‘Chasing Shakespeares’
Lynn Bonney
Saturday, October 7, 2006
“Chasing Shakespeares,” by Sarah Smith, Atria Books, 2003, $24
Also in paperback by Washington Square Press, 2004, $13
It’s a mystery, a love story, a literary whodunit. Sarah Smith’s “Chasing Shakespeares” may not fit into a specific genre, but it’s smart and exciting, a thriller in its own particular way.
Delving into the question “Who really wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare?,” the novel treats the reader to a romp through literary scholarship.
The narrator, Joe Roper, fell in love with Shakespeare as a 9-year-old. Now a graduate student, he is cataloging a collection of Elizabethan material, donated to Northeastern University to a collector who amassed a trove of manuscripts, letters and poems. Most of them are fakes, but Roper — whose mentors are Shakespearean scholars — is hoping, as so many others have, that he will turn up a document from the Bard himself.
And there, in his hand, is a letter asserting that the writer is not the author of the plays that are attributed to him. The signature: William Shakespeare.
The letter, Roper knows, must be a forgery, but it passes all his usual tests. But taking it to a colleague could expose him to scorn, even end his academic career.
Enter Posy Gould, a Harvard grad student with the soul of a Valley Girl, who believes the letter is real. Using her rich daddy’s credit card, she and Roper take off for London, where they search for answers to the question.
Smith shepherds the reader through a world of possible Shakespeares, from Francis Bacon to Edward de Vere, the Duke of Oxford. Searching the British Library, visiting the new Globe Theatre and the site of the old, Roper manages to merge the Londons of the 21st century and the Elizabethan Age. At times, his ability to “see” the past come to life as it was — or at least as it might have been — breathes miraculous life into those long-ago days. It’s a magical history tour and readers are lucky to be along for the ride.
Perhaps the novel’s most endearing character is Katherine Darnell, who plays a minor, but essential, role. A retired librarian from Iowa, she makes her appearance in London, at a gathering of Oxford fanatics. She is an agnostic in the debate about the real Shakespeare, but she advises Roper that he must search for documents from Shakespeare’s “lost years.” She believes that someone saved those documents and that they still exist.
“I believe that God is a librarian,” she says. “I believe that literature is holy, Mr. Roper, that it is the best part of our souls that we break off and give each other, and God has a special dispensation for it, angels to guard its making and its preservation.”
“Chasing Shakespeares” raises questions of history, ownership of art and family relationships, couching those questions in romance, humor and moments of genuine excitement. Smith draws on her own experience as a scholar in London to bring the Elizabethans to life in a lively literary mystery.
Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”