PERCHANCE to DREAM

I'm bingeing on Bard-related books this month. First, I finished The Serpent of Venice, Christopher Moore's fabulous follow-up to Fool (pardon me while I alliterate), which gleefully mashes up plots and characters from King Lear, Othello and The Merchant Of Venice.

And now I've segued into Kate Danley's Queen Mab, a fairy fantasy woven in and out of Romeo and Juliet. Danley had me at the first hint of turning Mercutio—one of the most lamented of all the Bard's untimely deaths—into the hero of her story.

In tales of the Fae, death need never be final if an author has the chutzpah and imagination to rewrite a story we think we already know. Fortunately, Danley has both.

Queen Mab is a figure from ancient Celtic folklore, the Fairy Queen known as the Bringer of Dreams. In Danley's story, three generations after the Roman demi-god, Faunus, tricks beautiful Mab and breaks her heart, the two immortals enter into a wager for sport—a chess game in which two mighty houses of Verona are pitted against each other: the Capulets and the Montagues.

Mab brings dreams to sleeping mortals.

But the game has scarcely begun when Mab finds herself bewitched by Mercutio. A witty, compassionate mortal man allied with neither house, he sees beyond Mab's magical aspect to the complex and beautiful soul beneath. She and Mercutio become lovers, but the stakes of the game rise fearfully as Faunus secretly plots to steal Mab's power and banish her from the world.

In Danley's view, all the events in Shakepeare's play—sudden brawls, reversals of fortune, changes of heart—are chalked up to fairy interference. This allows Danley to use large sections of dialogue from the play (not scary: written as prose) in the unfolding of her story.

In one clever invention, Mercutio's show-stopping "Queen Mab speech" becomes his desperate attempt to hold onto her memory, fading like a dream, after she charms him into forgetting her for his own safety.

An untimely end, but only in the Bard's version

Using so much of Shakespeare's text might feel like cheating. But the original material that Danley's weaves in—the love story of Mab and Mercutio, appearances by Faunus, and the Old Gods—is such a great idea, and so well-integrated into the plot of the play, that it draws us in. (Mab and Mercutio even get their own balcony scene!)

The formatting of this self-published book can be a bit wonky from page to page, with the expected typos sprinkled in here and there. Of more concern to me was overuse of the word "upon"—sometimes twice in the same sentence—when "on" would serve just as well.

But this is a pet peeve of mine; so many authors seem to believe that "upon" makes their prose sound more historical.

It also feels as if the book were written very fast. A little more time spent on building resonance, particularly in the closing chapters, to appreciate the plot twists, would have been nice. But Queen Mab is also a fast read (due in part to its enormous print), and the sheer audacity of Danley's premise kept me happily engaged.

Another guest appearance by Mab.

Rewriting the fates of classic literary characters has become its own sub-genre in recent fiction. (Hey, I did it in Alias Hook!) Moore and Danley cheerfully rewrite Shakespearean plays the way we wish they had all turned out. Still, one of my favorites of the bunch reimagines the lives of the playwrights themselves, not the plays.

In Elizabeth Bear's outstanding Ink and Steel, Christopher Marlowe (Kit Marly) is resurrected in the Court of the Fairy Queen after that unfortunate incident at Deptford. There, he becomes the innamorato of several important fairies while helping to train his successor, Will Shakespeare, in the art of weaving magical fairy spells into the gorgeous texts of his plays to protect the mortal realm of Elizabeth.

Every idea on every page of this two-book tale (including the sequel, Hell and Earth) is rich, complex, and literally beguiling.

Gee, I think I'll go read it again...

(Above: Queen Mab by Gustav Dore.)
(Above: The Death of Mercutio by Edwin Austin Abbey)

MAJESTIC CON JOB

Anonymous is that rare movie from action director Roland Emmerich in which nothing blows up—except the crackpot theory that Edward DeVere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the canon of plays and sonnets historically attributed to William Shakespeare. This hothouse melodrama of Tudor intrigue, sex, and politics, scripted by John Orloff, is based on the most controversial "Oxfordian" theories.

It's all sheer humbuggery, but still an entertaining spectacle: the costumes are exquisite, the overhead shots Elizabethan London are breathtaking, and it's populated by a bunch of attractive young actors on their way up.

