As a geek in the traditional (i.e. nerdy) sense of the word I have long been a huge fan of Neal Stephenson’s work. Snow Crash, Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, REAMDE, Anathem, Seveneves – all highly recommended.
So when I heard that he was doing a time travel story about Elizabethan England? I did something I don’t usually do, I went ahead and got the hardcover.
Should have waited. I think this is the first Stephenson book that I can’t say I recommend. Most of the time, like with Seveneves or Anathem, I’ll ask, “Are you up for the challenge?” Not here, not by a long shot.
Let’s get something out of the way. Shakespeare’s not in this. They do have a visit to Elizabethan England and do meet Richard Burbage and have what I’ll admit is an amusing scene there. But that’s it. There’s some discussion by others about Shakespeare’s work, but that’s it. There’s a bit about the Irish that’s worth another blog post, coming soon. So if, like me, you’re interested in this book for the Shakespeare content? Save your money. There isn’t enough.
The rest of the book isn’t up to Stephenson’s standard. He spends most of his time amusing himself with sophomoric pokes at bureaucracy and government, with various side trip opportunities to describe sexual stuff (like what happens when you put an 1800s prostitute and a Viking warrior in the same room together) that has nothing to do with the plot. He seems so entertained by his own words that he forgot to write a compelling story.
Who knows, maybe I’m just so thrown off by the lack of Shakespeare that I’m being unnecessarily hard on this one. When I described it to coworkers they said, “Sounds entertaining despite itself.” And it was, I’ll give it that. But I don’t go through these books (especially in hardcover!) just to be entertained. I want to get something out of it. I don’t know what I got out of this other than temporary amusement.
Ok we’re heading toward a big finish and lots of plots are moving forward.
Richard Burbage is a changed man after coming out of the plague house. He’s showing more attention to Moll, which is pleasant. Shakespeare has written Richard III for him, but for some reason his father James wants to play the role (because “I made this theatre and I’ll play any role I want.”). There’s actually a nice father/son moment between the two where Richard says, “You also made me, so when I play the role, it’ll be you playing the role as well.”
Alice Burbage has fallen under the spell of Southwell, agreeing not only to be baptized but also to carry Southwell’s book to … wherever it is that it needs to go.
This doesn’t go well after Marcus narcs on them to Topcliffe in an attempt to save his son. Southwell and his people have no time for this, dispatching Marcus when he tries to prevent Southwell from escaping, and then leaving Alice behind to be captured. Marlowe is there, however, and won’t stand for it. He brings Sir Francis Walsingham in (I kept thinking it was Bacon, to be honest), just before Alice can be whipped and tortured. This however doesn’t stop Topcliffe from beating her (after everyone’s left them alone), and potentially choking her to death. I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know the real Alice Burbage’s story, so it’s quite possible that she dies in this. I’m curious.
There’s some Richard III content in this one as they teach Presto (the street urchin) to play the role of Prince Edward. Honestly I wish I knew more about the play. I can’t recognize it from the quotes, other than the obvious ones.
Next week is the final episode. I have no idea if we’ll get another season. I have no idea what the ratings have been. I guess I’ve liked it, once we got past the ridiculous sex and violence. I’ve watched every episode. It’ll be a shame when it’s over.
Ok, after a great episode that was weak on sex and violence we’re back with blood flying. This one opens up not just with a disembowelling but a decapitation. Awesome. This time it’s somebody we know – the fat guy from a few previous episodes who was captured and tortured. And this time we see Southwell in the audience praying for his soul. This does not sit well with Marcus, whose son was busted by Topcliffe last week.
I don’t get most of this episode. There’s very little Shakespeare in it. Their friend Autolycus – who is part of the storyline so infrequently that I would forget his name were it not for the reference to the text – has a new girlfriend. Which ends up with him getting plague. How that happens? I don’t know.
But he ends up in a plague house, which basically means he’s dead. But a twist! Burbage can’t let him go alone, so agrees to be boarded up in a plague house with him. What? Did that actually happen? We know he’s not going to die, so I’m not sure what the writers are getting at with this little side trip.
Shakespeare has an idea – he’s going to write a story exposing the Queen’s torturer Topcliffe. That play? Richard III.
Shakespeare learns that Southwell now has Alice Burbage on his side as well, which gets them (Shakespeare and Southwell) into an argument since Shakespeare sees it as putting Alice in harm’s way, while Southwell is
starting to be shown as a bit of a nut who cares only about people’s eternal spirit and is thus not troubled by people being captured and tortured.
Best line of the night? Alice says that Shakespeare’s offering nothing of value to the world because who cares about Henry VI Parts 1, 2, 3. He swears that he is working on a play of such greatness… to which she responds, “What, part 4? Does it have a funny dog?” Ouch.
