did he who made the lamb make thee?

Spike: Everyone's talking to me. No one's talking to each other.... Someone isn't here. Button, button... who's got the button? My money's on... the witch.

~ Buffy the Vampire Slayer ~ "Same Time, Same Place" ~

At Matt and Larissa's wedding, Steve quoted Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - "Button, button, who's got the button?" - and Claire and I both assumed that he was quoting Buffy. Which, for the first time, made me curious about Spike's comment in season 7 of Buffy. The comment itself refers to an old children's game where a button was secretly given to one of a circle of children and either one child who was 'in' or the whole group would try and guess which of their number held the button. Not only was it mentioned (rather inanely) in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and by Spike in Buffy, but it is suggested to Alice as a pastime in Disney's animated film of Alice in Wonderland and is played by characters in the novel Go Ask Alice (a reference to Jefferson Airplane's song 'White Rabbit'), using an LSD tab in a can of soft drink as the button.

The one that particularly interested me, for obvious reasons, is the reference to it in Robert Frost's 'The Witch of Coos':

Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits
She could call up to pass a winter evening,
But won't, should be burned at the stake or something.
Summoning spirits isn't 'Button, button,
Who's got the button,' I would have them know.

Primarily the Frost quote interests me because it is also referencing a topic peculiarly appropriate to the Buffy reference, with Willow's return and the potential evil that she carries within her as explored throughout the rest of the season. But I don't know that Jane Espenson is especially referencing it so it remains, for me at least, a curiosity.

Of course, the obvious interpretation of Spike's comment is the puzzle of who's causing that disjointed reality that keeps Willow from seeing her friends and vice versa. But it also speaks to Spike's mentality at the time: he is, to some extent, become William the Bloody once again. The game is thought to have Victorian origins and so is certainly something William might have played as a child and can be read as indicating that the return of his soul conferrs on him some level of innocence (in the sense Blake uses it, as opposed by experience rather than corruption). Unlike Angel who was cursed with a soul and was a good man before he became a vampire, William was a good man and chose the return of his soul: for him it is not a burden to be born but a renewed freedom. While he has done monstrous things, there is always something sentimental and human in Spike's make-up and the return of his soul is a very different experience for him than it was for Angel. Spike's response to the guilt he feels is stronger than Angel's - in his collapse into madness - because he was innocent as William. But he also comes to terms with what he has done much faster for the same reason: William was innocent and it is the soulless monster who performed those acts. While Spike still carries both some of that burden of guilt with him and all of the things preformed by the monster have shaped him into the man he is, that guilt is never his motivation as it is Angel's: Spike's motivation for becoming a champion is love, not a desire to achieve the impossible (as Angel often acknowledges it is) in redeeming his past wrongs.

But I digress. The reference to a child's game can be seen as representative of William's innocence and the extent to which Spike has reclaimed that state in the return of his soul. At the same time, his madness has also returned him to a childlike state: his reactions to both his memories and the events around him are those of a child, not an adult.