Customer Reviews

Untam'd Desire

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In short, fascinating subject matter hampered by a needlessly complex writing style.

The author is in love with his own cleverness, and seems to purposely obscure meaning in favor of sounding erudite. Take the line "for many quotidian behaviour caused a slide of such things into desuetude." That could be written much more clearly as "for many, daily behavior caused such things to slide into disuse." In fact, there are several other places the author uses "quotidian" where the more intelligible word "daily" would suffice. I have a rather extensive vocabulary, and still wanted to have an OED beside me much of the time.

Similarly, Haynes drops names all over the place, without much elaboration or explanation. You should already have a fair knowledge of Elizabethan history (literary and court politics) before attempting this book. It's easy to get lost when he drops asides like "not long after that lamentable fracas at Mrs. Bull's" -- if you didn't already know that Marlowe was killed in May 1593 at the house of Eleanor Bull, you'd be lost.

A lot of this book did go over my head. But if you can learn to skim somewhat and pick up the gist, it's still quite an interesting read. I found the details about daily life in Elizabethan England both fascinating and entertaining. Although I've done a great deal of reading recently about Elizabethan society, I still learned a lot, and came up with new topics and titles that I want to explore further.

And, though I was put off by his writing style, I still want to seek out another of his books, titled "Elizabethan Secret Services" -- so it's not *that* off-putting.

This is nowhere near as robust as the title would lead one to believe. It implies that the contents of this book would be more detailed regarding the risque lives of Elizabethan times. I have read many historical novels over the years which were much more enlightening regarding what went on behind closed doors. In short, this is a disappointment, being quite dry in long descriptions of court life, who pulled which strings to promote their own agenda, etc. Any author worth their salt who writes historical novels includes such details.

Good all around read- discusses the subject matter in depth while remaining in good taste. Introduction is of particular interest.