After Marston Moor

A Midsummer Tempest, i.

I am learning history and alternative history. Provisionally, at least, it seems that, in this Poul Anderson novel, the Battle of Marston Moor ends differently with Prince Rupert taken prisoner although Anderson accurately records both the Royalist defeat and the death during the battle of Rupert's dog.

Rupert and his companion begin to speak in verse. See here. Rupert continues:

"'Thou'st left thy blade forgotten, in my back!
"'I thought at least thou wert as good a dog,
"'If not as bright, as Boye that thou let die!
"'Farewell, Will Fairweather - fairweather friend -'" (p. 7)

(I have rewritten prose as verse.)

One of Rupert's Roundhead captors speaks:

"'This is indeed Prince Rupert of the Rhine...
"'Your Highness, you will not remember me...
"'I was a humble knight you met at court,
"'That time in youth when you from Holland came
"'To guest his royal Majesty your uncle -
"'Who's still our King, and we his loving subjects
"'Who only fight his evil counselors -'"

Rupert:

"'You are so long of wind you ran me down...'"

Roundhead:

"'I beg of you, your Highness, that you yield.
"'You shall receive all honor due to you.'"

Rupert:

"'Else lie a corpse, or piglike stunned and trussed?
"'Well, have this of me, then, Sir What's-Your-Name,
"'Until another day. For after all,
"''Tis no disgrace to fall
"'To such as Cromwell.
"'Beneath your buff, you men are Ironsides.'" (ibid.)

Prince Rupert And Other Matters

Today we visited the City and Cathedral of Lichfield, where I learned something of interest to readers of Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest. On 7 April 1643, Prince Rupert, leading three thousand troops, attacked the Parliamentarians in the Cathedral Close. The Cavaliers mounted artillery to the north of the Close where one site is still called Prince Rupert's Mound. Rupert's force drove out the Parliamentarians.

I have made some additions to the Poul Anderson's Cosmic Environments blog and also to a recent post, "Stepping Stones And Patterns." (See here.) I have finished rereading "The Trouble Twisters" and will shortly try to summarize its complicated political situation. Basically, what van Rijn needs on any planet is a stable civilization to trade with. When Falkayn, negotiating on Ikrananka, learns that human soldiers working for the local Emperor have on Imperial orders conquered a city but have then held the city and declared themselves independent, he, Falkayn, offers to use his superior fire power (without killing anyone) to end the human resistance.

Thus, he is not automatically loyal to members of his own species. But he offers them a fair deal as well. Too acclimatized to Ikrananka, after living there for generations, to return to the technological civilization of Earth, the "Ershokh" (human beings) can remain on Ikranka where they can continue to work as soldiers but now armed by the League to guard the proliferating trade routes. This sounds like another example of van Rijn's "My making a reasonable profit is beneficial to all concerned" philosophy. (I may have already summarized this situation sufficiently.)

If Falkayn, now a Master Merchant of the Polesotechnic League and leader of van Rijn's first trade pioneer team, had not secured a deal and had even had to be rescued by a relief expedition, then he would neither have earned a commission nor have continued to lead a team. He must continue to excel. But eventually he becomes van Rijn's confidante and grandson-in-law despite breaking his oath of fealty at a crucial historical turning point.

A Midsummer Tempest XVII

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol (New York, 2006), Manse Everard quotes A Midsummer Night's Dream:

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
"The solemn empires, the great globe itself..." (p. 480)

In Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Prince Rupert quotes:

" '...the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself...' " (p. 185)

I think that "...solemn temples..." sounds righter than "...solemn empires..."?

It is confirmed that Jennifer's education/indoctrination did not include Shakespeare, even though in this timeline he is the great Historian, not a playwright. She had to ask who Caliban was and does not recognise Prospero's words as quoted by Rupert.

There is an ingenious sequel to The Tempest:

Prospero's magic book could not be destroyed by ordinary means so he disposed of it at sea where it sank to the seabed but was unharmed by the water;

he did not sail far because he feared theft en route so the book is close to shore where Rupert retrieves it in a diving bell;

Rupert suffers from the change of pressure when he returns too quickly to the surface but Ariel, a spirit of the air, fixes that;

an incantation from the book raises supernatural forces that help the Cavaliers to win the English Civil War.

