The Bad Sleep Well: Kurosawa's Masterful Derivative of Hamlet

The Bad Sleep Well [Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru]. Dir. Akira Kurosawa. Perf. Toshirô Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Kyôko Kagawa, and Tatsuya Mihashi. 1960. DVD. Criterion, 2006.

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One of my favorite Hamlet derivatives is Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well.  Even though Throne of Blood (for which, q.v.) gets most of the Kurosawa / Shakespeare press—and rightfully so, as it is utterly superb—The Bad Sleep Well is incredible.

The film's opening is crafted in such a way as to interest its viewers—and to confuse those who have been told that this is a Hamlet derivative. There's no ghost—no watchman on the battlements—not even an announcement about a wedding following so hard upon a funeral.

We do get a wedding, but it's not what those looking for Hamlet connections expects. Instead it's a wedding of some high-ups in the Japanese business world. The wedding takes place in one large room with a group of journalists—somehow smelling out a scandal—cordoned off in a separate, adjoined room.

After watching further, we learn that the film's plot involves a Hamlet-like character named Nishi who marries Yoshiko, the daughter of a corrupt official, as part of a secret plan to bring that official and the entire company to justice for its corruption and its role in his father’s suicide.  Yoshiko and her brother Tatsuo are similar to Ophelia and Laertes.

We open, in other words, with the marriage of the analogues for Hamlet and Ophelia.

Neither Nishi nor Yoshiko speak during the first scene, which lasts nearly twenty minutes; however, there’s enough talk about them to excuse their silence.  During the preliminaries, Tatsuo is twice described as Nishi’s friend and once as Iwabuchi’s son before he is described as Yoshiko’s sister.  When Yoshiko enters, limping, a close-up reveals that one of her legs is substantially shorter than the other.  She stumbles while ascending the steps, and Tatsuo, rather than Nishi, helps her up and escorts her to the banquet.  Rumors fly among the journalists that Nishi is only marrying Yoshiko to advance his position in the company, but Tatsuo, when he gets the chance to make a speech, passionately defends Nishi—adding this as his conclusion:  “Listen, Nishi.  If you make my sister unhappy, I swear I’ll kill you.”

The toast is shocking to the business-minded audience—but not nearly as shocking as the arrival of a second wedding cake.

I'd love to give you the entirety of the first scene, but that is too much. Here, instead, are the last seven minutes or so of the opening scene. Pay particular attention to the different levels of viewers here—especially in one remarkable shot where we, as the camera, look over the shoulder of the bride and groom into the faces of the businessmen and then, beyond them, through the entire room to the group of journalists in the adjoining room, intensely watching for any sign of scandal:

I imagine it will be hard for most of you not to track the film down at your earliest opportunity to see how the rest of it plays out. The cake with the rose marking the window from which the analogue of Hamet's father supposedly jumped becomes something of the play-within-the-play in compressed form.

And look at the framing of this shot—it's remarkable!

When you watch the rest of the film, you'll find much more to think about, and all of it will set you scrambling back to the text of Hamlet with new and intriguing perspectives on the plot and the characters.

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Book Note: Station Eleven

Mandel, Emily St. John. Station Eleven. New York: Vintage, 2015.

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I read this book twice in quick succession: the first time because the narrative was enormously compelling and the second time to be certain that the depth of character and theme was really as profound as I thought it was the first time. And it certainly was.

Please don't run away screaming when I start to tell you about the plot. It's a post-apocalyp—

Hey! Wait! Come back! I promise it's not like that!

When I heard that this novel was a post-apocalyptic narrative, I was skeptical. The Hunger Games and Divergent and the rest have soured me to the genre. But this is a masterpiece that uses the idea of a post-apocalyptic world to transcend the genre completely.

I also heard that there was a Shakespeare connection; that pushed me heavily toward reading it.

The novel opens with an actor putting on King Lear—and dying from a heart attack in the middle of Act IV, scene vi.

That night, a devastating pandemic (the Georgia flu) arrives in America. It sweeps across America and around the world, killing nearly everyone who is exposed to it.

