Between Shakespeare in Love, Upstart Crow and that episode of Doctor Who, among many others, the life of William Shakespeare has become almost as rich a source of entertainment as his own works. Most of the time, though, we enter the action with the mature man, already established, writing and rehearsing, a man about the Elizabethan town.

Burgess starts his story earlier. We meet the newly pubescent teenage Shakespeare, obsessed with wordplay and fornication, one of which will make him his fortune and the other cause most of his frequent downfalls. Before we arrive at Shakespeare the playwright, we have to encounter Shakespeare the aimless dreamer, tricked into a loveless marriage (albeit with a role-play obsessed nymphomaniac), thwarted in his attempt to escape to the life of a private tutor in the homes of the rich and good by his inability to not get rather too familiar with the boys in his care.

This is not a sympathetic portrait. This is Shakespeare the unfaithful husband and pederast, and once we arrive in London he is all ambition and seething resentment, trying to climb the social ladder via the bed of the Earl of Southampton, but brought low by his obsession for an African prostitute, these being the “fair youth” and “dark lady” alluded to in his sonnets.

All of this is told in a pseudo-Shakespearean language, complete with made-up words that need to be divined from context. Burgess was always a clever wordsmith himself, and initially this makes it a tough read, but as with the Nadsat of his most famous work, the mind very quickly clicks with the rhythms of his writing.

I suspect that to enjoy the book requires a certain familiarity with the events of Shakespeare’s life. Burgess hits the important checkpoints while building an entirely fictional narrative around them. But almost as interesting is the depiction of plague-ridden late Tudor London, a once proud city under a formerly formidable queen now falling into decay as she grows irascible in her old age, mirrored by Shakespeare’s own descent into pox-ridden dotage.

A gripping read, full of surprises. I began reading Shakespeare and seeing his plays when I was a schoolboy. Apart from a high school teacher’s mention of the birth of Anne Hathaway’s first child only a few months after her marriage to the young Shakespeare, I gave no thought to Shakespeare’s experience of love, nor did I wonder about the sonnet beginning with the title of Burgess’s novel. Not to mention that so many of the sonnets are addressed to a young man. Burgess writes with a fluid quasi-Elizabethan style that might put some off with many a rhetorical flourish familiar from the bard’s plays and poems, but he has stitched together the available literary evidence in a brilliant way, including WS’s involvement with the Earl of Southampton and the mysterious lady whose eyes are ‘nothing like the Sun’. I recommend this to all who love the bard and enjoy a good read.

Excellent fictional account of the love life of the Bard, filling in the gaps with conjectures derived mainly from the sonnets, in keeping with the time depicted. I especially liked how some themes of his work would be worked seamlessly into the narrative. The language is a special treat, with a lot to ponder on, and a poetic feel to many passages. Incredible to think it was written fifty years ago already, it seems so fresh.

„…ha Shakespeare műveit Marlowe írta, akkor ki írta Marlowe műveit? Erre a kérdésre a választ abból a tényből merítjük, hogy Shakespeare egy Anne Hathaway nevű nő férje volt. Ez tény. Az új elmélet szerint azonban Marlowe volt Anne Hathaway férje, ami viszont igen nagy szomorúsággal töltötte el Shakespeare-t, ugyanis nem eresztették be a házba.”
(Woody Allen)



Talán nem kockázatos kijelenteni, hogy az életrajzok többnyire életrajzi adatokra épülnek. No de mi van akkor, ha olyasvalakiről akarunk életrajzot fabrikálni, akiről alig tudni valamit? Itt van például ez a Shakespeare, akivel kapcsolatban az önjelölt irodalomtudósok késhegyre menő vitákat tudnak folytatni, hogy egyáltalán létezett-e, vagy igazából csak fiktív személy, aki mögött Marlowe, Essex grófja, Francis Bacon, esetleg Csingiling, a barkácstündér személye bújik meg. Burgess ezt a problémát felettébb kreatívan oldja meg: az ő Shakespeare-je nem magukban a tényekben, hanem a regény nyelvében lakozik. Unortodox életrajz tehát, ami arra tesz kísérletet, hogy a szavakban, kifejezésekben és mondatokban tükrözze vissza azt a nehezen körvonalazható valamit, amit a „shakespeare-ség” kvintesszenciájaként ismer fel az olvasó. Lemond a koherens ívről, egyfajta patchwork-szöveget alkot, ami végig sokkal előbbre valónak tartja a hangulatok és érzések átsugárzását, mint hogy érettségi segédanyagként felhasználható legyen.

