Where Edward III Has Some Folks to Fight

King Edward III by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hey, this was a good read. (No pun intended.) Elizabethan plays can be tough, but this was not that bad, and very entertaining. I liked it. 5 stars.

It's one of those "Did Shakespeare write this?" plays that has more recently been a "How much of this did Shakespeare write?" play. Something like half, maybe. Hard to tell at this point. But in my head, and according to educated critics who have used a lot of methods to analyze the language and style, this is essentially a Shakespeare play. With assistants.

Being a history, the play is pretty episodic. It starts with Edward putting down a rebellion on the Scottish border, where he pressures a beautiful countess to sleep with him until she shames him enough he apologizes. Then, we pass to France, where he is pushing his claim to the throne. There are a couple battles--Crécy and Poitiers--where his son the prince survives and succeeds against great odds a couple times. He takes Calais [historical spoilers!], where he really wants to commit some atrocities but gets talked out of it. The captured French king is brought to him as they enter the city.

I found it fun to read and imagine it would be pretty great to watch. It's too bad it mocks Scottish people in the beginning, because that made it unpopular when James I became king a few years after it was written and first performed.

As history, this has flaws. Events are moved around and historical figures invented. Some of it's true, but it isn't very accurate. And some critics say it isn't up to Shakespeare's standards (for reasons that don't trouble me). But it is a play meant for spectacle, for patriotic fervor, for emotional reveals (like when the prince survives one more tough spot, even though the people already know he survives) and that would make it a high-energy play to see. It's very dramatic.

Seriously--go to school or read a history book for history. Go to the theater for drama. And this is good drama--IMO, always.

Recommended.

Oh--the notes and helps in the front and back of the Melchiori edition from Cambridge are very good. That's a bonus.

View all my reviews

Where Kit Outsmarts Everyone. For Awhile.

A Tip for the Hangman: A Novel by Allison Epstein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a very well written book, with excellent research, a well-developed Elizabethan setting, memorable characters, and great pacing.

Yes, Christopher Marlowe probably was a spy. This is a fictional account of that, but it feels like it could be true. (The author lists in the back the ways she diverged from literal truth. I was not concerned.) It's gritty and tough, but there's also tenderness and genuine human emotion. Kit is a great character, and I loved rooting for him, but he didn't do himself any favors at times... He's super smart, a brilliant writer but also an amazing mind, capable of deciphering nearly unbreakable codes, and learns how to keep his secret life and his public life separate. He's a bit of a hothead, willing to antagonize people who he shouldn't, and I only wish he had been a little wiser. Still, it feels that the outcome (both in real life and in the novel) was in a way inevitable. Once the state sees potential in a spy, there's no way he could be free to just live his life. And no way could he ever be truly safe.

I had never looked at his history before, and I was surprised to see that he was from a working class family, attending Cambridge on a scholarship. That's pretty cool. I wonder if it explains the tone of his plays--though the author attributes that to his experience with religion and some other things. Now I want to reread them, see if I can see the poor man's son in his language.

This novel works as a straightforward historical spy novel, but the prose is special. I seldom notice language, but the writing here--the figurative language, sophisticate musings, and prose at the sentence level--are all first class. I enjoyed it a lot and highly recommend it.

View all my reviews

Where Witgood Tricks Everybody

A Trick to Catch the Old One by Thomas Middleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first Thomas Middleton play I've read, and it's okay. A little up and down. Parts of it are quite entertaining, and it's not too hard to understand (comparatively speaking), but a lot of the action is annoying and hard to get behind, so started off by giving it a 3. However, I'm talking myself into a 4 as I review the story and realize it's pretty good, actually. :)

A young man--Witgood--has been messing around, wasting money gambling and paying for prostitutes, and just generally being irresponsible. His rich uncle (Uncle Lucre) has taken advantage of him when he needed a loan instead of helping him out and has taken control of his property. (Before the play, even.) I'm not sure how he did that, but it's part of the setup. But through the course of the play, Witgood gets his property back, has his debts wiped out, marries a good girl, and foists his prostitute/mistress off on his uncle's worst enemy, another usurer named Hoard. It's all tricks; they make everyone think that the courtesan is actually a rich heiress, and from that point just let all the greedy gold-diggers drive the action.