Before Rupert descends, Ariel warns:

" '...I've no eye to scan the future...' " (p. 186)

Earlier, I thought he had displayed knowledge of the future when he said:

" '...names can be important. They should have called him Ernest.' " (p. 172)

But this is, on his part, an unintended pun. The only knowledge that there will later be a playwright called Oscar Wilde is the author's. 

While Rupert is below, Will Fairweather comments that he has:

"...naught zave tha bell, that book, an' his life's one candle -' " (p. 188)

Thus, Will lists the bell, book and candle used in exorcisms.

When healing Rupert, Ariel names the play in which he had appeared:

" '...he'll need but a few days' rest to raise the tempest of his health.' " (p. 189)

A Puritan describes Oberon and Titania as "...woodland demons..." (p. 194) The Fair Folk are not demons but a Puritan necessarily sees them as such. That explained (to me) something in Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions. There, both Faerie and Hell are with Chaos against Law. I commented earlier that Faerie twilight is not demonic darkness - even if both are distinct from divine light. However, Three Hearts... is set in a timeline where the Carolingian myths are true. It follows that, if those myths share the Puritan confusion of Faerie with darker forces, then that must be how it is in that timeline.

Rupert, Will and Jennifer fly magically back to England in a boat, as shown on one book cover. Rupert recognises the land below from much map-reading but comments that there are no borders. Will remarks:

" 'I'll buss tha swile...' " (p. 202)

Although I am Will's fellow Englishman, this statement was completely opaque to me. However, I am informed that "buss" can mean "kiss." From this and the context, I deduce that Will means that he will kiss the soil. He also comments:

" '...this messin' around in boats just ben't for me. Oh, nothin' liake it, true!' " (p. 202)

Thus, he quotes The Wind In The Willows.

 Our heroes rout five Roundheads but why is one of the five described as "The man of the book..."? (p. 206)

Is the final battle something of an anti-climax? Sure, the Wild Hunter, King Arthur and the knights of Avalon and even a moving forest overwhelm the Roundheads but we know something like that must happen so we read it without much surprise. Near the end, there are more passages of dialogue that are really powerful blank verse.

The Graphic Poul Anderson?

I am imagining graphic adaptations of Poul Anderson's works. A prose novel can be adapted as a graphic novel but how about this in a monthly or bimonthly comic book format?

The Poul Anderson Fantasy Line would simultaneously serialise:

The Adventures of Holger Danske (Three Hearts And Three Lions);
The Adventures of a Witch and a Werewolf (the Matuchek series);
The Adventures of Prince Rupert of the Rhine (A Midsummer Tempest);
"Other Universes," which would show:

an alternative timeline ("The House of Sorrows");
travel between timelines ("Eutopia");
the inn between timelines (the two Old Phoenix stories);
Danske, Valeria Matuchek and Rupert meeting in the Old Phoenix (A Midsummer Tempest, xi and xii);
Valeria addressing a larger gathering in the Old Phoenix (A Midsummer Tempest, Epilogue).

One installment of "Prince Rupert" would end with Rupert and Will about to enter the Old Phoenix. The following installment would begin after they have left it. The reader would be referred to the appropriate installment of "Other Universes."

The Poul Anderson Science Fiction Line would simultaneously serialize:

Before the League (pre-Polesotechnic League stories);
The Polesotechnic League (stories contemporaneous with van Rijn, including the first two Falkayn stories and the first two Trader Team stories - van Rijn cameos in the first Trader Team story);
The Adventures of Nicholas van Rijn.

The third, fourth and fifth Trader Team stories, two of which are novels, also feature van Rijn so they would be crossovers. The short story, "Lodestar," easily divides into a Trader Team section which would be adapted in "The Polesotechnic League" and a van Rijn section, with him meeting the Team at the end, which would be adapted in "The Adventures..."

Graphic adaptations add visuals, thus are like a continuation of the book covers: van Rijn should look as he does on the cover of Baen Books The Van Rijn Method. Simultaneous serializations offer the extra dimension of reading connected works concurrently instead of consecutively.

Bodies

A Midsummer Tempest, xxiii.

"'It is Prince Rupert! Rupert has returned! Protect him with your bodies, him and these! Bring him at once, the prince before the King!'" (p. 210)

All men are equal. However, if, during a battle, I was ordered to protect a commander with my body, then I would obey such an order. Prince Rupert or, since I would be on the other side, General Cromwell would have to be protected.

Ironically, if he had no other recourse, a Presidential bodyguard would have to earn his salary by taking a bullet instead of the President - then his family would inherit his salary.