Persze ehhez az író ura kell legyen a nyelvnek, vagy nem is ura: egyenrangú társa, forró szeretője. Burgessben megvan ez a potenciál, képes szavaival ábrázolni a korszak miazmás levegőjét, és képes arra is, hogy a zsenit olyan közelségbe hozza, ahol a zseniség jegyei szétszálazhatatlanul összebogozódnak a jellembéli gyengeségekkel. (Vagy nyugodtan mondjuk ki: bűnökkel.) Mocskos és szép szöveg, bátor vállalkozás, helyenként hevülten lelkesültem érte. Mindazonáltal a végébe kicsit belefáradtam, ott mintha elfogyott volna vagy az írói, vagy az olvasói lendület, egyfajta szétesettség hatalmasodott el a regényen, és Burgess nem tudott teljesen meggyőzni arról, hogy ez tervezett szétesés.

Creative sex scenes, clever ejaculation imagery, and deep thoughts for godless societies.

Burgess offers wonderful sex scenes to illustrate that God’s favorite activity for married humans can be rendered into beautiful words. That this novel was written over half a century ago testifies to his enduring literary power.

Of course, contemporary society may not appreciate how the author writes about sexuality since some misguided souls think that sex is just a pastime instead of a fulfilling part of married life. Oh, well, that’s their problem.

The rest of us can enjoy this novel not so much as a philosophical treatise on the sanctity of marriage and how Shakespeare broke that sanctity, but as linguistic revelry equal to any Shakespearean drama or sonnet. Therefore, if you can’t tolerate Shakespeare’s antiquated language just yet, read this novel instead.

What linguistic revelry? Well!

For example, stating that he “loosed into her honey his milk” (33) is simply clever language for ejaculation, as is the imagery that “a thrust of opal drops in animal ecstasy unleashed a universe” (191).

Burgess uses such literary expression of sexuality to expose the inherent disruption of Shakespeare’s society, a time which “cracked order in State and Church” (267). Beyond the snickering fun of the above examples of coitus, the author writes some serious condemnations of that milieu.

“That lust and filthy fornication and sodomy and buggery roam this realm, beating their lewd wings and raising a coughing and stinking and blinding dust to lead reason astray [….] You may take one man’s sinfulness to be the type and pattern of all” ([184]) is not merely creative language. The ideas apply to our time as much as it did to Shakespeare’s, and no amount of protestation from those who think they are “liberated” today can ignore that the sexual activity detonated by the terms “fornication” and “sodomy” (established for millennia) remain sinful and immoral.

The saddest sections of the novel are Burgess’ suggestions that Shakespeare was a man who utterly lost his faith, whether the “Old Faith” of Catholicism or Anglicanism, which the Tudor monarchs forced on the nation in the sixteenth century under threat of death. Shakespeare is someone who “kept quiet about his own weak faith in anything” (53). He may have been a master writer of drama and sonnets, but Shakespeare was a fornicator, an adulterer (with boys, men, and women), and a coward.

Now wonder, then, that a genuine hero in the novel is Shakespeare’s father, who says, “I see that there is more truth there [in the Old Faith of Catholicism] than I formerly thought, and that men have been cruelly burnt for nothing” (200). Maybe Shakespeare himself found his father’s faith eventually. After all, the novel ends with the capitalized words “My Lord” (271).

But that would be trying to force a happy ending on a fictionalized account of a life that had great literary merit yet is a piss-poor example of how one should live.

We must thank Burgess, then, for a fun read with didactic value.

4.5 stars

Să nu credeți că ignor diferența dintre un document istoric și o ficțiune :)

Am extras din romanul lui Anthony Burgess cîteva ipoteze cu privire la WS. Unele au oarece temei, cele mai multe, nu. Voi prezenta mai jos lista lor și le voi însoți fie de semnul scepticismului absolut (--), fie de semnul încrederii absolute (++). Așadar, în notația mea, (--) înseamnă: nu cred deloc, iar (++): s-ar putea să fie așa cum spune Burgess, deși s-ar putea să fie și altfel. Semnul (+-) desemnează resemnarea absolută: îmi suspend judecata, nu pot să mă pronunț, mă abțin.