The novel then explores what takes place twenty years later—but without leaving the time just before and just after the Georgia flu unexplored. Indeed, that's what I found so masterful and so genre-breaking about this novel: what happens twenty years after and what happens two weeks before the breakout are explored nearly equally in order to make sense out of the breakout, civilization (and its downfall), and the human condition.

In the section set twenty years after the Georgia flu, we mostly follow the experiences of The Traveling Symphony—a group of actors and musicians who have come together in the wake of the collapse of civilization:

The Symphony performed music—classical, jazz, orchestral arrangements of pre-collapse pop songs—and Shakespeare. They'd performed more modern plays sometimes in the first few years, but what was startling, what no one would have anticipated, was that audiences seemed to prefer Shakespeare to their other theatrical offerings.

"People want what was best about the world," Dieter said. (37-38)

The Traveling Symphony has, as a sort of motto, Survival is insufficient, which, one of the characters says, "would be way more profound if we hadn't lifted it from Star Trek" (119). The motto implies that there's more to life than mere survival—and the novel explores that theme in all its intricacies and mysteries.

In that (and in the use of Shakespeare), it's a bit like Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear (for which, q.v.), but without Woody Allen as the Fool and without the off-putting Avant-garde segments.

I'm providing two things to inspire you to read this novel. First, the opening three pages (click to enlarge):

Second, here's a list from early in the novel of what's been lost with the fall of civilization. I found it moving and entirely fitting with the way the novel develops its themes:

I found the novel to be compelling on a number of levels, and I highly recommend it—and (unusually) not just for the Shakespeare.

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Bonus Image!  A screenshot of the quote from Star Trek: Voyager:

Shakespeare: The Planet

Card, Orson Scott. Ender in Exile. New York: Tor Science Fiction, 2009.

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With a small kernel of a short story called "Ender's Game," Orson Scott Card developed a intricately-detailed universe spanning centuries both prior to and long after the events depicted in the novel Ender's Game. Among the dozen or twenty novels in the Enderverse is Ender in Exile, set between the first and second novels in the Ender series.

Without giving away too much, the novel tells the story of Ender's journey to the colonized planet of which he is to become the governor. On the journey, Ender and some of the passengers put on a reading of The Taming of the Shrew. That part is somewhat interesting in how it connects to the larger themes of the novel, but it's not as intriguing as the e-mail correspondence between Ender and the acting governor of the colony—especially when they discuss the name the planet and its settlements should have.

The correspondence picks up in the middle. Ender has evidently proposed calling the planet "Prospero," but the acting governor explains why that wouldn't be very much appreciated.

I'm providing a block quote (of a fashion) below with the exchange (94-99):

The conclusion, then, is to call the whole planet Shakespeare (and to give that name to the first town); future towns will be named after characters in Shakespeare.

It makes me wonder how the other cities will choose their names—and how that would affect tourism. "Caliban City: A nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there."

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Book Note: The Gap of Time

Winterson, Jeanette. The Gap of Time: The Winter's Tale Retold. London: Hogarth Shakespeare, 2015.

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As long-time readers (and, really, even first-time readers) can imagine, I was extremely interested to hear of the new Hogarth Shakespeare series that started last year. Well-known authors are signing up to write novels that retell Shakespeare's plays.

Apparently, Jeanette Winterson was tapped to try her hand at it, and she chose to retell The Winter's Tale in her novel The Gap of Time. The title is drawn from Leontes' final speech in the play, which concludes with these lines:

                                              Good Paulina,
Lead us from hence, where we may leisurely
Each one demand an answer to his part
Perform'd in this wide gap of time since first
We were dissever'd: hastily lead away. (V.iii.151-55)

Settling down to read the novel—called "The Cover Version" (7) by its author—over Christmas break, I was thrilled by the first chapter—and then pretty deeply disappointed by the rest of the novel. To give you a sense of the opening, I'm excerpting the first part of the first chapter. It starts just after Shakespeare's "Exit pursued by a bear" (IV.iii.58.s.d.). Note: I've done a little "explicative deleted" (or "Nixonizing") to the excerpt below. 

I find that to be very satisfying and very interesting. And the same can be said of a number of plot devices in The Gap of Time.  The oracle is replaced by a DNA test for paternity.  Autolycus is a used car dealer—and his dealership is called "AUTOS LIKE US." And the author even works in a clever reference to herself in a Wikipedia entry about one of the characters in the novel—"MiMi made her acting debut in 2002 onstage at Théâtre National de Chaillot in Deborah Warner's adaption of The PowerBook—a novel by the British writer Jeanette Winterson" (49).  

