A Question of Will (Out of This World Series) [Paperback]

Lynne Kositsky (Author)

Book Description

Series: Out of This World Series | Publication Date: May 1, 2000

Lynne Kositsky tackles the academic debate of just who wrote Shakespeare's plays and sonnets with humour and insight in this almost believable tale of a present-day teen stranded in the shadow of the Globe Theatre. Through Willow, we meet Will Shakspere, Edward de Vere, Richard Burbage, John Pyke, even Queen Elizabeth. Guaranteed to intrigue Shakespeare's fans, both old and new.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 6-9-Set in London, this novel begins with Perin Willoughby taking a summer-school course on Shakespeare. On a field trip to the Globe Theatre, she becomes separated from the rest of the class and is sucked through time during an eclipselike occurrence into the bard's world. She meets a colorful, smelly, rambunctious cast of characters and immediately falls for a hot blond, John Pyke. The only problem is that he and everyone else thinks that she's a boy. Willow/Perin is apprenticed to Shakespeare, who is portrayed as being rude, a slob, and a heavy drinker. He swindles his sponsor out of money, lacks the intelligence of an author of his stature, and never writes. Disguised as a boy playing a girl, the witty and resourceful heroine eventually works her way on stage as Juliet. Her speech is filled with slang such as "doggam," which may wear thin with readers, and she switches between comparisons of the present and the Elizabethan era. With the exception of Pyke, the other characters are not fully enough developed for readers to care about them. However, Kositsky does give a sense of the sights, sounds, smells, and people of 16th-century London and addresses the debate over who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. A serviceable introduction to the topic; an afterword provides background.

Lynn Bryant, Great Bridge Middle School, Chesapeake, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

...the only book...for this age group that deals with the question of...authorship of Shakespeare's plays. -- Suite 101, Canadian Literature, June 16 2000

A Question of Will's upbeat language, with the playful--sometimes ribald--humor of actors' stories, will have universal appeal. -- Saskatoon Star Phoenix, July 22, 2000

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  
• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: Roussan Publishers (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1896184669
• ISBN-13: 978-1896184661
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,774,671 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A blast from the Elizabethan past., November 17, 2000

By 

Richard F. Whalen (Truro, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Question of Will (Out of This World Series) (Paperback)

Kositsky plunges her heroine back into Elizabethan England for a wild, rollicking adventure with an acting company and a theater hanger-on named Will Shakspere, who seems to be taking credit for Shakespeare's plays. Young adults (and not so young) will relish her gross encounters with Elizabethan thugs and her winning ways with the acting company and Queen Elizabeth herself, who bestows an early version of the Academy Awards. Hard-core Stratfordians will object to Oxford as the playwright, but Kositsky's light, spoofing treatment, solidly grounded in the facts of the authorship controversy,easily carries the reader into her version of the world's biggest literary mystery. It's a blast from the past.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delightful Romp through Literary History, November 3, 2000

By 

J. H. Haverhill (Palo Alto, Ca.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Question of Will (Out of This World Series) (Paperback)

Here is an engaging, entertaining, and indeed positively delightful romp through the underworld of the Elizabethan theatrical scene -- as witnessed through the eyes of an intellectually precocious thirteen-something (unlucky in love!-Yikes!) named Willow who suddenly finds herself teleported from 20th century Ontario into the grimy candlelight world of London in 1593 where she finds herself rooming with the -- allegedly -- great playwrite "Shakspere."

Only the most dogmatic partisans of the by-now moribund official view of Shakespeare will be offended this linguistically precocious reconstruction of the "might have been" hypothesis of the Earl of Oxford's identity as the real Bard. Indeed Lynne Kositsky has an uncanny knack for anchoring her fictional narrative in detailed and singularly accurate memory for cultural nuance and historical incident. Kositsky also possesses a natural gift for the pulse of language. Her narrator speaks in an energetic and often captivating fusion of Canadian Valley Girl slang and Elizabethen vernacular, which is certain to capture the imagination of many young readers. Is this another J.K. Rowling in the making?

Here's a taste:

Bobby Goffe really hated me, that was for sure: he criticized and cuffed me every chance he got. Shakspere dissed me daily, perchance cos he'd been stuck with me, mayhap cos he feared I'd discovered his secret schemes. And I still needed to keep a sharp look out for that other gig, Beavis, Butthead, and Mystery Guy, at every turn. To cut a long story short, I felt threatened every step I took. At the house, at the Theatre, on the street, a mere whisper would twist my head around, a hint of a hubbub would set my heart to heaving.

(p. 70)

As the reader may detect, Ms. Kositsky's most formidable weapon, like that of her dark hero Edward Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is a razor sharp wit, viz. her biting satirical invocation of the (historically real)duel between actor Gabriel Spencer and actor-playwright Ben Jonson, in which Willow, transporting mysterious packages between Vere and Shakspere, is revealed to be the precipitating cause of the duel:

Galloping gobstoppers, what should I do now? Stand my ground till [Spenser] strangled me, or agree to what he wanted, and then get out while the going was good. I was too scared to make up my mind. He started shaking me again like I was a pair of maracas. And maybe there were two of me at that, cos I was starting to see everything double.

"No, never," I cried at last. "I will never give you anything of Vere's. Do your worst!" I drooped over like a limp lily, and was about to throw up on the villain's boots, really making him mad, when Ben Jonson rushed into the Cathedral. He must have been behind us all the time. In a trice, he realized the mess I was in and shoved his bully-boy face into Spencer's, fixing him with his beery breath. "That's Shakspere's lad, Gabe. Put him down right now, right here, right this minute, before you do him a permanent disablement"......

(p. 102)

The book can be recommended without reserve for all readers between the ages of eight and eighty who love the derring-do world which belongs to "Shakespeare" -- the world which harbored the great voyages of exploration which have made our modern life, for better or worse, what it now is. The author deserves congratulation if not some sort of medal; but one may be sure the further books by Ms. Kositsky are not far from publication.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new look at Shakespeare, June 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Question of Will (Out of This World Series) (Paperback)

A new and unusual look at "Did Shakespeare write it?" Interesting and appealing to teenagers from 9 to 90. Another triumph for this author.