The Late Mr. Shakespeare [Hardcover]

Robert Nye (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 23, 1999

From "one of our best living novelists"(Peter Ackroyd) comes the most original, exciting, and provocative novel about Shakespeare since Anthony Burgess's classic Nothing Like the Sun.

Our guide to the life of the Bard is an actor called Pickleherring, who asserts that as a boy he was an original member of Shakespeare's acting troupe. In an attic above a brothel in Restoration London--a half century after Shakespeare has departed the stage--Pickleherring, now an old man, sits down to write the full story of his former friend, mentor, and master. Fond, faithful Pickleherring has forgotten nothing over the years, and using sources both firsthand and far-fetched he means to set the record straight. Was Shakespeare ever actually "in love"? Did he write his own plays? Who was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets? Brilliantly in tune with today's Shakespeare renaissance, Robert Nye gives us an outrageous, language-loving, and edifying romp through the life and times of the greatest writer who ever lived.

"Outrageous and deliciously obscene. . . . Deserves a place on the same shelf with Shakespeare's plays. Never from a work of scholarship or criticism have I learned so much about Shakespeare and his art than from this novel, nor do I remember reading a more lovable book."-- Marvin Hunt, San Francisco Examiner

"Fantastic, poignant, bizarre . . . Nye skillfully summons up the sights, sounds, and language of Pickleherring's time and place."-- Los Angeles Times

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Falstaff, Merlin and The Memoirs of Lord Byron takes on WS himself, producing a lively, bawdy gallimaufry of anecdotes, facts and fictions that inevitably will be compared to Anthony Burgess's Nothing Like the Sun. The conceit is that "Robert Reynolds alias Pickleherring," a comic actor now an octogenarian, met Shakespeare when the playwright was 32 and Pickleherring 13. Now Pickleherring lives in a London attic, above a whorehouse that itself is above a bakery, and sets out to tell the "country history" of WS. He tucks in all the anecdotes that make gossips and scholars swoon, for example the possibility that Queen Elizabeth I was Shakespeare's mother, that the Vicar of Stratford, not a humble butcher and tanner, was Shakespeare's father. Pickleherring casts his own hand heavily over the proceedings, as any lifelong actor is wont to do; the young Pickleherring played women's roles in Shakespeare's plays at the Globe and had a friendly flirtation with WS. A recurring theme is his unscholarly explanations of Shakespeare's artAfor instance, comparing the playwright's use of flower imagery to John Milton's. Milton's flowers always scanned, the actor relates; he picked his bouquets by syllable. Shakespeare's flowers, by contrast, always had personality and resonance. In addition to the Dark Lady, the Earl of Southampton and other Shakespearean tropes, Pickleherring/Nye refers to the fathers/sons themes and the surfeit of forgiving wives and daughters in the later plays. Surely the more a reader already knows about Shakespeare and about Elizabethan life from the dunghills up, the more pleasure Nye's account will produce, braided as it is from whimsy, compassion and research. But even readers limited to having read Julius Caesar in ninth grade will find this novel gladdening.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

YA-Robert Reynolds, aka "Pickleherring," was a boy actor who first encountered Will Shakespeare when he was 13 and the Bard was 32. Many years have passed. Shakespeare is long dead and Pickleherring, now an octogenarian, decides that the time has come to tell what he knows (or has heard) about one of the world's greatest writers. Explained through language well suited to both the times and his subject, Pickleherring's topics range from what Shakespeare learned at Stratford grammar school to the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, his childhood ailments to the games he played as a youngster to his funeral arrangements. Nye includes a postscript listing the authors whose "lives and works" he has quoted. For young adults with a fondness for words, Shakespeare, or English history, and for anyone who enjoys a laugh-out-loud, somewhat bawdy read-this book will be a treat.
Pamela B. Rearden, Centreville Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; First Edition edition (April 23, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559704691
• ISBN-13: 978-1559704694
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,265,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An ever reader to a never writer, June 3, 2002

By 

"tabby577" (The land of corn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Late Mr. Shakespeare (Paperback)

How does one describe this book?