But with all that going for it, I'm not sure the novel as a whole works very well. The main part of that is the extreme stress Winterson puts on any of the homoeroticism in the play. Her Leontes and Polixenes analogues had a homosexual fling in their youth, and Polixenes still self-identifies as gay. This explains why he can be in the Hermione analogue's bedroom while she's changing in and out of various outfits (while Leontes watches on secretly-installed survellience camera and works himself into a fever pitch of obscene jealousy). But Polixenes needs a son to meet up with Leontes' daughter eventually, so he has had a heterosexual fling in order to have a son. Much of the novel doesn't seem contrived, but that element does. And even though Leontes' jealousy is irrational, if Polixenes is gay, it makes it a bit less believable (which is not a great direction to take, since it already totters on the unbelievable).

I'm eager to see what else the Hogarth Shakespeare series will give us; this one had a great deal of promise, but, for me, ultimately fell flat.

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Shakespeare in Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, and Ethan Hawke. 1989. DVD. Touchstone Home Entertainment, 1998.

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And now let's get back to wonderful uses of Shakespeare in good films.

I know I surprised most of you when I revealed that I had never seen Good Will Hunting (for which, q.v.) until this summer.

I'm afraid I will shock you when I tell you that I had never seen Dead Poets Society until a few weeks ago.

"Were you not in training to be an English teacher in 1989?" you ask.

Well, yes, I was.

"Did you not know of the film's existence then?" you inquire.

No, I was well aware of the film and the basic elements of its plot.

"Why, then, did you not see the film?" you ask in stunned disbelief.

I'm not entirely sure, but I do remember wanting to wait until I had figured out my own teaching techniques before seeing the film. I didn't want to model my teaching on Robin Williams' interpretation of John Keating's teaching methods. This year, I started to feel relatively secure that I wouldn't be tempted to stand on desks during every lecture or have students recite Whitman while kicking soccer balls, so I broke down and watched the film.

I shouldn't have waited. You all already know this, but it's a great film with a tour de force performance by nearly everyone in it.

And the Shakespeare! Perhaps I would have seen it sooner if I had known about the Shakespeare! Here's a great scene where Williams convinces his students that Shakespeare doesn't have to be stodgy and staid, imitating what appears to be Sir John Gielgud (or the like), Marlon Brando, and John Wayne doing Shakespeare:

The culmination of the film (I'll still try to avoid spoilers for anyone who, like me, has yet to see it) involves a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the boys at the school has discovered a passion for acting, has disobeyed his father's instructions, and has taken on the role of Puck. The clip below conflates the production, providing its beginning and end—with Puck's closing speech delivered to the father, who stands disapprovingly in the back of the auditorium:

The multi-layered delivery of the lines is fascinating. It caps the play, of course, and is delivered as a piece of false modesty to the audience—but it's also delivered as a request for absolution from the disobeyed father. 

That sort of careful integration of Shakespeare into a different plot is tricky—but absolutely awe-inspiring when it pays off, as it absolutely does here. 

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"O Horrible! Most Horrible!": Another Awful Shakespeare Derivative

Let the Devil Wear Black. Dir. Stacy Title. Perf. Jonathan Penner, Randall Batinkoff, Norman Reeds, and Mary-Louise Parker. 1999. DVD. Unapix, 2000.

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Some time ago, I chanced upon a VHS tape of this film. I watched part of it, fast-forwarded though a fair bit of it, and abandoned it. But I remembered it when thinking about how bad badly-done Shakespeare derivatives can be.

This film is a derivative version of Hamlet set in modern Los Angeles. The cover says, "Something is rotten rotten rotten in the city of angles," and I suppose that doesn't count as false advertising—except it seems to apply to what happens in the plot when it more neatly fits the quality of the film.

I'm usually thrilled by derivative versions, finding that they point us back to the text in interesting ways. This film, even though it follows the plot of Hamlet more than most, doesn't work. It ends up being crude and amateurish, and it doesn't seem to have anything thoughtful to say about Shakespeare's play.

