The Player's Boy [Paperback]

Bryher (Author), Patrick Gregory (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2006

The orphaned James Sands anticipated a magnificent career as apprentice to an Elizabethan theater troupe. But when his masters die unexpectedly, Sands must fight for his art, his home, and ultimately his life as the violent reign of James I overshadows the glory of the Elizabethan era. An historical novel with profound contemporary reverberations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An English novelist and patron of artists such as H.D., Bryher (Winifred Ellerman, 1894-1983) first published this beautifully realized story of a young Elizabethan actor's apprentice in 1953. After the death of James Sands's beloved Master Awsten, one of the Queen's Players who has taught Sands the rudiments of acting, Sands travels from Southwark, London and passes through a succession of employers. At a house in the country, he meets the summering playwright Francis Beaumont, in the process of writing his play Philaster. James wins the part of Bellario, the girl page disguised as a boy for love of Philaster, who in a curious royal menage-a-trois sends Bellario to serve his beloved Arethusa; James duly falls in love, unrequitedly, with Beaumont's virginal fiancee, Ursula. History intrudes offstage in the form of Sir Walter Ralegh's execution and the ascent of the Puritans, and James, now a clerk, becomes a kind of poignant anachronism, too delicate for the coarsening new age. Theatrical and romantically lyrical, Bryher's novel is a forgotten gem, channeling the servant boy's first person flawlessly.
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About the Author

Bryher (1894-1983) wrote many critically acclaimed novels and memoirs during her lifetime. She was deeply involved in film, politics, and psychology. She funded Contact Editions, and edited Life and Letters To-day and the first English film journal, Close Up. She was the longtime companion of H.D., and a generous supporter of numerous writers, artists, psychoanalysts, and culture icons, including Marianne Moore, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, and Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company.

Patrick Gregory is an editor, translator, and the author of the novel The Dagguereotype. He is the son of poet, translator, and critic Horace Gregory and poet Marya Zaturenska, who were intimate friends with Bryher. He now lives in Northampton, MA and South Halifax, VT.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Paris Press (July 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930464096
• ISBN-13: 978-1930464094
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,231,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars scrupulous and haunting, March 3, 2007

By 

edlk (New England, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Player's Boy (Paperback)

"When Elizabethan splendor was passing into Jacobean twilight" was the promotional line when THE PLAYER'S BOY was first published in 1953 and it still captures the essence and the dichotomy of Bryher's work.

The novelist and translator Patrick Gregory (who knew Bryher) has written a graceful and invaluable introduction that provides entrance to this welcome reprinting. This smart, tight little novel tells the story of a time of turbulent transition as seen through the eyes of a young theatrical apprentice in the heady, muddy, dangerous world of 17th century England. A tale of one young man's tangled journey to maturity (if not wisdom), this is historical fiction of the highest order, scrupulous and haunting.

Bryher's talent is to take the reader inside the world she writes about, showing, personalizing the impact outside forces (what later becomes known as "history") have on ordinary and unsuspecting lives. It is James Sands' voice - at once antique and modern - that tells not only a tale of backstage life, with all its byzantine intrigues, but also one of life choices, of compromises and consequences, of external events and intrusions and political plottings that take him away from the theatre but never let him leave it. THE PLAYER'S BOY is an unorthodox bildungsroman with a resolution as unexpected as it is inevitable.