Permit me, madam, to attempt.

First of all, the main reason (in my opinion) to read "The Late Mr. Shakespeare" is, simply, the narrative (discounting the chapter containing Shakespeare's will, which was not nearly as fluid and I more or less skipped over). Robert Nye's prose is uncouth, unique, and undoubtedly true - I savored every word, and I yearn for more.

Another redeeming factor of this book was the disjointedness of it all - one could lose track of the book for months, pick it up again, and begin another chapter afresh - and it would hardly make any of the difference. The chapters are almost entirely unrelated (other than with the general aging of shakespeare and progression of his life) - and all were both intriguing and delicious. I enjoyed the discussion of Shakespeare's works and the possible innuendos to other works, friends, and people - in addition to some possible spots of his inspiration and speculations on his greatest pieces. It doesn't matter to me how much is true and how much is mishmash - the fact of the matter is that it was interesting. But then, I've always had an obsession with editorials and the like, so I suppose this book was straight up my alley.

And let us not forget the entirely estranged bits of the book that tie the entire image of Shakespeare together - the insults he shouted while engaging in tennis, for example.

In summary, this is likely not meant to be a sit-down-and-read sort of book, but a stop-and-think-for-a-few-moments-and-move-on read. And it's both a unique and likable sort of method.

Finally, the ending was satisfying. I have experienced such a delicacy in ages.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deliciously bawdy, tender and touching, captivating, May 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Late Mr. Shakespeare (Hardcover)

Pickleherring takes one on a romp through Shakespeare's life, giving the modern reader a real feel for the life of the Bard and his times. Nye's use of the language is delightful, his timing perfect (except for what I saw as a few slow moments in the last third of tbe book), and his send-up of many of the controversies surrounding Shakespeare and his work is wonderful. I loved the use of scholarly footnotes smack in the middle of two of the most dramatic pages of the book. I laughed, I cried, and I fell in love with the narrator. A little Shakespeare knowledge is advised; it will send most of us eagerly to the reference books and to WS's works.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nye's Second Best Novel About Shakespeare, May 26, 1999

By 

Michael J. Connor (Waltham, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Late Mr. Shakespeare (Hardcover)

"The Late Mr. Shakespeare" just published in the United States, but published last year in England is Robert Nye's second novel about Shakespeare, and his second best novel about Shakespeare. Nye's earlier novel "Mrs. Shakespeare" has not been published in the USA as far as I can tell,though it is still in print in the UK. In the earlier novel Nye has Shakespeare's wife Anne tell her story. It is a slim novel, and a good read. On the last page of "The Late Mr. Shakespeare" Nye gives the reader a list of the authors that he read and used in writing the novel. This "critic-fuel" (to borrow a term from Alasdair Gray) is what I found most interesting about the book. No doubt scholars and critics will be able to identify Nye's sources. I will just mention a few examples: Robert Reynolds, the narrator, also known as Pickleherring is from E. K. Chambers' "Elizabethan Stage," volume 2, p.336. The historical Reynolds was an actor, but had no professional relationship with Shakespeare. He and his wife Jane were indicted for non-attendence at church 1616 and 1617. Pickleherring was the name by which he was known in Germany. The other actors Nye mentions are also listed in Chamber's book. Shakespeare's first job in London, horse-holding at the theatre is from Johnson's preface to Shakespeare's plays. The chapter on Tom O'Bedlam comes from an essay by Robert Graves. The chapter on the plague in London during the year 1665 is from Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year." I could go on, but I think you get my point. Some have said that the more you know about Elizabethan England the more you will enjoy this book. That's not quite correct. The more you know about Shakespearean facts, traditions and legends, the more you can sift through the impossible, the plausible and the factual of Nye's book. Is this mixture of impossible, plausable and factual entertaining? For me knowing where Nye gathered his materials was distracting. Now I am sure that most of Nye's readers have not read the large scholarly biographies of Shakespeare by Halliwell-Phillips, Chambers, or Fripp, but I have, and I prefer their versions of Shakespeare to Nye's.