollins@isis.cs.du.edu confirmed the current use of 'bent'. William also added bits about "odd's life" and Shakespeare's sexual preference. Mike spotted another relative of Constantine's.
• Joel Tscherne ac985@cleveland.Freenet.Edu corrected some of my panel numbering.
• Michael Bowman mbowman@andromeda.rutgers.edu added some information on `bent'.
• Mark MacBear mamcconnell@uccs.edu identifying Marlowe's role in Shakespeare's sonnets (I think that who said it and who he meant, I lost most of the reference.)
• Dave Stobbe, who signs himself "Ed (the Anti-Dave)", dave.stobbe@canrem.com corrected my attribution of movable type to Gutenberg.
• Ralf Hildebrandt added more details.
• Richard Munn noted added some notes from the Audible version, some details on Lushing Lou and the Prior Engagement.

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