Of course, what we urgently need is a world were such orders and decisions are no longer necessary!

Morgenrot, Soi-Disant, Runagate And Rhyming Couplets

A Midsummer Tempest, ix.

Prince Rupert sings "...a riding song of the Continental wars...":

"Morgenrot,
"Morgenrot,
"Leuchtest mir zun fruhen Tod?
"Bald wird die Trompete blasen.
"Dann muss ich mein Leben lassen,
"Ich und mancher Kamerad!" (p. 72)

Sheila has just written me this translation:

"Dawn,
"Dawn,
"Are you lighting my way to an early death?
"Soon the trumpets will sound.
"Then I must leave my love,
"I and many a comrade."

Rupert refers to a "...soi-disant minister..." (of religion) (p. 73) Although I cannot find it now, I thought that I had encountered "soi-disant" in James Blish's Cities In Flight in a context where I took it to mean something like "distant," whereas in fact it means "self-styled" or "so-called." See here.

Rupert is denounced as a "'...whoreson runagate and knave...'" (ibid.)

Poul Anderson signals the approach of the end of a chapter with some rhyming couplets presented as prose although I now rearrange them as verse:

Rupert:

"'Climb down to earth, now; do not seek to flee.
"'I've longer legs than you, 'tis plain to see.'"

Will:

"'I reckon here's where we change trains, my loard,
"'A moment, pray. I'll further look inboard.
"'Here's brew indeed, whole casks o' nut-brown yale!
"'We'll not go thirsty, though we may go stale.'"

Rupert:

"'Our prize's tank and tender are quite full,
"'To Stoke or further, 'twere a steady pull,
"'Save that for speed, we first must turn around,
"'And send that message. So, we'll seize the ground.'" (p. 76)

POVs In Chapters i And ii

A Midsummer Tempest.

Prince Rupert is the viewpoint character of i. We are told that he waited and was aware, what he thought and that:

"An inner pain touched him." (p. 1)

We are told that he recognized Will and what he saw during the Battle of Marston Moor.

At the end of i, Rupert is captured by Roundheads led by an as yet unnamed knight.

In ii, Rupert and that knight, identified as Sir Malachi Shelgrave, converse in blank verse disguised as prose - except that we notice its singsong rhythm. And, as if this were a play or a film, neither man is the viewpoint character. Both are described as if by a third party observer. When Rupert is annoyed, his fists knot but we are not told how it feels to him. When they walk in silence, we are told that both control their tempers.

After they have entered a railway shed, there is a change of scene which should have been marked by a double space between paragraphs:

"A moment later, a coach and four rattled up a drive which curved to meet the Bradford road." (p.14)

"A moment later..." makes us think that we are still outside the railway shed but the rest of the sentence locates the scene elsewhere. Jennifer Alayne alights from the coach and, on p. 17, sees and recognizes Shelgrave but not his large companion whom we know to be Rupert. Thus, the narrative has acquired a viewpoint character but it is Jennifer.

In The Old Phoenix

All One Universe, p.111.

These guys have been there:

Theseus (and here)
Scheherazade
Falstaff
Holger Danske (and here)
Huck Finn
Irene Adler (see image)
Red Hanrahan
blind Rhysling
a Zenobia who won free of Rome
an Abelard who remained whole (and here)
a Prince Rupert who defeated Cromwell (and here)
a Tecumtha who preserved his nation

These alternative versions of Abelard and Prince Rupert are in Poul Anderson's canon whereas the alternative Zenobia and Tecumtha are not.

And, if you can find the time to research all these characters in the detail that they deserve, then you are a better man than I am.

The Shakespearean Timeline

Our Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the central character of Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), is a grandson of James I. Did I realize that before? His grandmother was Danish which gives Rupert occasion to remark that England and Denmark have been friendly since Hamlet's day. Indeed, Shakespeare's Hamlet visited England. But, "'Hamlet?'" (p. 99) asks Holger.

Holger is not from our timeline and neither, if he regards Hamlet as a historical figure, is this Rupert. Valeria, from yet another timeline but accustomed to inter-historical travel, asks questions and deduces that Rupert's timeline is differentiated by the fact that in it Shakespeare was the Great Historian, not the Great Dramatist. Thus:

fairies exist;
magic works;
Caesar had clocks;
technology started earlier;
Cavaliers have steam trains and balloons;
with Oberon's help, they can win the English Civil War.

When I first bought A Midsummer Tempest, it took me a while to get into reading it. It is different and denser but worth the effort.