Catalogul ipotezelor:

1. William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) a început să scrie sonete pe cînd se afla încă în Stratford-upon-Avon, pe la 14-15 ani: (--). De fapt, WS a început să scrie destul de tîrziu, oricum după vîrsta de 20 de ani. Primul lui poem s-a tipărit în 1593. Cam tot atunci a redactat și prima lui piesă de teatru...

2. WS a urmat școala de gramatică (grammar school, King's New School) din localitatea în care s-a născut: a studiat, probabil, latina și cîțiva scriitori antici, Plaut printre ei: (++). Se presupune că l-a avut ca magistru pe un anume Thomas Jenkins, atestat în școala din Stratford după 1575.

3. WS nu a iubit-o pe Anne Hathaway cu care s-a căsătorit, totuși, în noiembrie 1582, cînd primește o așa-numită „dispensă de căsătorie” de la episcopul din Worcester. Avea 18 ani, soția avea, probabil, cu 8 ani mai mult decît el și era însărcinată. Anne a născut în mai 1583 o fată: au botezat-o Susanna. În februarie 1585, Anne naște doi copii gemeni, un băiat, Hamnet, și o fată, Judith; Hamnet va muri la vîrsta de 11 ani, în august 1596: (++).

4. WS a fost pedagog în casa unui anume John Quedgeley, judecător de pace și gentleman; judecătorul de pace avea 5 băieți și l-a angajat pe WS ca profesor de latină. Ipoteza pornește de la o anecdotă spusă de un actor la mult timp după moartea lui Shakespeare. Povestitorul pretindea că i-a fost prieten și că o știa chiar de la WS: (--).

5. Trimis în Bristol să cumpere o carte, WS vede în ușa unei case o femeie cu părul negru și pielea întunecată, arămie. Ar fi cea dintîi întruchipare a unei fantasme care l-a urmărit toată viața: Doamna brună, Dark Lady: (+-). Partea a doua a ipotezei este adevărată, prima e aproape sigur falsă, deși în vremea lui Shakespeare existau negrese în toate bordelurile din Anglia. Nu e obligatoriu, totuși, ca „Black Lady” să fi fost o negresă. Putea fi pur și simplu o englezoaică mai brunetă, cu părul sîrmos, negru, precum femeia din sonetul 130...

6. WS a fost bisexual: (+-). Greu de dovedit doar pe bază de poezii.

7. WS a avut sifilis. Morbul francez i-a grăbit moartea (--). Sonetul 147 nu poate fi un temei serios pentru această ipoteză.

8. WS știa limbile greacă, latină și franceză; pe cînd era copist în Stratford, l-ar fi citit pe Rabelais în original: (--). Știa, de fapt, ca să folosesc chiar formula lui Benjamin Jonson, „small latin, and less greek / small latine, and lesse greeke”...

9. WS din Stratford-upon-Avon (și nimeni altcineva), al cărui mormînt se găsește în catedrala Holy Trinity din numitul oraș Stratford, alături de mormîntul lui Anne Hathaway, a scris cu mîna lui toate operele atribuite de tradiție lui WS, actor în Londra, poet și dramaturg: (++).

10. WS a fost și în realitate WS: (++).

Pentru a formula aceste ipoteze, Anthony Burgess a folosit două surse: puținele documente care au rămas de la WS și imaginația liberă. Pentru a le evalua, eu am folosit intuiția cartesiană...

Cînd a murit de fapt Shakespeare? Despre o confuzie venerabilă:

https://valeriugherghel.blogspot.com/...

Greatly amusing. Would also recommend reading Burgess' book about Marlowe.

Not Burgess' best, and Dead Man in Deptford is the superior English playwright fictionalization. Burgess doesn't shy away from the unhygienic grit of 16th century life, but this is perfected in the latter novel, and tends to be overdone in this one. Burgess interprets the literary artist well, however, and makes some interesting assumptions about the obscure life of W. Shakespeare.

Summary:
Anthony Burgess’s Nothing Like the Sun is a highly fascinating, albeit fictional, re-telling of Shakespeare’s love life. In 234 pages, Burgess manages to introduce his reader to a young Shakespeare, developing into manhood and clumsily fumbling his way through his first sexual escapade with a woman, through Shakespeare’s long, famed (and contested) romance with Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and, ultimately, to Shakespeare’s final days, the establishment of The Globe theater, and Shakespeare’s romance with “The Dark Lady.”

