As a run-down, "Calliope" delves into Dream's past and present, allowing him to encounter a former lover, the muse Calliope, who like him is being imprisoned by a greedy mortal. This issue more than the others offers some insight into future Sandman stories, as Calliope and Dream's coupling led to the birth of Orpheus.

"Facade" may have been the weakest entry, though any chance to see Death shine and offer advise is generally worth the price of admission as Gaiman uses the opportunity to dig up a long-forgotten minor superheroine and her horrifying loneliness.

"Night of a Thousand Cats" is a charming little tale, not unlike a lot of Gaiman's single issue stories, like those seen in the "Fables and Reflections" volume of this series.

And finally, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is a real charmer, where Gaiman works historical figures in with mythological ones. Anyone familiar with either the play or English folklore will probably get a stupendous kick out of this. And even if you aren't, there's enough charm in the tale, and the full ramifications of Shakespeare's deal with Dream become apparent.

The only real complaint I had about this one was that it was too short. For the price I paid, and given the length of other volumes, I think I was expected more than four stories.


Four stories on the border of myth and dream   March 30, 2003
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

"Mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you."
- Death of the Endless, in "Facade", herein

"Calliope" in some ways is the most interesting entry; Gaiman has also included his script for Calliope, as annotated during his conversations with the artist. Gaiman emphasizes that this isn't the One True Way of scriptwriting - but a student would have to look long and hard to find a better published example. The script supplies both dialogue and detailed descriptions of the accompanying visual images the artist should capture, also documenting their origins. (Failing author Rick Madoc's workspace, for instance, is based on Gaiman's own, without the Groucho Marx statue.)

Calliope and Dream were once lovers, but the fate of their son (one of the key elements of the Sandman mosaic, in FABLES AND REFLECTIONS) caused a rift between them that never healed. Like Dream, Calliope has spent much of the 20th century as a mortal's prisoner - in her case, Erasmus Fry captured her as she made a nostalgic visit to Greece in 1927, and rather than wooing her, forced her to provide inspiration. Now an old man, Erasmus as the story opens has sold her to Rick Madoc, who wants to break his writer's block before the deadline of his second novel falls due. (Forced inspiration involves Madoc raping Calliope, telling himself she's not really human.) Tasting success, Madoc gets greedy, and continues to exploit Calliope as he rises to fame and fortune - and enough time passes for Dream, an ultimate source of inspiration with a gift for epic vengeance, to escape his *own* unfortunate incarceration.

"A Dream of a Thousand Cats" is the message preached by a mother who learned the true depths of the falsehood of feline independence, when her humans drowned the litter sired by her first lover, a stray tom whose bloodline wasn't 'good enough' for a purebred Siamese. In her grief, she sought the heart of the dreaming for justice, revelation, and wisdom. A dead crow there, denying first justice and then wisdom, directed her to the king of dreams - another aspect of Dream, just as Nada and the last Martian saw him differently than the usual artist's portrayal. The truth the nameless mother brought back from the dreamworld - of how humans came to dominate cats, and what it *really* takes to change the world - is very powerful, despite the savage irony of the long odds against her.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" (by Neil Gaiman and William Shakespeare) picks up the thread of Dream's working relationship with Will Shakespeare, begun in "Men of Good Fortune" in THE DOLL'S HOUSE. (The bargain is concluded in the last story of THE WAKE.) The artist, Charles Vess, later collaborated with Gaiman on his full-length novel of Faerie, STARDUST.

Lord Strange's Men - the acting company in which Shakespeare worked as both actor and playwright before joining the Lord Chamberlain's Men - have left London to tour the provinces after their patron's death (historical fact; Gaiman cannot typically be caught out in any continuity error). Here at Wendel's Mound in Sussex, Dream has called in one of the chips owed him by Shakespeare in exchange for inspiration. (Dream sees nothing unusual in the choice of stage, as this was a theatre long before the coming of Shakespeare's people to the island. "The Normans?" "The humans.")

A performance of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' for the *real* Auberon and Titania, whose people have long since left the mortal plane, but who have accepted Dream's invitation to a single night's entertainment, in thanks for the diversion their people have provided for Dream in his eternal existence. This story marks the first overlap between Faerie and the Sandman storyline, introducing not only the royals, but the shadowy figure (noted, with a most-wanted flavor, as being still at large) of the Puck. [As the real Peaseblossom says, "'I am that merry wanderer of the night'? I am that giggling-dangerous-totally-bloody-psychotic-menace-to-life-and-limb, more like it.'" "Shh, Peaseblossom. The Puck might *hear* you!" The by-play in the audience is well written.]

The characters of Lord Strange's Men are dead-on accurate, with Richard Burbage (technically the best actor) taking Oberon's part, Shakespeare as Duke Theseus, and Will Kemp (the strongest comedian, whose insistence on ad-libbing eventually caused his break with the company, as Shakespeare preferred people to stick with his scripts) as Bottom the weaver. The *real* price Shakespeare has paid for his inspiration, though, can be seen in his relationship with his young son Hamnet, experiencing a rare few weeks of his father's company - in the silent part of the boy servant over whom Oberon and Titania quarrel in the play, an irony that deepens as we see the reaction of the real Fair Folk to him. The Puck can't resist the temptation of playing himself on stage...

"Facade" Urania Blackwell was once the superhero Element Girl, long forgotten by the intelligence agency that persuaded her to use the Orb of Ra to trade her humanity for superpowers, then shelved her. The one shape she can't take for long is that of an ordinary human; 'putting on her face' involves forming short-lived clay masks from her own substance, to be able to pass. She has lost the will to live, existing as a shut-in on a "company" pension, and has only 2 kinds of dreams - bad and terrible. (Ordinary nightmares are only bad dreams; the *terrible* dreams are those in which she lives a normal life, then wakes to find that she's still a metamorph.) Death, not Dream, appears in this one, but not to end Urania's life - she heard Urania crying while collecting a neighbour woman who'd fallen from a ladder. After all, as Death points out, she just has a job to do; people make their own fates, and put their own interpretation on her job, whether as gift or punishment.


Double filler   December 29, 2005
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Others have written enough about the story content, so I just want to add an additional annoyance with this volume: the last 40 pages (out of 160) are just for the script of 'Calliope'. All text. No pictures... The book was already short enough compared to the others. And that script took even more away from it...