It is wonderful that Oberon has been rehomed in the magical garden at Arundel Castle, commemorating the 14th Earl, Thomas Howard, a collector of art and restorer of the Norfolk family fortunes.
Oberon is also much travelled, journeying around Europe for some centuries, appearing in poetry, masques, stories and opera. His fame was spread by the French medieval poem Huon de Bordeaux, where he uses his magic to help the hero complete an impossible task.
A translation of this poem by John Bouchier (Lord Berners) was the inspiration for the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was first performed around 1595–96. In Shakespeare’s English woodland Oberon causes much confusion for the human lovers and casts a spell on his wife Titania, making her fall for the peasant Bottom, now transformed by an ass’s head. Though he restores order in the final act, Oberon remains a mysterious and unpredictable character.
In Ben Jonson’s masque Oberon, the Faery Prince, (first performed on 1 January 1611, in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace) the Prince of Wales Henry Frederick, took the title role. Fairy and human princes are synthesised, but King James 1 is the subject being honoured. While Oberon is celebrated by the god Silenus and his satyrs whose songs declare he ‘doth fill with grace, Every season, ev'ry place; Beauty dwells, but in his Face’ his climactic appearance in the masque ‘proclaims homage to the British Court’ and the sovereignty of the king.
Melt Earth to Sea, Sea flow to Air,
And Air flie into Fire,
Whil'st we in Tunes, to Arthur's Chair
Bear Oberon's desire;
Than which there nothing can be higher,
Save JAMES, to whom it flies:
The costumes and sets in the Masque were designed by Inigo Jones and the Temple of Oberon in the Earl’s Garden reinvents his creation for Johnson’s masque. Set at the top of a ‘mountain’, between two obelisks, and amid a landscape of boulders and tree ferns, nothing is as it seems and magic is everywhere. The masonry is green oak. The Temple is a grotto lined with mosaic and shells. A gold crown spins in mid-air, mysteriously suspended over a stalagmite fountain. The white water sings and dances as it flows into the ground, seeming both elemental and wraith-like. Other features of the garden are equally enchanting, with gateways and pavilions also based on designs by Inigo Jones, for an earlier Earl’s garden at the long vanished Arundel House, by the River Thames (where Temple station now stands).
Designed by Isobel and Julian Bannerman and intended as ‘an evocation of a Jacobean garden, not a re-creation’ it seems a fitting home for the Fairy Prince and his kin. It is playful, mischievous and enchanting with scented roses, organic vegetable garden and huge red apples hanging temptingly low on the espaliered trees. It is too reminiscent of other magical gardens, like the one at La Bête’s chateau, to steal one. Anyone foolhardy enough to do so might discover the darker side of Oberon, the Nibelungen Alberich who steals the Rhine maidens’ gold features in Wagner’s Ring Cycle.