Rupert's Religious Rights

(Prince Rupert, The Last Cavalier. We have encountered that type of title before.)

A Midsummer Tempest., ix.

When Rupert is Shelgrave's prisoner, the latter wants him to receive the Puritan minister and:

"'...would give me no chaplain for myself -'" (p. 73)

When he was a prisoner in Linz, Rupert refused to see Jesuits.

I would see the Puritan and the Jesuits to disagree with them but would expect an interesting discussion only with the latter. Meanwhile, I would meditate without needing a chaplain (see here) although a visit from a Zen monk or lay minister would be welcome.

In Lancaster, some member of our meditation group is a chaplain to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. In theory, each new patient is visited at least once by a chaplain. Thus -

Chaplain: Hello, I am a (fill in the blank) chaplain.

Patient (1): No, thank you.

Patient (2): I am a Catholic and need to see a priest for confession and communion.

The (Zen etc) chaplain refers Patient (2) to the Church of England chaplain who dispatches the Catholic chaplain. If it works properly, then everyone helps everyone else, the patients' needs are addressed and no one is inappropriately proselytized, a vast improvement on the days of the likes of Shelgrave.

Between Worlds

When a character moves between worlds, how does the author describe the transition? Sometimes, the character imagines another world, then enters it - and later wonders whether it was real - but usually the other world is unequivocally real. I will mention only a few examples from the works of three fantasy writers, CS Lewis, Poul Anderson and Neil Gaiman.

Lewis' most famous entrance to another world is a wardrobe but there is a better example in a later book. The characters look at a painting of the ship the Dawn Treader until it seems that the waves are moving, then they fall into the sea and are rescued by the ship's crew. Lewis never explains how a painting of a contemporary Narnian ship came to hang in an English house.

The hero of Poul Anderson's Three Hearts And Three Lions, fighting Nazis on a Danish beach, finds himself in the Carolingian mythological universe. Later, mission accomplished in that universe, he returns to the Danish beach with no loss of time, like a returned ruler of Narnia.

In Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), Puck tells Prince Rupert of the Rhine's companion, Will Fairweather:

"'...to speak of inns and such - My friend, if sorely pressed for shelter, think of this. There is a tavern known as the old Phoenix, which none may see nor enter who're not touched by magic in some way. It flits about, but maybe you can use his ring to find it, or even draw a door towards yourselves...'" (pp. 55-56) (Oberon and Titania have given Rupert a magic ring.)

Sure enough, the ring lights the way to the inn which appears before Rupert and Will although it remains invisible to their Puritan pursuers. A regular of the Old Phoenix tells us:

"Look for it anywhere, anytime, by day, by dusk, by night, up an ancient alley or in a forest where hunters whose eyes no spoor can escape nonetheless pass it by unseeing...you must be alert for its fleeting presence..." (Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), p. 9).

This regular finds it many times, once unbelievably on ship at sea, another time more reasonably on a country road after dark where he knows that:

"The inn might waver from sight at any instant." (Anderson, "Losers' Night" IN All One Universe (New York, 1996), p. 107)

It sounds like Neil Gaiman's Inn of the Worlds' End:

"Up the lane aways is the Inn. You just have to be SURE it's there, though. If you AREN'T sure, then fizzlywinks, it's only goin to be fireflies and treeses" (Gaiman, Neil, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 22.

One Worlds' End guest enters it in stages. Brant Tucker is driving to Chicago at night on the interstate. So far then he is travelling though not as yet between worlds. (However, his Earth is that of the DC Universe where anything not only can happen but routinely does happen.) Then:

he was very tired, so did he dream everything that followed?;
he didn't think it was weird when it started to snow in June;
a large, strange animal ran in front of the car (we see this since we are reading graphic fiction);
the car went off the road, across a field, down a hill and into an oak tree;
Brant, carrying his unconscious co-driver, Charlene Mooney, could not find the road;
he was directed to the Inn by an apparently disembodied voice (see above - the reader realises that the speaker is a hedgehog; regular readers recognise the speaking hedgehog from Gaiman's The Books of Magic);
Brant finds a country road;
at the end of the road, is a light;
first it is fireflies in a hedge, then it is the Inn.

I think that the transition between realities began with the apparent snow storm which, we learn, was a reality storm, stranding travellers from many realms in the Inn. A sailor's account is different:

"Y'see, there was a storm, come up out of nowhere at midnight - - we were swept onto the rocks where there shouldn't've been rocks neither, nohow." (p. 67)

Brant and the sailor then disagree about whether the date is June, 1993, or September, 1914.