I was put off by the attitude everyone took toward the poor woman who had been Witgood's mistress. She's clearly a decent person, seems very kind, and yet she's spoken of as if she's monstrous. Witgood, who we are meant to be very sympathetic to, helps her out by setting her up with a husband, but Lucre is a horrible person. It's treated like a great joke on the greedy old man, but I'm imagining the poor girl having to be stuck with him. Witgood, meanwhile, has moved on from her to another girl who he marries, because you don't marry your mistress, right? One of Lucre's friends, invited to his wedding feast, is furious when he recognizes his wife and starts to leave like everyone else. As he's going, he says to Lucre:

"Fie, fie! A man of your repute and name!
You'll feast your friends, but cloy 'em first with shame."

Anyway, I get it. That's the attitude of the time. Can't really blame the author. But their hate toward one of the few sympathetic characters in the play was kinda shocking. (She very carefully never lies to Lucre. She says she has no money or property. He just thinks she's being secretive and doesn't believe her. In the end, it's his greed, not her statements, that makes the scheme work.)

The tricks were good, getting revenge on greedy money guys, getting Witgood out of trouble and setting his mistress up for life (hoping, I suppose, that the rich old guy she tricked into marriage doesn't last long). There are happy endings all around. Pretty solid story, all told.

View all my reviews

Where He Called Dibs On the Princess

The Two Noble Kinsmen: William Shakespeare (Drama, Plays, Comedy) [Annotated] by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Attributed to--and correctly so, as far as I know--Shakespeare and John Fletcher.

I found this pretty entertaining. It's more straightforward than some Shakespeare plays, having just one main plot and a minor secondary plot. Well, sorta two, I guess. This makes it more comprehensible on the first read than many of his plays. Besides, the original story comes from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, so there's a good chance you already kind of know the plot.

Set in Thebes and Athens, if Thebes and Athens were in East Anglia or something, it's the story of a pair or noble cousins who fall in love with the same woman who they just happened to see at a distance at almost the same moment, and it comes between them. There are a lot of hurdles between them and Emilia, as they are stuck in jail and she's the daughter of the king. But yadda yadda yadda they both end up free and, at the command of Athens' king, must do battle, with the loser dying and the winner marrying his daughter. The sweet young woman likes them both and wants nothing to do with a duel, but she has no say.

In many ways, this is a sad story, with many tragic elements. It starts with a war against a cruel king who would not allow widowed queens to bury their husbands, and it ends with a life-and-death battle between good friends. Lots of death and grief and separation. But it ends happily enough, which is a saving grace for me.

I think this would be fun to see. I'm curious about the parts with the jailer's daughter who goes crazy for love of Palamon but is cured by sleeping with her lover playing at being him. This could be poignant and touching or it could be played for laughs; I'm not sure how it would come off.

Supposedly, the easier sections were written by Fletcher, and the parts with denser language were Shakespeare's. I dunno. It all seemed like one thing to me. I liked it fine.

View all my reviews

Where Whoever Wins Last Is King

King Henry VI, Part 3 by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Man, there's a lot of plays about kings named Henry.

At least they're entertaining. This one was. I suspect I'd like it better as a movie than a play (so that you can see all the stuff that Shakespeare has take place offstage, like the fighting) but no matter how you consume it you need a book of who's who. A thousand given names to choose from and yet everybody's either Henry or Edward.

Sheesh.

If this were a novel, I'd say the author should have streamlined the plot. Too much back and forth, up and down. No one would ever believe it. He's on the throne, he's off the throne, he's on the throne, he's back off...

A lot of the message is muddied, I feel, by the randomness of the outcomes. It feels like every moral lesson is contradicted by the next act. Nobody is right; everybody is wrong. Might makes right? No. Power is transitory? Maybe. Treason is punished? Sometimes. But one sure thing: the people suffer no matter what the mighty do. One of my favorite scenes in this is in the third act, when Henry has been deposed and is in disguise in the north of England. A pair of gamekeepers recognize him and go to arrest him. The king wonders about their loyalty, since he had once been king and they had sworn allegiance to him.

