Book Note: Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)

MacDonald, Ann-Marie. Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). New York: Grove, 1990.

---

Careful readers may have noticed that I'm catching up on reading and posting about Shakespeare-related books. I have a few more to do, but then I'll put the film back in Bardfilm.

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is clever, amusing, and thoughtful. Although I Hate Hamlet (for which, q.v.) is still my favorite modern Shakespeare-related play—well, I should remember that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is also my favorite—this one is right up there.

The plot involves a junior professor of Shakespeare at a university. While working on her project, she falls into her wastepaper basket and ends up in the plot of Othello, just as Iago is convincing Othello of Desdemona's perfidy. Without thinking, she tells Othello and Iago is a liar and pulls the handkerchief from Iago's back pocket to prove it. Othello is overjoyed, but Iago is demoted and starts to plot a new revenge—this time, on this scholar from the future who has spoiled his plot.

The professor then ends up in Romeo and Juliet, dressed as a boy. A whole host of Shakesperaean mistaken identity / falling-in-love-with-the-wrong-person activity takes place—and that's where to describe more of the plot would be to spoil it.

---

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

Book Note: Interred with their Bones

Carrell, Jennifer Lee. Interred with their Bones. [a.k.a. The Shakespeare Secret.] New York: Plume, 2008. 

---

This is an action-adventure novel involving a search for the manuscript of Shakespeare's lost play Cardenio. And it's not too bad. The story is, for the most part, compelling, and the characters are enjoyable. There are places where the novel becomes tedious or even derivative (in some ways, it seems like a Shakespearean Da Vinci Code), but I struggled through them to find out what was going to happen next.

The pattern of the novel was one somewhat tedious element of the novel. Sections of rushing off to a new place in a maniacal worldwide treasure hunt alternate with long stretches of exposition.  Oh, and the occasional murder—always in the manner of a death from a Shakespeare play.

Elements of the authorship of Shakespeare's works form a part of this novel, but, unlike Chasing Shakespeares (for which, q.v.), Interred with their Bones doesn't become propagandistic, and that keeps those sections from becoming too tedious. The author says that she is agnostic on the authorship issue (the novel itself raises the interesting question of why religious terms like "heretic" or "orthodox" are employed by debaters of the notion), but she tends to lean toward William Stanley, sixth earl of Derby.

The novel is clever in its presentation of the authorship camps. For much of the book, we're not sure if the attacks on the protagonist are being put together by a consortium of Stratfordians who are worried that the discovery of Cardenio will prove that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him or by a cabal of Oxfordians or the like who are worried that it will prove that Shakespeare did. The plans of the opposition are so carefully-laid that, as I read the book, I thought that it couldn't be the Stratfordians—we can't even agree on whether Q2 or F of Hamlet has greater authority!

In short, the novel is not bad. It even has a passage alluding to the exploded notion that Shakespeare had a hand in translating Psalm 46.

---

Links: The Author's Web Site.

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

Book Note: Essential Shakespeare: The Arden Guide to Text and Interpretation

Bickley, Pamela, and Jenny Stevens. Essential Shakespeare: The Arden Guide to Text and Interpretation. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

---

This book would be a most excellent text and one that I might consider using in my upper-level Shakespeare course if it had been copyedited—or at least proofread.

The content of the book is quite marvelous, but the presentation leaves a great deal to be desired. The numerous typographical errors are incredibly distracting, particularly when the text of a Shakespeare play is being quoted. Please note that these aren't variant texts or variant spellings—they're typos, plain and simple. Many of them are the type of typo that results from using an OCR scan of a text without carefully proofreading it. But there are errors in the text of the book as well as in the material quoted in the text. I expect far more from a volume bearing the name of The Arden Shakespeare.

If you can get past the typographical errors, the book has much to recommend it. Fourteen plays are addressed, and each section provides an admirable sampling of food for thought. The section on Measure for Measure, for example, offers a wide range of ideas on the play, some of which I may be able to incorporate into my class the next time I teach the play.

Although written for students studying Shakespeare for the first time on a college level (and, therefore, both comprehensible and light-hearted), the volume does not condescend to its readers. Rather, it takes them a fair way on the road to greater depth of thought about Shakespeare's plays. For that, it's quite valuable (though I hope a second edition—one free from typos—will be forthcoming).

---

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

Book Note: Secrets of Shakespeare's Grave

Hicks, Deron R. Secrets of Shakespeare's Grave. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers, 2012.

---

When I first spotted this book in the bookstore, I thought it might be another young adult book debunking Shakespeare's authorship of the works attributed to Shakespeare.

So far (I've only read the first of the books in a series of at least two books), it's been exactly the opposite, though I don't want to tell you too much for fear of spoiling it for you.

The plot involves a brother and a sister who need to do what they can to save the family publishing business from being taken over by a disreputable relative.

More than that I'm not at liberty to reveal. But I will tell you that I enjoyed the book very much. It is filled with adventure—and not of the corny, tacky variety. It also involves intriguing trips to New York, London, and Stratford-upon-Avon to track down clues to the family treasure.  Read it and enjoy!

Note: The book's plot involves what I take to be a misreading of the poem on Shakespeare's Monument in Stratford. The line in question reads ". . . Si[t]h all that he hath writt / Leaves living art, but page, to serve his witt." The book considers the word "page" here to mean a piece of paper. Given the context, however, I take "page" to mean a servant. It's a minor point, but I thought I should mention it.

---

Click below to purchase the books from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

Book Note: Stage Fright on a Summer Night

Osborne, Mary Pope. Stage Fright on a Summer Night. Illus. Sal Murdocca. New York: Random House, 2002.

---

They always want to put Queen Elizabeth I in the Globe Theatre, nearly every single time.

I've read a few books in the Magic Tree House series from time to time. This one is, I'm afraid, not the very best of the genre. There's not much of a plot or much of a conflict to overcome. The structure of the series becomes a thinly-veiled pretense for journeying to Elizabethan England. But it only took about fifteen minutes to read, so I don't feel that put out.

Once there, our two protagonists are exposed to the usual seamier side of the era—the stench, the bear baiting, et cetera—before they meet a man named Will who is putting on a play called A Midsummer Night's Dream. He needs two actors to play fairies, and he snatches up the protagonists for the roles. They like this guy named Will all right, and they play their parts well.

They journey back to their own place and time, and they find this note. I'm including the full spread that includes their discovery, as it may be the most interesting part:

It's at that point that they realize that the Will they met was the William Shakespeare they they've heard of somewhere before. Not only that, but they have his signature—and a line of writing in his own hand! Naturally, they decide to leave it in the treehouse.

Since the book itself doesn't allow for much interesting speculation, I'm providing just a smidgen of my own.  Perhaps Morgan has sent these uninformed children back in time to get a document worth billions of dollars, probably to fund her malicious plot to take over the world.

---

Click below to purchase the book from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).