Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The Tragedy of Arthur: A Novel by Arthur Phillips

This book is both dazzling and delightful. It purports to contain a newly-discovered play by Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Arthur, and a long introduction to that play by a version of the novelist Arthur Phillips. The reader quickly discovers she's in the midst of a tour de force, the likes of which hasn't been seen since Nabokov's Pale Fire. Arthur Phillips, the unreliable narrator of the novel, is convinced that his father, a skilled forger, forged the play, but Professor Verre, the scholarly voice that adds footnotes to Phillips's footnotes, is just as unreliable as he tries to justify his reading of the play that makes Shakespeare its author. The play itself is not a bad stab at an imitation of Shakespeare--it uses Holinshed just as Shakespeare did, and it borrows lines from some of Shakespeare's other plays. There are some really funny moments in the play too. Along the way, there's a dazzling variation on the Earl of Oxford thesis, interesting speculation on what could have caused this play to have been suppressed, lots of great family drama, and a lot of fun to be had at the narrator's expense. All in all, well worth enjoying.

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