It took some time to find a clip that would capture the film well without being vulgar or indecent, but I managed to extract this one. For lack of a clearer analogy, this scene may be something of a version of the play-within-the-play. Jack (the Hamlet analogue) reveals to Carl (our Claudius figure) that he knows about the adrenaline pills (analogous to hebenon in the ear):

Steer clear of this film—there's just not much here. 

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Links: The Film at IMDB.

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A Terrible Attempt at Something Shakespearean in Strange Magic

Strange Magic. Dir. Gary Rydstrom. Perf. Evan Rachel Wood, Elijah Kelley, and Kristin Chenoweth. 2015. DVD. Industrial Light & Magic, 2015.

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I should have listened to Shakespeare Geek.  "Always listen to Shakespeare Geek " I tell myself—and then I get excited about something that interests me and fail to listen to Shakespeare Geek.

I recently watched Strange Magic, which I had been assured was a film with some connection to Midsummer Night's Dream.  Fascinated, I plopped myself down and watched . . . one of the lamest and laziest excuses for an animated film ever. And I would have endured it happily (or at least in a less-irritated fashion)—I really would—had there been any genuine connection, however tenuous, to Shakespeare.

I also would have endured it with a much better grace if the musical covers had been even in the slightest degree worth listening to.

This disastrous and horrific film is set among the fairies and goblins of the forest—and there's a love potion involved. That almost is a connection to Midsummer Night's Dream, but this love potion doesn't really do anything like Shakespeare's, and these fairies aren't anything like his fairies.

Let me give you a quick demonstration. In the clip below, the daughter of the king is confronted with a newly-repentant former fiancé whom she caught in the arms of another women on her wedding day. He tries, in a corny, smarmy way, to convince her to give him a second chance (for utterly unexplained reasons, he thinks that marrying her will give him his own army, which he wants because . . . Industrial Light and Magic?), and she responds with a hearty get-out-of-my-life song:

The whole film is like that. It makes no sense. The animation hits that weird space between realism and animation that makes everyone's skin crawl. And the covers make us all want to run listen to the originals to get these dreadful versions out of our heads.

And it has no Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Geek said, "Skip this one. I can't really find anything worth recommending."  One of these days, I'll actually listen to his sound advice.  The film was not at all strange, and it was far, far from magical. And it was even further from Industrial Light and Magical.

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Links: The Film at IMDB.

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Martha Speaketh Shakespeare!

"Thou Callest Me a Dog." By Peter K. Hirsch. Perf. J. T. Turner, Christina Crivici, and Tabitha St. Germain. Dir. Todd Demong.   Martha Speaks. Season 6, episode 7. PBS. 16 June 2014.

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I've enjoyed the "Martha Speaks" books by Susan Meddaugh ever since LeVar Burton told me about the first one—Martha Speaks—on Reading Rainbow.

But it's relatively new news to me that PBS has a Martha Speaks show for children.

And for Shakespeare aficionados! In a recent show, Martha accidentally eats a copy of Hamlet (the actor had left a sandwich on it), and she starts speaking in Convenstional Shakespeare-Style Olde Englyssishe (CSSOE)—viz., a great prevalence of thee, thou, thy, doth, and -est endings of both nouns and verbs.

But she also quotes from the plays (notably Hamlet), and ends up being cast as Hamlet in a production. And the production is clever enough to use a title from Merchant of Venice and a few other interesting inside jokes (e.g., the solipsistic actor's name is "Armin Burbage").

I offer a few samples below, but you can watch the entire episode on-line.  Just click here, and then click on the "Thou Callest Me a Dog" episode.

In this first clip, Martha's language malady is diagnosed:

The second clip shows her being offered the lead role in Hamlet.

The most famous six words in Shakespeare make up the entirety of the third clip:

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Links: The Show at IMDB. The Episode on-line.

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Shakespeare in Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting. Dir. Gus Van Sant. Perf. Robin Williams, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck. 1997. DVD. Lionsgate, 2011.

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We all know that there's lots of Shakespeare in Boston.

[Insert obligatory reference / link to Shakespeare Geek here.]

And one of the best movies featuring Boston accents in Good Will Hunting.