King Henry: I was anointed king at nine months old;
my father and my grandfather were kings,
And you were sworn true subjects not me:
And tell me, then, have you not broke your oaths?

First keeper: No; for we were subjects but while you were king.

King Henry: Why, am I dead? Do I not breathe a man?...

First Keeper: We are true subjects to the king, King Edward.

It's clear that the opinion of the people, who they favor and who seems to have true authority over them, matters in the story; it's part of the political calculation that the schemers take into account. But just a part. Other factors can still outweigh their collective power. And individually, the people are nothing. In the end, whoever can get the power is king, and the common folk--powerless nobodies--can only be loyal to the power. That's their only choice. Anything else is too great a risk for them. So, if there's a new king, Hurrah! Long live the new king!

And it looks like the winners get fancy meals. That's what the crown will buy you.

King Edward: And now what rests but that we spend the time
With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows,
Such as befits the pleasure of the court?
Sound drums and trumpets! Farewell sour annoy!
For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.

I'm not sure it's worth all the scheming and fighting in the rain and murdering of old men and kids only to get feasts that you probably could have had as a duke or earl anyway. But that's just me.

I read this without the benefit of the side-by-side retelling you find in No Fear Shakespeare, and I felt the lack of it. But I don't have a test to take or an essay to write, so just reading it for general comprehension is good enough for me. I liked it and I may take another look at it in the future, maybe straighten out a few more of those Edwards and Henrys.

Now on to Richard III.

View all my reviews

Where Grace Unmasks a Ghost

Haunted by Grace Cavendish
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought the series faltered a bit in the first half of the previous book--though it did get better later--and I feared the series had run its course; I thought it would only disappoint from here on, and I half expected this to be a mess. Nope. Great fun. Solid. Good mystery, good use of our favorite characters, good action. The series seems to be going strong at this point.

"Haunted" is a bit like an episode of Scooby Doo, but in a good way. A ghost in the castle? Nice. A generations-old mystery? Perfect. It works. Plus, [spoiler] there's a happy surprise for one of Grace's friends, which I was glad to see.

Recommended. Obviously, if you've read the first seven books in the series, you should read this one too. Very entertaining.

View all my reviews

Where Grace Has to Save a Friend

Feud by Grace Cavendish
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sixth in the series, and I've enjoyed them all.

One of the great pleasures of reading this book and series (in common with the Enola Holmes books) is having a genuine conflict with stakes that give the story interest without raising the temperature so high I have to put it down. That's how this whole series has ended up on my bedstand; it's a pleasure to read around bedtime, when I will enjoy adventure but not agonizing dread.

Well plotted and paced, as always, and internally consistent.

Aimed at younger readers; recommended for just about anyone interested in historical mystery.

View all my reviews

Taming of a Shrew. Not That One.

The Old Taming of a Shrew: Upon Which Shakespeare Founded His Comedy; Reprinted from the Edition of 1594, and Collated with the Subsequent Editions of 1596 and 1607 by Anonymous
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I haven't read Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew yet, but I found this one, which might be based on his or might be the source he worked from or might be connected in some other way, pretty fun and entirely problematic.

The play feels like a rough draft with none of the plot holes worked out, and there are a few complications thrown in for no particular reason, lies told when the truth would serve. Supposedly, it was gonna be impossible to find a man who would marry the notorious shrew, which was an impediment to the father allowing men to court his other daughters, but that was solved about five minutes into the play.

None of it matters, though, as it's just meant to be a bit of fun. Most amusing is the framing device, where a rich man takes a drunk into his house and makes his servants treat him like their lord when he wakes up. The play is performed for his amusement, and when he passes out again they take him back to the street where they found him.

Kinda mean, too, if you think about it.

