As P. D. James novels go, this isn't in my top ten. The mystery is pretty good, but it becomes a not-altogether-successful mashup of the detective genre and the suspense / thriller. It could be reduced by a third and be all the more compelling for it. It's her tenth novel, and it may be that her editors were reluctant to stand up to such an established novelist.
The editors may also have missed something—though that's not certain. And that brings us to the Shakespeare puzzle at the heart of the novel.
A Taste for Death introduces the character of Inspector Kate Miskin, a promising detective intent on rising through the ranks. She was raised by her grandmother after her mother died. Late in the novel [spoiler alert], we learn that her absent father was a policeman who had a wife and two kids (and who was killed in a car accident in the line of duty some time earlier).
As we learn about Inspector Miskin's determination to succeed, we are presented with a Shakespeare quote as something of an origin story (p. 151):
The problem is that Shakespeare didn't write that.
For ease of reference, here's the text of the "Shakespeare" quote:
What matters it what went before or after,
Now with myself I will begin and end.
When they don't assert that it's a Shakespeare quote, sources on the internet will definitively state that it comes from John Webster's The White Devil, and if they mean that it's a paraphrase of a few lines in that play, they're right. My edition—edited by John Russel Brown, The Revels Plays (Methuen, 1960), gives us this exchange between Vittoria and Flamieno, both fatally wounded by an avenger:
Vittoria
My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,
Is driven I know not whither.
FlamineoFlamieno makes a final speech and then dies as well.
Then cast anchor.
Prosperity doth bewitch men seeming clear,
But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.
We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune’s slaves,
Nay cease to die by dying. Art thou gone?
And thou so near the bottom?—false report
Which says that women vie with the nine Muses
For nine tough durable lives: I do not look
Who went before, nor who shall follow me;
No, at myself I will begin and end:
While we look up to heaven, we confound
Knowledge with knowledge. O I am in a mist!
Vittoria
Oh, happy they that never saw the court,
Nor ever knew great men but by report! [Vittoria dies.]
That solves the puzzle of the quotation's (really, the paraphrase's) origin. But the puzzle of its misattribution to Shakespeare remains.
P. D. James knew her Shakespeare and her Webster quite well. We just saw her careful use of quotations by both authors in her Skull Beneath the Skin (for which, q.v.). Is this a case of Homer nodding (in which case, Homer's editor also nodded)? Or did James misattribute the quote (and also paraphrase it instead of quoting it directly) on purpose? In that case, the ideal editor would have drawn her attention to it and confirmed that the "mistake" is no mistake at all but a purposeful, intentional slip.
The novel introduces the lines as "Two half-remembered lines of Shakespeare" from Inspector Miskin's perspective. That may point toward the intentionality behind the misattribution. They're half-remembered (i.e., paraphrased), and their author is also misremembered.
I'm at a bit of a loss to understand the reason(s) for doing so, though I am much more inclined to give credit to James for knowing her Shakespeare and Webster (and extending that credit to her editor) than to say that she erred.
Perhaps it's a subtle way of undermining the character of Inspector Miskin. If her life philosophy is based on a misattributed misquotation, perhaps that brings her pursuit of her vocation into question as well.
I haven't found any published scholarship on the issue. In Susan Baker's "Comic Material: 'Shakespeare' in the Classic Detective Story" (in Acting Funny: Comic Theory and Practice in Shakespeare's Plays, ed. Francis Teague (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994), 164–179), the passage is treated as if it were Shakespeare—the question of its actual origin doesn't arise. We're just told that "Shakespeare is crucial to Kate's upward mobility" (168).
Let's go back to the other Shakespearean elements in the novel.
One of the murder victims is named Paul Berowne, and the name's connection of Love's Labour's Lost is made clear in the course of the novel itself. Miskin's boyfriend is the one to call our collective attention to it (p. 155):
[Note: Major Spoilers Follow]
Miskin uses this newly-gained information to send a message of distress when she and her grandmother are being held at gunpoint by the murderer. She calls her boyfriend—ostensibly to cancel a dinner engagement for that evening (p. 437):
The murderer does become suspicious, but I'm not sure he has much greater familiarity with Shakespeare than Inspector Miskin (p. 445):
Looking at my bookshelves, it's hard to get in the mindset of "You already have one complete Shakespeare; why would you need an edition of just one of the plays?"
All in all, it's not a terrific novel. Though this final use of Shakespeare is nicely done, I remain confused about the non-Shakespeare non-quote early on.
I'm currently reading (and, in some cases, re-reading) the P. D. James novels, and I may get a better sense of this novel's use of Shakespeare with Kate Miskin's characters as I read on. Stay tuned.
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Bonus Images: The Relevant Speeches (and some additional context) from The White Devil:
Bonus Bonus Image: Footnote to "lions i' th' Tower" from the New Mermaids edition
(slightly more relevant if I'd posted this yesterday . . . Groundhog day):
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