To be or not to be – Jodi Picoult asks the question
Click play below to listen to audio transcript of this post.
Most of us have read at least one Shakespeare play during school in English classes at one time or another. I remember struggling through Coriolanus, As You Like It, Macbeth and Twelfth Night, but I was never a big fan – until, that is, I visited the Globe Theatre in London one year. I saw As You Like It performed authentically as it would have been at the time –with no lights, microphones, recorded music or stage effects, in fact there is not even a roof over part of the theatre (but thankfully it didn’t rain!). The spoken words came alive in a way I had not experienced in the class room and the quips, asides and wordplay made more sense than I could ever have imagined. The experience of live theatre is so completely different to the reading of a play – and it is how it was meant to be experienced. Live on stage.
Jodi Picoult has addressed the controversial topic of whether Shakespeare did actually pen the plays himself in her new book By Any Other Name. There have been numerous theories about the autheniticity of his authorship with suggestions of alternative candidates from the period, including poets, playwrights and novelists- all male. This novel takes that person to be Emilia Lanier (née Bassano), a talented but vastly overlooked poet from the same era whose life experiences seem to mirror some of the topics used in the plays. She moved in simliar circles and, as a woman, would have struggled to have her voice heard. As with all the other theories this is pure speculation but Jodi Picoult has made it into a intensely readable story, mirroring it with a more contemporary story of the struggles of a female playwright to have her work performed on stage in New York, also resorting to submitting her work under a male pseudonym to gain recognition.
Jodi Picoult does not shy away from controversial subjects and her body of work reflects her desire to talk about the difficult things, acknowledging social and moral issues which are often not addressed in literature. By Any Other Name spotlights inequalities in society and asks just how far we have come in the past 400 years, but it also provides us with a fascinating insight into some of Shakespeare’s plays, into life in Elizabethan England and glimpses into the lives of some of our most famous Elizabethan writers.
I am not sure it matters at this point in time whether the plays were penned by one man, one woman or even a team of individuals writing under the name of Shakespeare. The plays have carved their own place in our literary history with a plethora of Shakesperian quotes surviving in modern language.
It’s been ‘a wild goose chase’ (Romeo and Juliet) though there has been ‘method in the madness’ (Hamlet) and it is better to ‘lie low’ (Much Ado…) as ‘discretion is the better part of valour’ (Henry IV). ‘All our yesterdays’ (Macbeth) are ‘a foregone conclusion’ (Othello) so ‘if music be the food of love, play on’ (Twelfth Night)
I would say that By Any Other Name is a novel not to be missed and is available now to reserve from our Branches.