Of course, the main plot is pretty awful. A guy marries a belligerent woman, and to tame her he takes everything away from her and restricts her food and makes her say the sun is the moon before he lets her do anything, like see her family. She finally gives in and becomes the perfect wife. It looks like lessons for men to be happy, but it's more like lessons on emotional abuse and gaslighting.

Experts don't agree on which came first, this or Shakespeare's similar story, but many agree that it likely was Marlowe who wrote it as a parody of his own plays, as it uses odd lines from Tamburlaine and other works. So, that's kinda cool. I still wonder why the plot is so rough...

As they say on the Elizabethan Drama website, this one is pretty easy to read, so it's not a bad choice for people wanting to sample old plays by writers other than Shakespeare.

View all my reviews

Where Grace Solves Another One

Conspiracy by Grace Cavendish
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Third in the series. Still very cute, well plotted, well researched, and fun.

This is intended for a MG audience, and IMO is nicely tuned to that age group, but the readers aren't condescended to, which is why it works for older readers, too. Obviously, a writer of fiction is allowed to take liberties with facts, and few middle graders would notice if the novel was unrealistic in its depiction of the setting or characters, but I credit the author(s) with doing an excellent job of recreating Queen Elizabeth's court and the people within it. The overall setting is believable, the characters are generally constrained by the norms of their time, and the historical events and context are handled in a way that is both instructive and (thankfully) unobtrusive.

Entertainment was the primary goal of the series, I suspect, not social studies instruction, but historical accuracy and educational value were clearly significant concerns for the author and publishers. (The mention of teacher tools in the back rather confirms this.) And there's a lot to learn here. Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth taught me a lot about the place and time, which makes sense because he was a brilliant scholar, but I'd be a liar if I said I didn't also learn quite a few things about the Earl of Leicester, Kenilworth Castle, and life for people at court from reading this novel. It's all packed in there, just part of the deal.

I also like the main character. Lady Grace make a fine detective ("pursuivant" here) and an entertaining protagonist for the series. She isn't a bumbling goof (a type I never enjoy), but neither is she excessively skilled, and is in the sweet spot to make the mystery work. She can't fight, she doesn't dance well, and other than climbing trees is not any kind of action star. Neither is she some kind of Sherlock, solving mysteries by cigarette ash and footprints. But she's brave enough, resourceful enough, persistent enough, and clever enough to make a fine POV character.

I liked it.

This book and the previous two were written by Patricia Finney (writing as Grace Cavendish, in the same way that the Hardy Boys authors were all called Franklin Dixon), but she didn't do any more. The following titles are written by other authors; I'm hoping they continue the excellence.

Let's find out. :)

View all my reviews

Where the Pirates Are the Good Guys

Betrayal by Grace Cavendish
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second of the Lady Grace mysteries, actually written by Patricia Finney ("writing as Grace Cavendish," as they say). I found it well written and entertaining, even better than the first.

This is a MG book that does an admirable job with creating a realistic and believable story. The setting is nicely realized, with the characters mostly behaving as they would have in that time. The MC has adventures that would be very unlikely for one of Queen Elizabeth's maids of honor, but the action is still plausible enough and the literary devices managed well enough that the plot works. Making the usual allowances for fiction, one can read this without finding fault with the author for taking excessive license with reality.

Put simply--the story seems realistic enough to have happened, and that makes the action that much more fun.

I like the character of Grace (who reminds me of Enola Holmes in a good way) and she carries the story well. The other characters are also well developed, especially for a novel of this length.

So--good stuff. Recommended especially for younger readers, but also for those older readers who enjoy this sort of thing. Like me.

View all my reviews

Where I Tone Down the Raving for a Book I Liked Better than I Let On

The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez by Ann Swinfen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this novel, and it succeeds on many levels. It is fun to read (my main criterion, actually), it deals with themes I care about, it has characters I enjoy knowing, and its well-rendered setting, besides lending the story additional realism, is an engaging source of information.

