Interred With Their Bones
I have a confession to make. I have never read Hamlet. I hope this won’t completely destroy my English major street cred. In any case, it’s on my To-Read list. I’ll get there eventually. I wonder if Hamlet has anything to do with homoeroticism or the destruction of the homosocial bond by the institution of heterosexual marriage. Maybe it’s about epistemology. My college Shakespeare prof seemed to think that’s what all the plays were about. (I quite enjoy Shakespeare, but I hated that class, and not just because I had mono that quarter.)
Despite lapses in my Shakespearian education, I have read Julius Caesar, a quote from which inspired the title of a novel I recently read, Interred With Their Bones by Jennefier Lee Carrell. Pretty creepy sounding, isn’t it? Here’s the original quote, if you’re curious:
The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
Interred With Their Bones, as you may have suspected is about Shakespeare. More specifically, it is about the search to find one of Shakespeare’s missing plays, Cardenio. (For the fate of another lost play, Love’s Labors Won see Doctor Who’s “The Shakespeare Code.”
Kate Stanley, a former Shakespeare scholar, is directing a production of Hamlet at London’s Globe Theatre, when her former mentor unexpectedly shows up. Ros says she need Kate’s help with a major discovery, but before she can explain, Ros is mysteriously murdered, and the Globe is burned. Kate is propelled into a search for the manuscript of Cardenio, following clues from England back to Harvard and across the United States. The novel combines literary history, action, suspense, and plenty of puzzles. This type of scholarly adventure will be familiar to readers of The DaVinci Code, but Interred With Their Bones is, in my opinion, a far better book. The writing is of higher quality, and the unraveling mystery is much more plausible than the strange theological leaps of The DaVinci Code.
Inevitably, the search author leads to clues about Shakespeare’s true identity. I suspect that all novels involving Shakespeare are obliged to address the infamous authorship controversy. (Hopefully no one will be shocked by this, but there are lots of people who don’t believe that Shakespeare, the player from Stratford, actually authored the plays. Popular alternatives include Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, the earl of Oxford.) No matter what your opinion about the “true” author, the controversy does fit perfectly into this type of book. The real scholarly research on the subject is full of hidden codes in the plays, the sonnets, and even the King James Bible. (For those particularly interested in authorship, another novel, Chasing Shakespeares is another “bibliomystery,” as tagged on LibraryThing. It’s been several years since I read it, but I don’t remember being particularly blown away by it.)
I think at least some minimal knowledge of Shakespeare and his works is essential for the enjoyment of Interred With Their Bones, but you need hardly be an expert. There are several short historical passages that were slightly confusing at the beginning, but as Kate drew nearer to the answers, they made much more sense. The novel is roughly 400 pages, and I could not put it down. If you like a mystery with lots of interesting twists, don’t mind learning with your lit, or believe that libraries and archives are the most exciting places around, than I highly recommend that you read it!
Despite lapses in my Shakespearian education, I have read Julius Caesar, a quote from which inspired the title of a novel I recently read, Interred With Their Bones by Jennefier Lee Carrell. Pretty creepy sounding, isn’t it? Here’s the original quote, if you’re curious:
The evil men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
Interred With Their Bones, as you may have suspected is about Shakespeare. More specifically, it is about the search to find one of Shakespeare’s missing plays, Cardenio. (For the fate of another lost play, Love’s Labors Won see Doctor Who’s “The Shakespeare Code.”
Kate Stanley, a former Shakespeare scholar, is directing a production of Hamlet at London’s Globe Theatre, when her former mentor unexpectedly shows up. Ros says she need Kate’s help with a major discovery, but before she can explain, Ros is mysteriously murdered, and the Globe is burned. Kate is propelled into a search for the manuscript of Cardenio, following clues from England back to Harvard and across the United States. The novel combines literary history, action, suspense, and plenty of puzzles. This type of scholarly adventure will be familiar to readers of The DaVinci Code, but Interred With Their Bones is, in my opinion, a far better book. The writing is of higher quality, and the unraveling mystery is much more plausible than the strange theological leaps of The DaVinci Code.
Inevitably, the search author leads to clues about Shakespeare’s true identity. I suspect that all novels involving Shakespeare are obliged to address the infamous authorship controversy. (Hopefully no one will be shocked by this, but there are lots of people who don’t believe that Shakespeare, the player from Stratford, actually authored the plays. Popular alternatives include Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, the earl of Oxford.) No matter what your opinion about the “true” author, the controversy does fit perfectly into this type of book. The real scholarly research on the subject is full of hidden codes in the plays, the sonnets, and even the King James Bible. (For those particularly interested in authorship, another novel, Chasing Shakespeares is another “bibliomystery,” as tagged on LibraryThing. It’s been several years since I read it, but I don’t remember being particularly blown away by it.)
I think at least some minimal knowledge of Shakespeare and his works is essential for the enjoyment of Interred With Their Bones, but you need hardly be an expert. There are several short historical passages that were slightly confusing at the beginning, but as Kate drew nearer to the answers, they made much more sense. The novel is roughly 400 pages, and I could not put it down. If you like a mystery with lots of interesting twists, don’t mind learning with your lit, or believe that libraries and archives are the most exciting places around, than I highly recommend that you read it!