The Good:
Burgess has a command for language. This is my third experience with a work by Anthony Burgess and, once again, I am impressed and awed by his skill as a story-teller and an imagist. While, in typical fashion, he does tend to break-off at points of leisurely prose into something more Gertrude Steine-esque (stream of consciousness, for example), for the most part he keeps this novel in finely tuned form. There is also an exceptional arc to this story, which carries the reader from Shakespeare’s boyhood, to his death, with common characters interacting regularly and to an end result. Even the minor characters, such as Wriothesley’s secretary, are well-established and easily identified, once they have been described. I also very much appreciated the references to other historical figures of the time, and how they impacted Shakespeare’s life and works. Marlowe, Lord Burghley, Sir Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I, The University Wits (Greene, Lyly, Nashe) all make an appearance, or are at least referred to, throughout the novel – their works (as well as works of the Classicists – Ovid, Virgil; and the early dramatists – Seneca, etc) are clearly defined in relation to their impact on Shakespeare’s own designs and interpretations. I found this highly informative and a nice refresher to/reinforcement of my studies of Shakespeare at the Undergraduate and Graduate levels – I enjoyed being reminded of how the playwrights competed and worked together, how Shakespeare was inspired, and by whom, and how politics and the time period played an important role in the successes and failures of the players (Greene, for instance, died sickly and shamed; Marlowe hunted down as an atheist; Jonson’s imprisonment for treasonous writing, and Nashe’s escape from England for the same). Incredibly fascinating and surprisingly sound story, which also appropriately references, with subtlety, many of Shakespeare’s works, at their time of development, so that a reader familiar with the works may catch them without their names actually having been written. Lovely little way for Burgess to reward his learned readers (as Shakespeare oft amused himself by doing).

The Bad:
Burgess takes much creative, though well-researched, license with Shakespeare’s life and the details of his relationship with various people. For instance, while many scholars believe “The Rival Poet” of “The Fair Youth” sonnets to be either Chapman or Marlowe due to circumstances of fame, stature, and wealth (ego, essentially), Burgess breaks from the traditional interpretation of “The Rival Poet” to explore the possibility that Chapman was, in fact, a rival for Henry Wriothesley’s attention and affection and, for this reason, Shakespeare became jealous and critical of Chapman. Similarly, the ultimately un-established relationship between Shakespeare and Wriothesley, Shakespeare and “The Dark Lady” (or Lucy, in this novel), as well as, even Shakespeare and his wife – are all quite largely fictional. That being said, while the novel’s general details – including historical happenings, political and religious tensions, and rivalries between the poets and the players are all well envisioned – the novel is dangerous in that the story of Shakespeare’s life comes across so logical here that it almost appears factual (and, who knows, a large portion of Burgess’s interpretations may have been true). Thus, the writing is fantastic, but the liberties taken are troublesome.

Final Verdict (4.0 out of 5.0)
The story was well written and enjoyable. It was also, I thought, a fascinating glimpse at history and this particularly time period. Burgess reminds the reader of many of the fears and prejudices of the time, and seems to be more critical of Elizabeth I than Shakespeare himself (most scholars believe) was. I appreciated Burgess’s cleverness and subtlety, but also his openness and candor in terms of sexuality and taboo relationships. Burgess clearly wants to open the reader’s eyes to what very well could have happened, yet is never acknowledged. Still, some of the author’s creative license, I think, goes beyond an artistic historian’s realm. When I compare Nothing Like the Sun to, say, Stone’s Lust for Life I find the latter to be much more honest to the facts as we know them, whereas the former is a bit more adventurous in scope. Overall, though, it was a highly educational, enjoyable read of an interesting and valid perspective look on Shakespeare.

“…the city grew a head, glowing over limbs of towers and houses in the rat-scurrying night, and its face was drawn, its eyes sunken, it vomited foul living matter down to ooze over the cobbles, in its delirium it cried Jesus Jesus.”

“There was no doubt of it: a poem in print was somehow a different work from the warm, fingered, crossed-out, pored-on, loved and hated sheets that held one's own nature in every line (one's hand was indeed one’s hand, part of oneself).”

