Bawdy Biography of the Bard (Will - Christopher Rush)

Member Name: luckyarchers

Product:	Will - Christopher Rush
Date:	31/01/09 (634 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: William Shakespeare and Elizabethan England brought graphically to life .

Disadvantages: So realistic I could smell the stench . But is this really a fault?

Will opens with William Shakespeare critically ill and needing to get his affairs in order.

*** Religion ***

Most people at this time would want a priest at their deathbed, but the reader learns about Shakespeare's life as he tells all to the lawyer in charge of his last will and testament.

Over his lifetime he has seen people change from Catholic to Protestant, and vice versa, to be in the "right" religion for safety and/or worldly ambition. As he says that he does not want to be "accused" on being on one side or the other, he does not want any sort of churchman. Readers will in time learn of his true religious views.

*** Elizabethan Rural to City Life ***

William Shakespeare tells his lawyer how he was born into a rural Warwickshire community, where he was to fall in love with, and marry, Anne Hathaway.

Although he was raised in a family not having to worry about the basic necessities of life, his beginnings are a lot more humble than most people of his time who remain famous today. Shakespeare earned his right to fame, rather than was born to it.

Do you think that the right schooling is necessary to nurture the talents of the best writers? Well I was pleased to learn that, like me, Shakespeare was glad to leave his school, which taught him what the masters regarded as absolute certainties, so leaving no room for intelligent discussion. In those austere conditions his masters would keep themselves warm by beating the posteriors of the small, hungry boys.

He tells life like it was for him. The reader will need to accept the violence, lack of hygiene and social niceties to appreciate this read. This master of words sometimes makes his descriptions more vivid than poetic, in his striking accounts.

By reading about his life in historical context, I felt catapulted back in time. The everyday realities of his life included using the shared shithouse of his rural community, learning the trade of the slaughterhouse and the ever present disease risks such as plague and syphilis. The lawyer, impatient for him to get on with the most important things he needs to know, asks if he wants his craps itemized, but doesn't rush him through the baldy parts of his verbal meanderings.

The odours of the age grow stronger when he leaves the family home and goes seeking success in London, with its closely packed dwellings for ordinary folk, the open sewer of the Thames and the slaughter house where he initially needed to work close-by.

I greatly appreciated the entire book, but the most interesting part for me was the rivalry between the London theatres in the second half.

As Will gets opportunities to met members of high society, as well as less salubrious people, political astuteness becomes necessary to realise his full potential. Here some of his sexual exploits mix business with pleasure. Readers are also introduced to his favourite whores.

The further into the book you get, the more you learn about the inspiration for Shakespeare's writings. Influences include national events, the tastes of the people he is writing for and his personal life.

Among those impressed by this novel is Sir Ben Kingsley. He will be starring in a film version.

*** The Author ***

This is my first experience of Christopher Rush's work, but I will be on the look out for more by him including Hellfire and Herring which is a memoir of his childhood in a Scottish fishing village in the 1940s and 1950s.

*** Recommendation ***

Having read this compulsive novel, I will now think of William Shakespeare not just as a playwright, but also a real person with a wide range of emotions, strengths and weaknesses.

Reading words that alternated between witty, imaginative, poignant, vivid, gross and poetic, or are a mixture of these qualities, I felt that I was living alongside the Bard and eavesdropping on his life.

I think that the style of writing is pitched just right. I felt that I was back in Elizabethan England because it was not too modern, but at the same time was fairly easy for a 21st century reader to understand. (A lot easier that reading Shakespeare's plays.)

Read it yourself if you want a credible fictional insight (based on facts) into William Shakespeare the man, as well as the times that influenced this poet's writings.


Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Beautiful Books (9 Oct 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-1905636358
RRP: £8.99

Summary: At the end of his life Will Shakespeare tells his life story to the lawyer who is drafting his will.