Allyson Johnson

What I’ve Been Reading: Fools and Mortals

Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bernard Cornwell is a master at recreating a past society, whether it’s life on the battlefield of the Napoleonic Wars, an immersion in the Saxon society of Arthurian England, or in this case, the pinnacles and pitfalls of the evolving theatre in the time of Elizabeth I.
The protagonist is Richard Shakespeare, the younger brother of William, who escapes from a brutal apprenticeship and runs to London in hopes of joining his brother’s theatre group, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. But William’s welcome is chilly, and Richard must pay a steep price to learn the skills he needs to be a player on his brother’s stage.
Did Richard Shakespeare actually exist? Yes, there was such a sibling, ten years younger than William, but the historical record is mute as far as his life is concerned, leaving Cornwell an open field to imagine. The plot is a little thin, involving the rivalry between the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the struggle to find new plays to please the populace. The world is so real, though, that I could feel the drip of rain down the back of Richard’s neck, hear the pounding of the carpenters working on stage sets as Richard is trying to rehearse, and see the flickering lights of dozens of candles used to light the stage.
Cornwell assumes that the reader is pretty familiar with at least two of William’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. If you’ve gotten that far in studying Elizabethan drama, you’re ready to plunge in to Richard Shakespeare’s world.




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