““Little innocent Will. He who makes Tarquin leap on Lucrece and everything the filthy world could dream of happen in Titus. Well, you cannot separate so your dreaming from your waking. If you would indulge the one you must suffer the other.””

“But there was a great fat heart, crammed like a goose's liver, dripping treason treason treason; the entrails were endless, an eternity of pink sausage; the crowd was a-roar with delight at the comedy of the fatness of the chopped limbs.”

“We fly, I swear we have flown, I swear we have taken wing and soared through a ceiling that has become all jelled air and floated then among puce and auriferous nebula. It is the glorification of the flesh, the word made flesh.”

“The transports I now enter are a burning hell of pleasure. If before we have soared and flown, now we burrow, eyes and noseholes and snoring mouths filled with earth and worms and scurrying atomies, all of which are transformed to a heavy though melting jelly of pounded red flesh mixed with wine. We dig with pioneering wings down towards the fire that is the whole earth's centre, nub, coynt, meaning. At the seventh approach to dying, my loins scraped raw, she sinking to a howling sweat-gleaming brown-gold phantom, I fancy that the ceiling opens as by some quaint shutter-device to reveal a pearl intaglio heaven…”

“With her I can find the beast's heaven which is the angel's hell; with him, the body's hunger now able to be set aside, there is that most desirable of sorts of love, that which Plato did hymn. And then the devil within me says: Yet thou dost admire his beauty of form, it is an impure love. I dream of our somehow gravely dancing a pavane or sarabande, all three, in whose movement the reconciling of the beast and the angel may, in myself, be accomplished. I would, in some manner, wish to share her with him, him with her, but perhaps only a poet may think in these high terms, not understandable of either the soul (giver) or body (taker). And so I wait to be told that I lose both a mistress and a friend.”

“And He a great wave ot mriness washed over his own poor Rogue as he saw dete more the boy's coffin drop into the forte, and he wondered whether, with death always lurking in alleyways, tainted meat, sour ale, death a very contending mid of life, those great cries about honour and rank and treachery were more than the bawlings of a fretful child in a cradle. Honour is a mere scutcheon. Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday.”

“WS sighed to think he would always be, in some manner, unable to provide the right biting word, the shaming image, for the little evils of his own time.”

““The times change quickly. A play should be bigger than the times.””

“All this could be borne by myself, but I wept at the injustice done to my poor body. A hundred ulcers pitched their tents on my skin during the night and were, in the winter morning, a neat and well-ordered camp. Oh oh oh, I cried and tried to kneel to my body to beg forgiveness, though I must first beg forgiveness for making my body kneel with me. In sleep I could step out and look down on it and drip my compassion. If I had done wrong my body had aot, and yet my body must bear the punishment.”

“God is a sort of roaring clown full of bone-cracking japes.”

“—Nay, not wrongs, for wrongs, he said, were man-made and might be redressed. But he thought that the great white body of the world was set upon by an illness from beyond, gratuitous and incurable. And that even the name Love was, far from being the best invocation against it, often the very conjuration that summoned the mining and ulcerating hordes. We are, he seemed to say, poisoned at source.”

I'm not quite sure what to make of Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess. The only other book I'd read by Burgess was A Clockwork Orange, a strange and interesting story of a dystopic future. Nothing Like the Sun is a tale of William Shakespeare and his purported relationships with the Earl of Southampton and Fatima, the Dark Lady.
Like Clockwork, Burgess has a way with language, Nothing Like the Sun written in an oldish English, as if you are reading a Shakespearan play. The story, itself, starts with a young William's life in Stratford, working for his father's glove - making business. Shakespeare is a moody boy, writing sonnets, chasing women until he is forced to marry Anne Hathaway after getting her pregnant.
Shakespeare then joins a travelling troupe of actors, begins writing their plays and moves to London, where he meets the Earl of Southampton and becomes involved in a romantic relationship. As well, influenced by a previous experience with a black prostitute in Bristol, he begins a relationship with Fatima, who he meets in London.
All the while, he writes sonnets for his lovers and plays for the public. His family is mentioned, he sometimes visits Stratford and at one point discovers his wife may not have been faithful to him either.
But, ultimately, for it being an interesting historical story that flowed nicely once you got used to the language and spent a bit of time with the book, I wondered if it really meant that much to me or if it provided me with any real information about Shakespeare. I'll have to try Bill Bryson's history of Shakespeare's life and compare... Just not right this minute. (3 stars)