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Product Description
Product Description
For the first time in 400 years, an author has dared to take on the voice of the world's most famous playwright. William Shakespeare is on his deathbed, where he receives his lawyer to set out his final will and testament. As he answers his questions the Bard begins to recall his life, and over 448 pages of tumultuous, passionate and glorious writing the true life of an extraordinary man emerges. This is Shakespeare as we have never known him: angry, emotional, honest, reflective, joyous, despairing - the Bard will never be looked at the same way again.
About the Author
Christopher Rush is the author of Hellfire and Herring, To Travel Hopefully, Venus Peter and other works.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, though flawed,
By Anonymous (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Will (Paperback)
This book offers an extraordinary mix. Rush plunges at every available opportunity into filth, decay and death - as if these were the only smells of Elizabethan England. Perhaps he is right? But on the other hand, Rush is a great word-spinner: intoxicating evocations of Stratford woodland and meadow, and rare flashes of true poetry elsewhere.
Rush casts a clever eye on the political, social and religious aspects of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, investing with freshness the familiar episodes and documents of Shakespeare's life. The prose is larded with quotes from Shakespeare and others), all done with a purpose. The whole camaraderie of the Globe Theatre is beautifully etched, with wondrous detail on their co-ownership of the Globe and their bequests to each other. Also the Christopher Marlowe episode and the accession of James I. Teeth-gnashingly, women don't seem to have minds of their own in the book. Anne Hathaway is presented as Shakespeare's first lust; Shakespeare has a fictional affair with Jacqueline Vautrollier; and his wretched encounters with Emilia Bassano (the "Dark Lady") are best forgotten. The fictional Alison shows her gratitude for Shakespeare's gift of cash by partially stripping for him. It's an unlikely scenario. Even the Bard is astonished. Of the last plays, we learn: "The girl-heroines are re-inventions of Hamnet [Shakespeare's dead son], of Edmund [Shakespeare's dead brother]. Over and over your author is asking a dead boy to forgive him for letting him die." So that's it, then. The girls are actually boys. I found this a perplexing read. And yet, for its originality and poetry, its notable research and illumination, I recommend it.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A mental block,
By
This review is from: Will (Paperback)
Try as I might I cannot get by head around this book. I have only read the first 50 pages and I am struggling. One minute the author is desperate to let us know that he knows Shakespeare's history, he shares the facts with us as Will, the bard's life-story in character. Conceivable? Maybe. However, it comes across as patronising and stilted, but then without warning Rush's vast creative skills and artistic license kick in, passed off as William's memories and ramblings. We are in the depths of the writer trying to show us the gamut of his talent. I feel as though I am reading about him and not Will. Sorry. I will (excuse the term) endeavour to see this through in the hope of enjoying the book for what it is. Sadly, I have read too many factual books that try to piece together Shakespeare's life and find this a little too presumptuous. The book is very well written and inevitably deserves it's accolades. Regretfully, I cannot afford it any.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A rather magnificent failure,
By
This review is from: Will (Paperback)
Goodness, this is a fascinating monster of a book. Which doesn't quite succeed, in my opinion. Still, it's a brave effort and Rush certainly needs points for courage. It's supposed to be about Shakespeare's retelling of his life story on his deathbed to his lawyer. A wonderful premise for sure, and the writing is very poetic on occasion. But maybe that premise is where the trouble starts. First off, there's no real plot, as such. It's simply one man telling another about his life, and you're never allowed to forget that fact. This means that the action and emotion is unfortunately very distanced from the reader and you're told everything rather than being directly shown it through the text. It would have been much better if you'd had a prologue setting up the scene and an epilogue drawing it back again, with the rest of the book being allowed to sing unaccompanied.
In a strange way also, it's slightly easier to read if you try to forget it's supposed to be a novel at all, and take it as a long - very long! - prose poem. Slightly easier anyway. It would definitely be interesting to see what Rush's poetry is like. I must also admit that the man Shakespeare as portrayed here rapidly became very wearisome and my sympathies were for those poor unfortunates he rubbed up against, such as Anne Hathaway and the long-suffering lawyer (just let the poor man eat his pie without carping on about it, for goodness sake!). So, as I imagine the real Shakespeare must have been quite fascinating, I suppose in making me dislike him, Rush must at least be performing some kind of literary miracle. In a negative way. That said, the historical details are very vibrant and obviously well researched. Perhaps it would be better rewritten as a non-fiction study of the age? And it certainly needs an editor who's not afraid to cut - it outstays its welcome hugely in terms of length. So, a brave attempt at something different by an author who can obviously write (but needs much much tighter control), but in the end a magnificent failure, I fear.
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