And a Necropolitan says:

" 'A dark thunderstorm arose suddenly, and the brougham in which my companions and I were travelling was washed into a river.' " (p. 42)

Making an ordinary journey seems to be the beginning of the process.

The landlady explains:

"This place is the Inn at the end of all worlds. None of you were BROUGHT here. Each of you was travelling, and was caught in an unseasonable storm of some kind. You made your way here by luck, and took refuge and advantage of the hospitality offered. And you WILL leave here, when the storm is over." (p. 139)

However, Charlene is allowed to stay to work in the Inn and we see her there in a later series, The Furies by Mike Carey. The characters offer different theories about what causes a reality storm. A common feature of the Old Phoenix and the Worlds' End is the telling of stories and some of these stories offer other routes between worlds:

"...the silver road...glittered and glimmered away beyond a street market." (Gaiman, p. 29)

The man who sees the silver road works in an office in a modern city where gravestones can have "...letters from forgotten alphabets..." (p. 28). That odd touch, if taken literally, means that the modern city is certainly not on any Earth like ours. The narrator of this story asks:

"Is there any person in the world who does not dream? Who does not contain within them worlds unimagined?" (p. 28)

And that is where the other worlds are.

Once Again Through Time II

In the Old Phoenix, Taverner introduces:

"'Messer Leonardo da Vinci... Herr Doktor Albert Einstein....'"
-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 17.

However, he later terminates their conversation:

"'No.'...
"'No, gentlemen,' he said in language after language...
"'I fear I must ask you to change the subject. You would learn more than should be. Both of you.'" (pp. 19-20)

But he does not stop the conversation between Prince Rupert and Valeria Matuchek even though, as a result of this conversation, Rupert returns to the Shakespearean timeline knowing that he must prevent a regicide and all its historical consequences.

Rupert has come from a timeline in which there is no regicide. Therefore, it is permissible, indeed probably necessary, that he return to that timeline and prevent regicide. Da Vinci has come from a timeline in which he did not later have any inkling of Einsteinian relativity. Therefore, it is necessary that he be prevented from conversing any further with Albert Einstein.

Taverner preserves existing timelines just as the Time Patrol preserves the Danellian timeline. We know what happens to the Danellian timeline if a time criminal succeeds despite the efforts of the Time Patrol whereas I am not sure what would happen to da Vinci's timeline if he did return to it with some knowledge of relativity.

It is also clear that da Vinci was possibly intelligent enough to suggest to Einstein where he was going astray, thus in turn changing the nature of Einstein's discoveries, as indeed happened in the goetic universe. See Speculative History.

Is Rupert Right? II

A Midsummer Tempest, ii.

Prince Rupert challenges Sir Malachi Shelgrave:

"...you people prate so much of freedom -' He waved toward the hireling workers in the fields. 'How free are they? No lord looks after them. You're free to let them go in beggary across the gashed and smoky land you'd make.'" (p. 13)

They walk in silence, controlling their tempers. What would I say to Rupert?

Is it freedom to be looked after by a lord?
Did lords "look after" their serfs?
Wage workers are free to organize.

Later, Shegrave looks forward to:

"'...a day when power does not grow from birth or sword, but out of mills and furnaces.'" (p. 14)

The power from mills and furnaces is first the power of their owners but secondly the power of  workers to challenge and ultimately to dispossess the owners.

Old Phoenix POV's

Careful rereading is necessary. The first person narrator of Poul Anderson's "House Rule" informs us that the Peter Abelard whom he sees in the Old Phoenix Inn is:

"...still a whole man."

-Poul Anderson, "House Rule" IN Anderson, Fantasy (New York, September, 1981), pp. 9-20 AT p. 16 -

- i.e., has not been castrated, as he was in our history. 

The first person narrator of Anderson's "Losers' Night" informs us that he has:

"...heard, or seen for myself..."

-"Losers' Night," p. 111. (my emphasis)

- that several legendary, mythical, fictional, literary or historical persons have visited the Old Phoenix and that these include:

"...an Abelard who remained a whole man..." (ibid.)

I had to check. The absence of that phrase, "...or seen for myself...," would have implied different narrators for these two stories.