But did you notice the Shakespeare-with-a-Boston-accent in Good Will Hunting?

About a third of the way though the film, the Robin Williams character talks to the Matt Damon character and argues that all the book learning in the world won't make up for experience:

I ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right? "Once more into the breach, dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, and watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable—known someone that could level you with her eyes.

It's a fabulous scene, and I include it below. N.B.: The language in the clip is, like the film, rated R.

There's something quite marvelous about that. And I think I'm ready to acknowledge that Shakespeare doesn't equate to experience. But I do think Shakespeare helps us to understand the experiences that we have had and imaginatively to experience those we haven't. Yes, the Chorus of Henry V asks us to piece out the play's imperfections with our thoughts and to "Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them / Printing their proud hoofs i' th' receiving earth" (Pro.26-27), but Shakespeare's genius lies it making it very easy for us to see the horses that aren't there—to know something of the experience of war—to find an articulation of the love we know we have.

Just like Good Will Hunting enables us to know something of the experience of losing a spouse to cancer or what it's like to be an orphan growing up in Boston.

Any Dickens fans out there ready to defend Oliver Twist on similar grounds? 

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Book Note: The Stratford Zoo Midnight Revue Presents: Romeo and Juliet

Lendler, Ian. The Stratford Zoo Midnight Revue Presents: Romeo and Juliet. Illus. Zack Giallongo. Colors Alisa Harris. New York: First Second, 2015.

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This is the second time we journey to the zoo in Stratford-on-Avon after closing time to see what the animals are up to (for the first visit, q.v.).

Previously, the animals put on Macbeth; this time, they turn their paws to Romeo and Juliet.

I enjoyed this book, but not as much as I enjoyed Macbeth. In the Macbeth, the violence was present but diffused by the notion the king (the lion) was eating his enemies, which is generally-accepted behavior for lions. The violence is also circumvented by another means, but I don't want to provide a spoiler on that score!

In the zoo's production of Romeo and Juliet, both the violence and the romance are diffused—and the means for doing so aren't quite as interesting or as effective. The petting zoo animals are the Montagues and the wild animals of the surrounding wood are the Capulets. The plot follows more-or-less accordingly, though Romeo and Juliet aren't romantically in love and [Small Spoiler Alert] they don't die at the end.

Still, the book is a good one, at which a gander is well worth taking. Here's a sample to whet your appetite:

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Book Note: Much Ado About Murder

Hawke, Simon. Much Ado About Murder. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2002.

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I would not normally post a review of a book that I haven't finished, but classes start tomorrow, and I know that I won't have time to give this book the attention it deserves until Christmas break at the earliest.

And I wouldn't review it if I wasn't certain of the claims I'll be making about it. Having read the other three books in the "Shakespeare and Smythe" series and having read fifty pages or so of this book, I can confidently say that it's at least as enjoyable and worthwhile as the others were—and those others were very enjoyable and quite worthwhile.

Though all the books follow the same characters and have many of the same locations, they have considerable variety within those constraints. This is the only one that's felt a bit contrived in its set-up, but I can suspend that element of critique and just sit back and enjoy the narrative.

The novel, like the others, puts Shakespeare's words into others' mouths, leaving the words there for him to pick up and turn into solid dramatic gold later. I'm providing a good example of that in the images below (click on them to enlarge them). You'll see how the author plays with the opening exchange between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing in this scene:

Hawke has done some good work in integrating Shakespeare's lines with his own sense of plot and character, even going so far as to give some of Beatrice's lines to the Benedick analogue.

All in all, it's a good summer read . . . even if I may have to wait until next summer to complete it!

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Book Note: Macdeath

Brown, Cindy. Macdeath. Dallas: Henery Press, 2015.

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Speaking of Mysteries avec Shakespeare, we arrive at Macdeath. It's another in a mystery series—there are other Ivy Meadows Mysteries on the way (The Sound of Murder and Oliver Twisted, if you're keeping score).

I'm afraid I feel that I'm not the target audience for this book, and that will, of necessity, color my review. I enjoyed our heroine, Ivy "Olive" Meadows, most of the time, but she is too inclined to go on about the dreaminess of the male actors—and then is too quick about jumping into bed with them.