This is primarily an Elizabethan spy story with a young doctor drawn into the intrigue, which, come on, is good fun. The action is broken up by scenes of Christoval's life and work, which helps to ground the increasingly fantastic spy story. He has his own spoilery secrets which threaten to emerge, adding to the conflict and tension. As a character, Christoval is sympathetic and engaging, with a great backstory: his family is Jewish, from Portugal, forced to hide their religion and flee to England, and he has his own additional secrets. His skill as a doctor, a mathematician, and a musician is part of what makes his story fun--he gets to be awesome sometimes, which I love, watching him save lives and break codes. All within reason, though; He's still a teenager in a dangerous world, not a superhero, and the author does not forget that.

A number of interesting themes emerge through the course of the story. A central one is the place of religion in society. As one of the "hidden Jews," (referred to, uncomfortably, as Marranos, which is acknowledged as a slur but shows up in a casual way a number of times), Christoval is sympathetic to the Catholic conspirators who are forced to hide their religious beliefs in Protestant England. How can a citizen be blamed, he wants to know, for adhering to a religion that was once obligatory? Especially when it passed out of favor, then back in, then back out once more? His ambivalence about bringing such people to justice makes him more believable and sympathetic. Other themes are: wealth disparity (inevitably); the oppression of women; tradition's primacy over new knowledge; and the violence inherent in the system. ;) Happily, these are allowed to surface in a natural way, adding welcome depth to the novel.

The setting is nicely developed with convincing detail. I found it educational, and can only hope and assume the information is accurate. :) How would I know?

I am glad to recommend this novel to other readers. Such quibbles as I have are swamped by my approval, and I can say it was a pleasure to read. I recommend that I go look for sequels.

View all my reviews

Where I Share an Uninformed Opinion on Marlowe's Dr. Faustus

Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, this is kinda cool. Marlowe's Dr. Faustus turns out to be quite readable and entertaining, with a straightforward story and not too many characters, though it helps to have notes to explain the more obscure bits. I like the pdf version available at ElizabethanDrama.org. Tell them I sent you. (They won't care. Don't bother.)

I can see, as I read this play, why it would appeal to an audience of his time. There is a lot of spectacle possible here that would surprise and entertain, a lot of magic and shocking detail. To a modern audience--me, in this case--there's a lack of conflict that makes it feel like a story without a plot. Sure, Faustus has internal conflict, arguing with himself about continuing down the path to hell, but the play is only partly about that; his internal debate is not central to the action. Seeing all the cool sights and pulling up spirits of the dead (like Helen of Troy) is really what the play is about.

IMO--this is more pageant than play, but fun for all that, and remarkable for Marlowe's language. I wanted to read it just for the "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" line. It was fun finding it in its natural habitat. Others might have better reasons.

Anyway, this is surely worth spending an hour or two on, particularly if you are interested in Elizabethan drama. :)

View all my reviews

Upon looking into Marlowe's Tamburlaine

Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 by Christopher Marlowe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My rating is for the play (especially the verse) but mostly for the edition. I'm here to point you to it with my recommendation.

I hunted for an edition of any Marlowe plays organized the way I like to read difficult texts, with notes on the page so that you can get assistance with the language and the obscure references without flipping back and forth between the play and the notes in the back. (My favorite work of this type is Isaac Asimov's annotated Paradise Lost. You can get your own copy today for about $250.) None of the texts that I could find were like this. Finally, I found ElizabethanDrama.org, which had pdf's of all Marlowe's work annotated in just this way, using notes from a variety of properly-cited resources. I found this edition very readable, the notes useful and interesting, and the overall experience a pleasure.

It's true that this is a simple story, in a way. It was a popular play, written to be enjoyed by the average person. The plot is straightforward, though the language is spectacular. Here's a random bit. (I literally just flipped the pages.)

Tamburlaine:
So shall he have his life and all the rest:
But if he stay until the bloody flag
Be once advanced on my vermilion tent,
He dies, and those that kept us out so long,
And when they see us march in black array,
With mournful streamers hanging down their heads,
Were in that city all the world contained,
Not one should 'scape, but perish by our swords.

(Notice the strict adherence to blank verse. Ten-syllable lines as far as the eye can see, with just rare exceptions. Count the syllables! Check the rhythm! Seriously. It's like that all the way through. I'm impressed, anyway.)