That narrator is absent from the Old Phoenix passages in A Midsummer Tempest which are all in the third person. Chapter xi begins with Prince Rupert's point of view (pov) but becomes omniscient narrator when he leaves the taproom. In xii, Rupert returns to the taproom and the narrative returns to his pov. In both cases, Valeria Matuchek is present. In the Epilogue, Rupert and his companion, Will, are long gone, Valeria has just finished recounting their story to a larger group of guests and the narration is from her pov.

And that is it for Old Phoenix povs. As Valeria concludes:

"'I hope you've enjoyed my story.'"

-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975), p. 229.

Here the author addresses his readers.

Two Alternative Histories

A Midsummer Tempest by Poul Anderson
Part of the Old Phoenix sequence.
17th century.
Fantasy: Auberon exists and Prospero's magic works.
Alternative versions of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and (mainly) Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

The Protector's War by SM Stirling
Volume II of the Change/Emberverse series.
Early 21st century.
Sf: malign aliens (maybe) exist and technology stops working.
Alternative versions of (see below).

Queen Elizabeth II and Tony Blair die.
Prince Charles becomes King Charles III.
Princess Diana becomes Saint Diana.
Prince William remains Prince William.

"'Small loss with Blair, is what I think. I never did like the bugger's greasy great smile...'" (pp. 341-342)

Stirling captures quite a lot of British sentiment on this issue. The Blair of our timeline now wants a second referendum on EU membership.

A previous occasion when I found a remarkable parallel between a novel and the news was here.

Real People And A Setting Sun

In historical fiction, we sometimes read about real people in fictional situations:

in Ian Fleming's From Russia, With Love, Serov telephones G, the fictional Head of SMERSH;

Poul Anderson's Manse Everard meets Hiram of Tyre.

In alternative history fiction, we sometimes read about real people in fictional histories. See Prince Rupert, Disraeli and Prince William (here).

I mention this because at least two more historical figures show up in unexpected circumstances in SM Stirling's Theater Of Spies. I say no more now. No images or Wiki links.

Paolo Roberto is not the only public figure to have played himself in a film. Sometimes the hero of one set of narratives is a villain in another.

Looking back at Prince William, reminded me of:

"...the halls of sunken Ys."
-SM Stirling, The Protector's War (New York, 2006), CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 236.

- and:

"...the sun was already setting. It made a path of blood and fire across the water, stretching clouds like hot gold and molten copper along the horizon."
-op. cit., p. 237.

Pure Poul Anderson...

And pure SM Stirling, of course!

Poul Anderson's Crossovers

We find that I have written many posts about fictional crossovers.

I think that some of the best such crossovers are to be found in Poul Anderson's works:

Holger Danske is introduced in Three Hearts And Three Lions;

Valeria Matuchek is introduced (indeed, is born and becomes a teenager) in Anderson's Operation Otherworld;

Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest introduces an alternative historical Prince Rupert of the Rhine;

in some chapters of A Midsummer Tempest, the alternative Rupert meets Holger Danske, now lost between universes, and Valeria Matuchek, now a graduate student, in the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix;

also in the Old Phoenix but in an Anderson short story, "House Rule," Nicholas van Rijn from Anderson's Technic History drinks with Sancho Panza from Cervantes' Don Quixote and with Eric the Red from history;

Sherlock Holmes appears in Anderson's Time Patrol series and, along with several other fictional characters, in the A Midsummer Tempest epilogue.

While in a divergent timeline, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol could have met and crossed over with a character who was a hero of that timeline. Indeed, Lorenzo de Conti, the personal causal nexus, probably meets that criterion.

The Time Patrol And The Old Phoenix

I do not think that Manse Everard of the Time Patrol can ever visit the inter-universal inn, the Old Phoenix. The premise of the Time Patrol series is a mutable timeline scenario where Patrol members work hard to maintain a single timeline. Even if they fail, their preferred single timeline is simply replaced by an alternative single timeline, of which we are shown three. There is no simultaneous coexistence of multiple timelines but it is inhabitants of such timelines that visit the Old Phoenix.

The Time Patrol is hard sf whereas the Old Phoenix multiverse incorporates fantasies. The inn is chartered by "...some power unknown..." and could lose its license. (1) The landlord performs the only "Time Patrol" function that is necessary. He interrupts the conversation between Leonardo and Einstein when each is about to learn more than he should but he lets Valeria Matuchek inform Prince Rupert that, in her timeline, the English Civil War had led to regicide. Rupert prevents such an outcome in his timeline but it seems that he was supposed to do this so that no "harm" is done. In its single timeline, the Patrol must ensure that every atrocity happens on schedule.

