Fairy Tale Failure

Shakespeare's Hamlet is one of my favourite plays. There is a line given by the mad Ophelia where she says, "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord! we know what we are, but know not what we may be" (4.5.46-48). The line has often puzzled me, but I've put it down to some story that the Elizabethans would know.

But after browsing the 398.2 section of the juvenile literature area in the library, I found the story. When I opened to the the table of contents of British Folk Tales by Kevin Crossley-Holland, there on page 331 was "The Baker's Daughter". One of the "good people" (I assume this means a fairy) masquerades as a beggar woman and goes to a baker's shop who is a known miser. His daughter is even worse. She sneers at the poor and is a sycophant to the rich. Three times the disguised woman begs for just a small piece of dough, and each time the daughter puts a smaller and smaller crumb of dough in the oven. But the smaller the crumb is the bigger the loaf becomes as it bakes in the oven. The daughter refuses each time to give the large loaf to the woman. The third and last time this happens, the daughter is so dumb-founded that all she can say is "who... who..." So the woman says that "whoo-whoo" is all the girl will ever say again and turns her into an owl as punishment for her treatment of the poor.

What this story is doing in the middle of Hamlet I haven't fully figured out yet, but I have some ideas. I think one day I'll have to write a paper exploring it further.