THE READING RHEUM: THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT (1856)

In my never-ending quest to search out examples of combative narratives that stand as ancestors to the superhero idiom, I re-read THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT in its 1970 edition as a Ballantine paperback (a popularization only possible after the Tolkien boom made fantasy-novels hot items).

After the novel was published to absolutely no acclaim in 1856, its author George Meredith never did another fantasy, but did find some fame in his day with naturalistic romances. I don't know that he would have been a particularly great fantasy-author had SHAGPAT succeeded. The novel suggests that Meredith had an abiding love for the wild fantasy-content of THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, as well as for the comic attitude of many of the stories.

The name "Shagpat" is pure faux-Arabian, being the name of a corrupt ruler who hasn't had his hair or beard shaved in many a moon, so that he bears a "shaggy pate." Unknown even to Shagpat himself, he owes his temporal power to a single hair, called the Invincible, which got transplanted onto his scalp in a very involved fashion. It seems a sorceress, one Noorna, was seeking to destroy the hair in order to overthrow its original owner, a tyrannical genie who wants Noorna to marry him. After she fails to destroy the Invincible, she decides that the only way to eliminate the genie's power for all time is to give Shagpat a shave-- and for that, she needs a barber.

The viewpoint character is just such a barber, with the equally faux name of Shibli Bagarag, and he alone can wield the mystic "Sword of Aklis" to cut down the Invincible. To say the least, a fantasy about a barber advertises his status as a comedy, but there are a number of combative elements in the story, not least assorted magical battles between Noorna and her nemesis, the witch Goorelka. This may be the aspect closest to the original Arabian Nights, since there are a number of stories in which sorceresses of great powers play major roles.

Like the Oriental stories that inspired the novel, SHAGPAT wanders from wonder to wonder, and doesn't have a lot of coherence overall. Still, it does stand as one of the earliest novels of combative fantasy since the days of the courtly romances, and though it didn't have any influence on the evolution of the superhero idiom, SHAGPAT does make an interesting footnote.