Shakespeare’s Doorways

One of my favorite parts of being a librarian is what we call “readers’ advisory,” aka book recommendations. I don’t mean recommending books that I like or that I think are “the best”; instead, library patrons tell me what they like, what they are in the mood to read, and I suggest books I think they’ll enjoy. A title might immediately spring to mind, but more often I need to do some research to find good suggestions.

I have been stumped when I’ve asked a library patron who some of their favorite authors are, and they’ve told me: Shakespeare. This isn’t as simple as “if you liked All’s Well that Ends Well then you’ll love Bartholomew Fair.” It is possible these readers who like Shakespeare are highly sophisticated lovers of Elizabethan drama and poetry - but I don’t think that a reader like that would come to a public librarian and ask for help finding more writers like Shakespeare.

So, you, let’s say, love Shakespeare. What books do I suggest for you? What authors compare to Shakespeare? I will answer these with one more question: why do you like Shakespeare?

In her book Book Lust, Librarian Nancy Pearl has written about the “doorways” that we go through to find our way to a book: the doorways of story, character, setting, and language. Some readers will love a book that keeps them guessing and turning the pages; another reader wants a unique character they can root for; some choose based on a sense of a place they want to be; and others will read almost anything as long as they love the prose.

When I think of the different doorways a reader might go through when they open one of Shakespeare’s plays, I think of:

Doorway 1: Inventive and rich use of language, puns, idiosyncratic and beautiful turns of phrase, invented words.

Doorway 2: Grand stories, mythical or historical, of love, jealousy, war, politics, living, and dying.

Doorway 3: A density of information – words, allusions, history – a book you can swim in, floating on a raft of dictionaries and encyclopedias. Something to study and scribble notes in.

Doorway 4: Simply, the *Shakespeareiness* of Shakespeare. This reader just loves Shakespeare.

Let’s take each of these in turn.

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For the lover of inventive language, I might suggest:

The Disheveled Dictionary: A Curious Caper Through Our Sumptuous Lexicon by Karen Elizabeth Gordon – “The Disheveled Dictionary takes a voluptuary's approach to language, carousing in a wanton world of words and their multiple and mischievous uses. Favorite characters from earlier books appear in cameo, including Yolanta, Jonquil Mapp, cowboys with lingerie, and assorted royal riffraff, who join in adumbration with the Grim Reaper, a reluctant baba, the contralto Constanza Zermattress, and other inspired creations.”

Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban – “Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state--and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture--rebel, change agent, and artist.”

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie – “In India, one thousand and one children are born in the hour following the midnight commemorating the country's independence from British rule. And of those children, none is more entwined with the destiny of that land than Saleem Sinai, he of dubious birth and a nose of astounding proportion. Discovering a psychic connection with midnight's other thousand, Saleem recounts a life both reflecting and recreating the modern history of his oft-troubled homeland.”

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For the patron who wants grand sagas, I suggest:

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl – A beautiful play. “A reimagining of the classic myth of Orpheus through the eyes of its heroine. Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice journeys to the underworld, where she reunites with her beloved father and struggles to recover lost memories of her husband and the world she left behind.”

Angels in America by Tony Kushner – Another play: “Glorious. A monumental, subversive, altogether remarkable masterwork…Details of specific catastrophes may have changed since this Reagan-era AIDS epic won the Pulitzer and the Tony, but the real cosmic and human obsessions—power, religion, sex, responsibility, the future of the world—are as perilous, yet as falling-down funny, as ever.” –Linda Winer, Newsday

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – “Assuming the power recently lost by the disgraced Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell counsels a mercurial Henry VIII on the latter's efforts to marry Anne Boleyn against the wishes of Rome, a successful endeavor that comes with a dangerous price.”

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende – “The Trueba family embodies strong feelings. This family saga starts at the beginning of the 20th century and continues through the assassination of Allende in 1973.”

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For a reader who wants a density of allusion:

Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco – “Three editors conspire to devise a plan of their own about European history. As they feed all the information into their computer, they think it is a terrific joke--until people begin to mysteriously disappear.”

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov – “Nabokov's parody, half poem and half commentary on the poem, deals with the escapades of the deposed king of Zemala in a New England college town.”

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard – “"In a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sit Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge. Through the window may be seen some of the '500 acres inclusive of lake' where Capability Brown's idealized landscape is about to give way to the 'picturesque' Gothic style: 'everything but vampires', as the garden historian Hannah Jarvis remarks to Bernard Nightingale when they stand in the same room 180 years later."

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli – “A novel about a family of four, on the cusp of fracture, who take a trip across America--a story told through varying points of view, and including archival documents and photographs.”

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For more Shakespeare all the time:

The Great Night by Chris Adrian – “On Midsummer's Eve 2008, three people, each on the run from a failed relationship, become trapped in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park, the secret home of Titania, Oberon, and their court. Titania has set loose an ancient menace, and the chaos that ensues threatens the lives of immortals and mortals alike.”

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood – “Felix is at the top of his game as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival. His productions have amazed and confounded. Now he's staging a Tempest like no other: not only will it boost his reputation, it will heal emotional wounds. Or that was the plan. Instead, after an act of unforeseen treachery, Felix is living in exile in a backwoods hovel, haunted by memories of his beloved lost daughter, Miranda. And brewing revenge. After 12 years revenge finally arrives in the shape of a theatre course at a nearby prison. Here Felix and his inmate actors will put on his Tempest and snare the traitors who destroyed him. It's magic! But will it remake Felix as his enemies fall?”

(search the catalog for “Hogarth Shakespeare” for more adaptations by different authors)

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell – “England, 1580. A young Latin tutor-- penniless, bullied by a violent father-- falls in love with an eccentric young woman who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford. She becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when their young son succumbs to bubonic plague.”

Finally, a Shakespeare fan might enjoy a biography, particularly one written for non-academics like Bill Bryson’s witty Shakespeare: The World as Stage.

You’ll see there is some overlap in these categories too – there are several Shakespearean doorways that open into each.

What doorways invite you into a book? Let us know!

- by Corina B., West Windsor Branch