Terry Pratchett got me to read Shakespeare! The premise of this book is like a remix of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so I had to read it. The first since school, I think. Just like the play, there is a couple just before their wedding, a band of rustic amateur actors, and the King of Queen of the fairies. However, in this case, the Queen, rather than being the playful queen of faerie, is the evil queen of the elves. The rustic actors are the conduit through which evil comes, and Verence and Magrat are not even sure about being married.
Elves, the ‘Lords and Ladies’ of the title are depicted as evil, with no regard for humans who they use for sport. They have been kept out of the Discworld by a circle of iron impregnated stones whose function has been long forgotten. It is a time of year when two parallel universes come close together, and the queen uses the thoughts of other possibilities, regrets and alternative futures in people’s lives, to persuade them to allow the elves to come through. Their evil nature has been long forgotten.
Granny Weatherwax sees the danger, but even she isn’t immune to possibilities of having been married to Ridcully, the Arch Chancellor of the Unseen University, as they had been sweethearts in their youth. Once the elves break through in the midst, and through the medium, of the play performed in honour of the wedding, chaos reigns. Magrat who finds inspiration from a fictional queen to stand up to the Queen. Nanny Ogg, together with her dwarf admirer, Casanunder, go under the Long Man to find the King, who agrees to stop what’s going on. It ends with the marriage of Verence and Magrat, and the restoration of the stone circle. Unlike the play, it is better that this is not just thought of as a dream.
The conversion of elves into something evil is particularly striking, as are the ideas of parallel worlds where all the things that might have happened have happened/ However, I’m not sure about the ending – perhaps it is just as the play in which the King and Queen agree that they’ve been a bit naughty playing with people’s lives and they should stop, but it would seem the Queen was nastier than that.
