22 Thursday Feb 2018
I’ve always found the idea rather sad: commissioning a portrait, getting a wonder made by the right painter, having it admired and treasured through the centuries, ending in some world-renown gallery… as a masterpiece of the author – with the sitter unknown, and not terribly important, either.
Well, do you know what the saddest portrait of unknown is to me? Not a painting, but a word-portrait: the Fair Youth of the Sonnets… Continue reading
19 Thursday Oct 2017
Posted in History, Scribbling, Uncategorized
Tags
1453, carey mysteries, Diana Gabaldon, Historical fiction, historical serendipity, p. f. chisholm, Siege of Constantinople
Says Diana Gabaldon, in her introduction to P.F. Chisholm’s brilliant A Plague of Angels*:
One historical author of my acquaintance describes something she calls “historical serendipity.” This is the condition of knowing one’s period so well and so intimately that when one reaches a point in the story where it’s necessary to… (gasp) make something up, one’s fictional choices are not only historically plausible – but very often turn out to be the ex post facto honest-to-goodness truth, as well.
Did it ever happen to you? Continue reading
30 Saturday Sep 2017
Posted in History, Scribbling
I think I’ve told you already how Writer Unboxed is one of my favourite writerly sites. That’s mostly because it provides a wonderful mix of thought-provoking discussion and practical stuff, musings and resources, theory and exercises… All of it interesting and useful. Continue reading
24 Thursday Aug 2017
Posted in History
Oh dear: the Amateur Local Historian is back. He of the portable river. The man who could not see why he should support his theories – and was soundly trounced for it by the real historians. He is back. Or perhaps not quite back?
The fact is, the man called me – a sufficient cause for alarm in itself, seeing that he hadn’t really sought contact since the Moving River Massacre. He called, and told me that perhaps, maybe, perchance, he might be sort of kind of writing another book. Continue reading
29 Thursday Jun 2017
Tags
While in Malta, I visited the old capital, Mdina – a gem of a small walled town, all honey-coloured stone palaces and alleys. One of those palaces happens to be Palazzo Falson, or the Norman House, as its last owner, Captain Olof Gollcher liked to call it. Continue reading
23 Thursday Mar 2017
Once upon a time I came across an interview or an article – I wish I could remember – in which a historical novelist gleefully told about placing in his latest novel’s prologue a handful of elements that could easily pass for anachronisms. He gleefully anticipated the mails, weblogs and reviews pointing out his “blunders”, and the joys of answering back that, in fact, a lack of written record for some thing before a certain date could not be taken as proof that the same thing did not exist… Continue reading
09 Thursday Feb 2017
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
I’m dithering…
Yes – it’s the novel. Again. But the fact is, you see, that there is this rather grim thing happening in June 1594 – historically happening, I mean. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, because while not directly involving my hero, it has two sets of ties to his circumstances – one practical (and historically documented), and one, shall we say, psychological… Continue reading
08 Wednesday Feb 2017
Tags
christopher marlowe, George Bernard Shaw, Léon Daudet, Nat Cassidy, Patricia Finney, Robert Brustein, William Shakespeare
It strikes me how often fiction and theatre portray Will Shakespeare in the act of absorbing his materials rather than creating them.
No, really: the average fictional Shakespeare spends half his life jotting down, more or less metaphorically, everything he hears… Continue reading
19 Thursday Jan 2017
Some more Julius Caesar, do you mind?
The fact is that, because of Shakespeare in Words, I had a special thrill when, in Act 3.I, the conspirators bathe their hands in dead Caesar’s blood – half barbaric ritual, half preparation to face the angry and upset crowds outside. Very much like actors before a play, they plan to appear with bloody hands and swords, shouting “Peace, freedom, and liberty.” Continue reading
10 Thursday Nov 2016
Tags
christopher marlowe, Henry VI, New Oxford Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, Shakespeare authorship question, William Shakespeare
So, the New Oxford Shakespeare credits Christopher Marlowe as co-author of the three Henry VI plays.
Well, actually fourteen more plays get co-authoring credits by someone else, and Arden of Faversham is added to the Canon, as well as one added scene in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy… But – probably because he is more widely known, and because of the Authorship rumours ever since Ziegler – the idea of Kit Marlowe having had a hand in the Henrys is doing most of the splash.
“Happy now?” asked Davide Mana of Karavansara – who has little sympathy for Kit Marlowe. Continue reading
