April 2, 2006

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  Sunday, A Day of Rest

  Yes, it was a napping Sunday for me.  It helped to take the edge of my miserable personality of late, but I’m still not myself.  Sigh.  When will I ever be me again?  (That line seems to be a perfect segue for breaking into a Broadway musical-type song.)

  Tonight I finished grading a set of timed essays and went to Lifelines (small group study) which was not at our house this week.  I served in the nursery for church, and I wore my new skirt and sweater from Dress Barn which I just got in my shopping spree yesterday.  It was fun to go out all by myself and try on clothes.  I even went to Barnes and Noble where I planned to pick up The Scarlet Pimpernel (which I did). While I was scanning the shelf for “Orczy,” I noticed the book right next to Pimpernel–The Man who Loved Jane Austen, a modern-day mystery proposing that Darcy was a real guy!   That seemed right up my alley, so I bought it as well. I’ll give you a review once I’ve read it.

  This week is full of events. Actually, all of April seems a bit over-the-top with things to do.  Ah, it will be over before I know it, and it will be mid-May and we will be done with school.  I’m just excited about the mild weather, a fine event in April.  That event could happen every day and I would not be distressed.

  I finished Chasing Shakespeares, and I hadn’t intended to review it due to some objectionable content, but I will since I said in that I was reading it in an earlier post.

  The story begins with Joe Roper, a good ol’ boy Vermonter turned graduate student in Shakespeare, cataloging a collection of books, letters, and “stuff”–most of which are forgeries.  He discovers one letter, supposedly written by Shakespeare himself, which indicates that William Shakespeare was not really the author of all of the plays, poems, and sonnets.

  (As a side note, the controversy of whether or not William Shakespeare of Stratford could have had the knowledge and background to write all those plays has raged for years. The most likely candidate pushed forward as an alternate author is Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. Hence, the pluralization of “Shakespeare” in the title–more than one Shakespeare author has been proposed.)

  Joe soon meets up with Posy Gould, a wealthy, flashy grad student who is studying Robert Cecil (contemporary of Shakespeare, not a writer). She finds out about the letter, and the two of them fly to England to have the letter authenticated. 

  While there, Posy tells Joe of her theories of the authorship question, and both of them do a bunch of research on de Vere and other writers of the time.  They tour around England a bit, bicker with her movie producer father, and…other things.

  I won’t give away any of the exciting bits, but I will give you a general assessment.  If you’ve ever been interested in the Shakespeare authorship question, this book lays out the de Vere case pretty well. It also tosses about a lot of Elizabethan names, so it’s easy to get lost with just who is whom.  Also, Joe swears a great deal.  For a graduate student in English, he certainly has a limited selection of interjections and adjectives.

  But, if you don’t mind a lot of swearing in your books and really want to know more about the case against Shakespeare, you would find this book worth reading.  It was compared to AS Byatt’s Possession, but it wasn’t nearly as good. (And I didn’t think Possession was a real page-turner.)

  • 10:06 pm
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