''A Midsummer's Nightmare'' (1996) is a novel by
Garry Kilworth
Garry Douglas Kilworth (born 5 July 1941 in York) is a British science fiction, fantasy and historical novelist, and a former Royal Air Force cryptographer.
Early life
Kilworth was raised partly in Aden, South Arabia, the son of an airman. Havin ...
.
It is a comical parody of
William Shakespeare's ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream
''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a comedy written by William Shakespeare 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict amon ...
'', and is internally illustrated by Stephen Player.
Oberon, King of the Fairies, decides to relocate his people from
Sherwood Forest, increasingly littered by tourists and drained of magic, to the less-spoiled
New Forest. Aided by young car mechanic Sid whom the fairies have captured, they set off in an old bus that Sid teaches
Queen Titania to drive, and have various encounters with humans on the way. At a village fête, Titania falls in love with and abducts a human baby (a humorous contrast to ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' where she falls in love with a half-man/half-donkey) whose disappearance attracts pursuit, and the fairy band joins up with a convoy of Stonehenge-bound
New-age travellers, including would-be writer Tom Blessing who bears some resemblance to the book's author.
However, the fairies' passage through the land awakens other supernatural entities, including
Wotan
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the ''Nibelun ...
,
Gogmagog, the
Green Man, the
Long Man of Wilmington
The Long Man of Wilmington or Wilmington Giant is a hill figure on the steep slopes of Windover Hill near Wilmington, East Sussex, England. It is northwest of Eastbourne and south of Wilmington. Locally, the figure was once often called the ...
, and Titania's old foe
Morgan-le-Fay, the Morning-Fairy. She, compelling the aid of various legendary beings, proposes to restore the polluted modern world by returning it to the era of Avalon, but with herself in charge, and to raise the necessary magical power by sacrificing the stolen baby, whose ancestry traces back to the
Matter of Britain. Sid and Tom help to thwart Morgan's machinations, Sid manages to return the baby, and at the book's climax, Morgan and Titania engage in a magical duel to the death.
References
1996 British novels
Parody novels
Novels based on A Midsummer Night's Dream
Novels set in Nottinghamshire
Bantam Press books
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