Oxford (Rhys Ifans) has penned his plays in secret, ever since he was fostered into the Puritan household of Queen Elizabeth's counselor, William Cecil (an unrecognizable David Thewlis), where poetry was forbidden. However, the dashing young Oxford (Jamie Campbell Bower, in flashback) charmed the lusty, poetry-loving young Queen Bess (Joely Richardson).

But now that the queen is in her dotage (Vanessa Redgrave, playing the formidable Bess as dotty and girlish), Oxford starts leaking his plays to the Globe theater company to influence public opinion (or "the mob," as all the nobles call them) in the matter of the queen's heir. Elizabeth's court is evidently teeming with her bastard children, including the young earls of Essex (Sam Reid) and Southampton (Xavier Samuel), whose doomed rebellion is portrayed as a patriotic attempt to retain the English crown for the English Tudor bloodline.

Refusing to claim authorship of the work because it's simply not done, or something, Oxford tries to get playwright Ben Jonson to front for him. But when the first performance of Henry V sends the crowd into an ecstatic frenzy, Will Shakespeare, a buffoonish comic actor in the company, sneaks in to put his name to the unsigned manuscript—a charade Oxford finds it politically expedient to maintain, bankrupting himself to buy the upstart Will's complicity.

This portrait of Shakespeare as a smarmy, boorish, scheming illiterate is irksome (although Rafe Spall plays him with vivid comic brio); so is the elitist idea that only a nobleman could possibly be capable of such brilliance. It's hard to believe that Oxford (or anyone) could have written A Midsummer Night's Dream at age 12, as is suggested here. And would the canniest monarch of her age farm out such a litter of bastard children among the noblest houses of England to be manipulated later by her enemies?

Meanwhile, the filmmakers cheerfully massacre the facts of English history and the allegorical meaning of the plays themselves, in a vain attempt to fit their idle speculation. I disliked the portrait of Christopher Marlowe (Trystan Gravelle) as an oily, conniving malcontent (especially since Marlowe was long dead by the time events in this movie take place). Ifan's mature Oxford is anonymous indeed; circumspect and elegant, but lacking in passion or presence. (Sebastian Armesto's courageous Ben Jonson emerges as the hero.)

Still, for all its faults, the film conveys the Elizabethan era in all its messy splendor, and backstage glimpses of the Globe in its heyday and snippets of the plays in performance are often thrilling.

It's too bad such majestic production values are wasted on such a hopeless con job. If you must fool around with Shakespearean history, I much prefer novelist Elizabeth Bear's audacious Stratford Man Duology, in which Will Shakespeare succeeds Kit Marlowe in weaving magical spells into their brilliant verse for the protection of the realm—after Marlowe has been whisked off to eternal life in the land of Faery. It's far more imaginative, and plausible, than the fairy tale of Anonymous.

INK & STEEL, WILL & JED

It didn't take long for the fog to come rolling back in, the old killjoy, terminating what was supposed to be a nice, long, summery hot spell. Ready to escape into an alternate reality? I suggest the outstanding two-volume series, Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth, a marvelous fantasia of Elizabethan scholarship and spellbinding magic from fantasy writer Elizabeth Bear. Known collectively as "The Stratford Man Duology," the story envisions an Elizabethan England teeming with more than the usual intrigue, as Elizabeth and her spymasters maintain an intricate bond with the parallel, underground kingdom of Faery to suppress the forces of Dark Magic that threaten them both.

The Stratford Man is, of course, clever, soulful, courageous Will Shakespeare, pressed into service to work protective magic into his verse as a reluctant, but brilliant replacement for verse-master Christopher Marlowe, recently deceased. But the most triumphant performance is by Kit Marly (Marlowe) himself, newly resurrected in Faery—poet, spy, sodomite, lover of several important fairies, Devil's personal plaything, and, ultimately, lapsed atheist. Bear's delicious series is a triumph of poetry, audacious eroticism, tenderness, and unfettered imagination.

Speaking of Shakespeare, only a few days remain to catch up with this year's dynamic Shakespeare Santa Cruz season. I highly recommend The Lion In Winter, a splendid theatrical entertainment presented con brio.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column, "Babes, Ditzes, and Moms," plagarised—oops, I mean inspired by—a Wallace Baine column collected in his new book of essays, Rhymes With Vain. His piece, "Jed Clampett, Molder of Men," discusses childhood role models on '60s TV shows.

Turns out that local songbird Jayme Kelly Curtis was inspired by the same column. You can listen to her wry, bluesy tune, "What Would Jed Do?" here.