MR. SHAKESPEARES BASTARD by Richard B. Wright (HarperCollins), 342 pages, $32.99 cloth. Rating: NNN
The title is a giveaway. Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard is about the (fictional) illegitimate daughter of William Shakespeare, Aerlene Ward, who as a 70-year-old recounts her life and that of her mother, Elizabeth, who met young Will in London in 1587.
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But as readers of Richard B. Wright’s award-winning Clara Callan know, Wright is expert at getting deep inside his female characters. His latest book sets up a subtly developed world of women who connect and pass on their knowledge and stories from one generation to the next.
We meet the book-loving narrator, who frequently cites the Bard’s lines and characters, at three stages in her life. There’s also the young Charlotte, in whose house the elder Aerlene works and who writes down her history, the romantic Elizabeth and, most boisterous of all, the cross-dressing prostitute Mary Pinder, Elizabeth’s go-between and protector in London.
The first half is Elizabeth’s story and the second, Aerlene’s, as she goes off in search of the now-famous father she’s never known except in the books she’s read.
But Wright also weaves through his story a look at England under Elizabeth, James and Cromwell. His use of social, political and religious details as well as a believable capturing of period language give an authenticity to the work. The first 20 pages, which provide a compressed history of the family with which the septuagenarian Aerlene lives, and the section recounting Elizabeth’s journey to London, are some the book’s best writing.
Wright reads with Dionne Brand, Michael Cunningham and Alison Pick tonight (Thursday, October 21).