(1) Anderson, Poul, "Losers' Night" IN Anderson, All One Universe, New York, 1997), pp. 108, 122.

A Midsummer Tempest XIII

The first year the Duke's Playhouse, Lancaster, presented promenade performances in Williamson Park, the Shakespeare play was A Midsummer Night's Dream. For the Promenade tenth anniversary, they again performed the Dream. I preferred the first performance but, on the second occasion, Puck gave a memorable rendition of:

"Up and down, up and down:
"I will lead them up and down:
"I am fear'd in field and town;
"Goblin, lead them up and down." (Act III, Scene II, lines 418-421)

Poul Anderson must have expected readers familiar with the play to hear an echo of Puck when he wrote of Prince Rupert in A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975):

"His fist beat the cannon beside which he stood, up and down, up and down." (p. 145)

In this alternative history, Rupert was not only defeated but also captured by Roundheads at Marston Moor. He escapes with help from Oberon, Titania and a Puritan's ward, Jennifer. The Puritans interrogate Jennifer by sleep deprivation but she later wins one of them over. Again, some prose can be rendered as verse:

" 'And here at last a chance has come for thee.'
" 'To do what thing, my lady?' 'Set me free.' " (p. 154)

Later, she reflects:

" 'Oh, hard it is to use him heartlessly,
" 'And from its grave call forth knight-errantry.' " (p. 156)

With some humour but also with harrowing scenes of Jennifer pinched awake, Anderson vividly displays dreadful Puritan intolerance. When reminded that Protestants are tolerated in a Catholic country, one of Jennifer's captors complains that Catholics are tolerated there as well!

Anderson does not mention this here but John Milton in Paradise Lost describes Catholic monks entering the hereafter and ascending as they believe towards Paradise only to be blown around, and their religious symbols scattered, by whirlwinds in the Paradise of Fools. How can anyone be so certain, first, that there is a hereafter and, secondly, that he and his co-religionists will be well received and their opponents confounded on arrival there? Such unwarranted certainty, serving only to make its believers feel better about themselves, is with us still.

It would be an instructive exercise to design a hereafter where everyone (everyone) learned more than they had on Earth. Milton might receive a short taste of the Paradise of Fools, then be shown that there is more to life, and death, than intolerance and complacency.

St Paul preached a new message of universal salvation that made sense at the time to some Jews and many Gentiles, both master and slave. Hence, its success. "Blood sacrifice" resonated then if not with most of us now. Christianity, ie, Gentile Messianism, provided ruling ideas for three stages of social development: slave-owning, feudal and capitalist. It was endlessly adaptable. Pagan elements absorbed earlier could be jettisoned when appropriate at the Reformation although the ideas remained distinctively Christian. Hence, the intolerance of the Puritans who attributed their business success or failure not to aristocratic privilege but to inscrutable Predestination. If only England 1649-1660 had been a genuinely inclusive and tolerant Republic... 

A Midsummer Tempest V

I missed at least one chapter-ending rhyme in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest (London, 1975):

" 'Let's go inzide the church to talk o' this, that none may zee us and think aught amiss,'...'At best, tha road we tread be dangerous to England an' to Rupert an' to us.' " (p. 37)

With this post, I am probably signing off for the month of August. Family arrivals, departures and a wedding will fill the rest of today. But what a find is A Midsummer Tempest! I have said before that it pays to reread Anderson for his descriptive passages, ideas, arguments that the reader can engage with, cross-references both to his own works and to others' ,eg, Shakespeare's, Kipling's, application of scientific knowledge to the detailed imaging of other worlds and environments etc. But I had not suspected verse or poetry disguised as prose and the need for the reader to work to extract the former from the latter.

If I had lived in seventeenth century England, I would have fought for Parliament against the King (of course). The Puritan and Glorious Revolutions of that century brought Britain from absolute monarchy through a brief republic into the constitutional monarchy that we have today. Thus, we currently live under a Revolutionary Settlement although some people are surprised to hear it. That is the political issue. Religiously, it is a different matter. I would have supported freedom of worship which the Puritans wanted for themselves but not for others. Thus, like Prince Rupert in the novel, I would have opposed Puritan intolerance and iconoclasm. This struggle was eventually won. The Church of England remains established but I am free to attend a Buddhist meditation group and Pagan Moots.