What an unconventional way to start a blog about Shakespeare. Of course, this is not a new blog, it is the one I was using for my year with Dickens...but well, Dickens's year has come and gone and I thought it would be less trouble to add to it. And after a year with Will, I might spend a year with Virginia, then a year with Tolstoy (it would probably take me a whole year to finish War and Peace after all) and then, who knows...A Year With David Foster Wallace? Or would that be pandering?
Anyway, since I am starting this blog because Anna gave me a book about Anne Shakespeare and some bardic stationery to write letters with, I thought it would be good to start this book like that. I mean, I don't have to stick to the cannon right? Only his writings? Forsooth!
I can play around, write about what has been written around him. And this book, well it was written by Arliss Ryan and although it is complete fiction, a sort of "what if", it is intriguing nonetheless. Here Anne claims co-authorship for some of, if not all his plays. I don't know. I haven't read that far yet. I'm at the part where she has run away to London to join Will, who abandoned her and his three children (yes, how come everyone seems to gloss over this fact when talking about the great bard? Why is it taken as a matter of course that he should abandon his wife because she was eight years older than him?)
Anyway, the tone is gently mocking. She does not see the great bard everyone sees. See them with their trousers off, they're never quite as grand.... She sees a petulant boy to begin with, intent on establishing his own importance, and then, someone who runs away to join a troupe of players in London, leaving his wife and children with his parents, never sending home any money. And when she runs away to London to find him and join him, she sees him as a person who cannot act to save his life... a poor player who has to settle for bit parts because he does not have the emotional depth for anything better...but who is so nice that the other players are careful to tiptoe around his feelings about it. And then, she sees him as the person she collaborates with to write sonnets and then plays. They get their first big break when Will is asked to repair Henry 6 which has been mauled and bandied about by the other playwrights, a mishmash of so many pens which have quite spoilt the broth.
I haven't read that far in but already, there is a tenderness developing between Anne and Kit Marlowe. Marlowe is handsome, he is young, he is on top of the world, and he is a genius. And Will, alas, Will is not quite there yet. I'll keep you posted as I go along.
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