Other than that, the story is a reasonable murder mystery. Because it's the first of the series, I think there's more building of character and background than you might expect (or desire). And our heroine is just starting to think about the role of the investigator (she has an uncle who, as a private eye, is able to give her advice).

The general plot is that an actor is killed during a production of Macbeth—our heroine plays one of the witches, so she has a fair amount of time to nose around and find out which other actors / directors have motives and opportunity.

My main critique—as you might expect—is that there's not enough Shakespeare. I'd like to have more of the details of the theatre life and of this particular production of Macbeth. That's where a rote mystery takes on a greater depth and interest to me. I'm reminded of Ngaio Marsh's Light Thickens, for example (for which, q.v.), which does that brilliantly.

I'll leave you with a sample from early in the book—that will give you a flavor of the novel and let you know whether you're in its target audience or not.

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Book Note: The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare

Braun, Lilian Jackson. The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare. New York: Jove books, 1995.

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Speaking of mysteries mit Shakespeare, I recently read The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare. After all, summer can't all be re-reading the plays and critical articles on the plays, can it?

This is a much lighter read than the Shakespeare and Smythe series (i.e., it's not as good and it lacks depth), but it was at least mildly interesting.

The Shakespeare comes in as a trope throughout the novel. The main character is a private detective in a very small town. He has two Siamese cats: Koko and Yum-Yum. In this novel, Koko becomes enamored of a set of Shakespeare plays. He pulls these down at opportune moments throughout the novel to illustrate or to foreshadow plot points. For example, he pulls The Tempest off the shelf and onto the floor right before a blizzard (which is a sort of a tempest, I suppose).

The novel occasionally exploits the ambiguities in the plays Koko decides to toss on the floor—and I wish it did so more or in more interesting ways. What could producing the Hamlet volume mean? A thousand possibilities open before us—but the novel often has our main character pinpoint the precise intended meaning. Perhaps that means Qwilleran would make a good Shakespeare scholar.

I'm providing two separate examples to give you a sense of how the book works—it's up to you to determine if this light read will lighten your days.

Koko is probably imagining himself as a tiger's heart wrapped in a cat's hide.

Here, there is some ambiguity over the reason this play was left on the floor.

Let me know if you try it and what you think of it if you do!

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Book Note: The Merchant of Vengeance

Hawke, Simon. The Merchant of Vengeance. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2003.

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The fourth in the series of "Shakespeare and Smythe Mystery Series" (I somehow missed Much Ado About Murder, the third book, but I shall attempt to rectify that shortly), The Merchant of Vengeance, is very strong on characterization and language use but not quite as compelling in the details of the murder mystery.

Still, it's a good, fun read. As with A Mystery of Errors and The Slaying of the Shrew, I'm loathe to provide spoilers, but this one contains a lot of interaction with Shakespeare's contemporaries. We meet the largely-destestable Robert Greene in a pub, and Shakespeare thinks about ways to outdo Marlowe's Jew of Malta, finding a way to present a Jew on stage with the fullness of his humanity.

And there's a murder and betrayal and a league of thieves and exciting, insulting exchanges and romance (a bit). I recommend The Merchant of Vengeance as a light end-of-summer read that still has some gravitas.

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Book Note: The Slaying of the Shrew

Hawke, Simon. The Slaying of the Shrew. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2001.

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I read Simon Hawke's Mystery of Errors (for which, q.v.) some time ago. I enjoyed it as a light read and wanted to try the two others in the series. This summer, I've managed to read the second: The Slaying of the Shrew.

Like the previous book, this one centers on the adventures of Symington Smythe and Will Shakespeare. Here, the former is a man who wants to act—but forgets his lines, however short and simply they may be, most of the time. The later is an actor, but he's pursuing the writing of plays more and more. Like the previous book, events in the lives of the characters mirror, foreshadow, and mimmic events in a Shakespeare play—but not only the one you're expecting from the title!

If I say too much more, the spoilers will detract from your own reading of the book. It's a mystery with Shakespeare as one of the characters—but not the main one—and his surroundings as the setting.

The category might be "Shakespeare Beach Novel"—a light, not-too-serious read that's entertaining and enjoyable . . . though it may not be terribly deep or remarkably memorable.

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