Thematically, the play asks many questions, such as the nature of power, the justifications for violence, the morality of empire-building, the cost of pride, and the value of loyalty, along with many others. In terms of plot, though, it's very direct; this really is an action story. In a way, it is the equivalent of a bulldozer plowing through a row of shacks. You know how it's going to go once you've seen the setup, even if you didn't know the basic contours of the historical events. The only question you might have is whether Tamburlaine or anyone in his orbit will ever show any true mercy or humanity. (Spoiler--just barely.)

Part of the pleasure in reading the play is psychological and anthropological--mining it for insights into the author's mind as well as the world in which it was written. For example, we see rulers more concerned with their rights and their power than the survival and well-being their people, and in conjunction with that, we see people who are more angry with their leaders for foolishly opposing Tamburlaine than they are with him for attacking them. It doesn't matter much to the regular people who rules them--they're all bad. (Is this how the people thought? Or how Marlowe thought? Not sure.) The casual brutality of so many characters is shocking, and their selfishness. The only characters really likable are the virgins sent to Tamburlaine to plead for mercy. They were angry and brave and sympathetic, much more than the leaders who sent them out.

Yeah, he killed them. That's how he was. Nobody was terribly surprised.

I found all of that horrifying and interesting. Apparently, it gets worse in part II. We'll see!

Anyway, if you have a mind to read Marlowe (or other Elizabethan dramatists) and like the annotated versions, I recommend ElizabethanDrama.org. You can just read it all on your computer. I prefer to read on paper, and found there are pdf-printing services that can print and ship a couple plays spiral-bound into one book for about $15.


View all my reviews

The One Where He Throws His Cloak Across the Puddle

Kenilworth by Walter Scott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't remember where this book came from. Probably, someone gave it to me. Possibly, I bought it, but so long ago I forgot. It was on the "books that don't fit anywhere else" shelf for years when I handled it again and thought about reading it.

The copy itself is old, well over 100 years, but I can't verify exactly which edition. It's cool, though.

And it is still a good book.

Knowing literally nothing about the novel--setting, characters, plot, nothing--I just opened and read, and then I kept reading. It's quaint, yes, but despite the archaic language, it reads very modern.

This is the story of a man, Tressilian, who loves a beautiful woman, Amy Robsart, the daughter of a country squire. He is hunting for her after she disappears. She has been taken by a powerful man, Earl Leicester, but with her consent, and she marries him in secret. The difficulty is that he keeps it a secret, and keeps her as a prisoner. Leicester, a favorite in Queen Elizabeth's court, could almost marry the queen if he had not been so foolish, and he has ambitions, while the man who loves the woman is a simple, good, and honest man.

There are a number of interesting and fun characters, including Sir Walter Raleigh, who performs his cloak-across-the-puddle act in the novel, and I finally understand what that might have looked like. Raleigh is a fun character, though minor, and his friend Blount, an honest soldier trying to play courtier with embarrassing consequences, deserves his own novel. The commoner Wayland Smith, a man of limitless wit and resources, feels like another protagonist, and the prankster referred to as Flibbertigibbet is like a force of nature whose playful sleight of hand has dire results. The antagonists, including a quick-thinking drunk, an alchemist, and Leicester's brilliant but amoral right-hand man, round out a full cast of characters.

A modern reader can hardly avoid noticing the lack of female characters and the condescension toward women. Queen Elizabeth holds her own--despite frequent asides by the narrator and actual character dialogue referring to female weaknesses and rather unattractive strengths--and Amy Robsart is a strong character in both senses, but that mostly covers it. The other women are not even secondary characters. You expect little more from a 19th Century novel set in the 16th Century, but it disappoints nonetheless. (Ivanhoe, which I read several years ago, has a similar problem, as I suspect most of the Waverly novels do. In addition, it has an odd, mixed tone toward its Jewish characters that mars an otherwise very entertaining novel. Old dead white guys, right?)

Still, the energy and inventiveness of the author is impressive, the plot brisk, and the entertainment undeniable. I liked it, and I recommend it.

View all my reviews