ABSTRACT
Embedded in one of the many short narratives that make up the seventy-five issues of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman comic book series (1989–1996), which features a family of philosophical, allegorical gods (the Endless) dominated by Morpheus (god of dreams), also known as Dream, Shakespeare makes a brief but important appearance. The story “Men of Good Fortune” (The Sandman 13, collected in The Doll’s House, 1990) explores the slow-developing acquaintance between Dream and a long-lived human named Robert (“Hob”) Gadling, who is granted immortality by Dream’s sister Death in 1389. We know this date because Chaucer and a friend named Edmund are hanging out in the tavern arguing over the value of vernacular literature in the background – Edmund compares Chaucer unfavorably to Langland (13.3.2). 1 The lord of dreams agrees to meet with Hob at the same tavern once every century, and the story progresses through the ages, finally ending in the 1980s with the friendship fully acknowledged and established.
