Customer Reviews

Shakespeare's Dog: A Novel

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I thought this was going to be some refined story of the Bard through the eyes of his dog. Instead, I got a randy romp of domestic fights and love, told in "canine Elizebethan" form. Wow what fun ! Some of the lines Mr Hooker (Bill's dog) I still like to use. This is a fun book

Who would've thought to ask a dog for his opinion of love (and all related activities), especially a dog living in Elizabethan England? It's been a few years since I read this book, but I still have some fond memories of Mr. Hooker's opinions.

"Shakespeare's Dog" is a great book.

Hooker (the dog in question) stands among the best animal-characters in all of English literature (and far above most of its humans, too).

The book manages to be bawdy yet astute, energetic yet informative. It is comic and poignant throughout, and unabashedly Shakespearean. It's the sort of courageous venture that either fails pathetically, or else achieves its own genuine, legitimate eminence. And "Shakespeare's Dog" is NOT pathetic, people.

If English-Lit students will catch an extra joke here and there, it hardly matters -- because the book is dense, every page, with wit, and emotion, and observation. There is no shortage of sense or slight to the general reader. It even sustains some palpable doggy-angst and doggy-suspense... The sort of undiluted, straightforward narrative that a dog, with its peculiar dilemmas and way of accounting, might make of life. And Hooker's life beneath the Bard's high window is squalid, momentous, and never without drama.

This is a book by a Shakespearean academician, possessed completely by all the Gods of Dogs, and written during a week-long Spring-Break bender. If you like dogs... or Shakespeare... or both... or for godsakes neither... BUY THIS BOOK lol!

I read this book several years ago, and its distinctive perspective made me see some aspects of the world, including William Shakespeare, with new eyes. Since then I have ceased to think of dogs as having tails: they have "plumes," a perfect term that is descriptive of attitude as well as appearance. Rooke's experiment in point of view is brilliant.