Marlowe is still his typical atheist self. Having failed to meet the devil he
wants to see Southwell, to meet god. We know how that’s going to go.
It’s clear that the story is racing toward some conclusions, but that also means focusing on the story that they’ve been telling, rather than Shakespeare’s biography. So you know how I’m going to feel about that. I get it, I get why it’s necessary. I’m just not all that interested in it. An episode like this is in the background while I do other things.
Let’s see what the next episode has for us! There’s only ten I’m told, so whatever’s going to happen is going to happen soon.
SPOILERS ABOUND! IF YOU’RE NOT CAUGHT UP, DO NOT READ!
Hurray! Less sex and violence!
You don’t hear that very often. But we finally get an episode that doesn’t have gratuitous people running around naked, and instead focuses on the Shakespeare. There’s a little violence, sure, but nothing like what we’ve seen before.
Last week ended with Presto setting the theatre on fire after his sister died. At first this just made me hate him even more, because I don’t care how angry he is, why is he taking it out on them? What did they do? But this week we actually get some closure on that, as he confides in Shakespeare that he was intending to just stay there and kill himself, but couldn’t go through with it.
The plot, admittedly, is a little thin. The theatre was already in financial trouble, and now that it’s half burned to the ground, Burbage sees no choice to but to sell. Shakespeare, meanwhile, has a plan. He goes straight to Emilia Bassano, our Dark Lady.
I like this character. Not only is she smart enough to see through Burbage a few weeks ago and say, “I want to talk to whoever actually wrote this sonnet,” but two seconds after meeting Alice Burbage she says, “Oh, that’s who you wrote that sonnet for.” She’s very smart. But she doesn’t come across as an emasculating presence like so often happens in these situations, where the men end up like clowns who can’t figure out the solution to a problem and need the woman to come to the rescue. In fact she informs him that she doesn’t have any money of her own to help him, so he can forget that idea.
However, while she doesn’t have any money of her own, her friends do. We meet a new character (whose name I literally cannot remember and who is not listed in the IMDB page) who requests a special performance so he can win the hand of his lady. The play? A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
<Yay!>
Against the backdrop of the most recognizable play they’ve done this far, the characters all fall into place. Shakespeare wanders around trying to think of great things to say about love. Emilia feeds him ideas, without just writing it for him. Young Burbage complains that he has to play a fairy and has to have his ego stroked by Moll, who is madly in love with him but he doesn’t see it. Kemp gets to act his ass off as Bottom. See what I did there? 🙂
The rest resolves as expected, a little too easily – cut to Burbage about to hand over the keys to his competitor, only to have Shakespeare and the gang burst onto the scene, tossing a bag of coins up on the stage to complete the transaction. Because this is movie economics, that one transaction generated the exact amount of money that Burbage needed. Nobody ever seems to ask for more, you know, for cushion. They still have expenses the next day too, you know.
Should we check in with Marlowe? I need his story to get a little better. He enlists the aid of his dark friends again because he wants to see the devil. I find this ridiculous. The major plotline of this show is that to be a Catholic is punishable by imprisonment and torture, and there’s a small army raiding houses all over town looking for any kind of evidence. But Marlowe walks up to a guy and says, “Show me the devil” and the next thing you know they’re having a pagan sacrifice. Sure, why not?
This, of course, leads to the obligatory “sell my soul” reference which gives him the idea for Dr. Faustus. Ok. Keep it moving. Once upon a time this was supposed to be about some sort of competition between Marlowe and Shakespeare for who is the greatest playwright, and Marlowe’s written nothing for all seven episodes of the show.
There’s the usual advancement of story with the other characters as well – Southwell’s printing house is raided, but he takes Alice to a baptism. Presto tries killing Topcliffe again but Shakespeare saves him, again. Apparently they’re finally friends now.
I liked a lot about this episode – mostly because it was about Shakespeare and crew and not about random sex and violence. But I hate that it wrapped up so nicely. Bardfilm is the one that called it a Deux Ex Machina, but I think he’s right. “We need money.” “Hey, here’s this new guy that’s willing to give us the money we need.” “Let’s put on a show!” It’s like the plot device of every sitcom in the 1970s.
Everything feels like it’s building toward something, which is good. I guess they’ve got 10 episodes. I’m wondering how far we get, and what resolves and what’s left open. Mostly I’m wondering if the series will do well enough to merit a season two. I even told my wife the other night, “I have to go watch my Shakespeare show. In all the years you’ve known me when have I been able to say that? Shakespeare is on tv every week. That is so many kinds of awesome.” I don’t want it to end.
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere! I’ve often said that I’m in it for the Shakespeare, and tolerating all the other bits. Tonight, and I realize I’m a day behind, I’m happy.
We open with Shakespeare’s family still in London with him, and it’s not long before Hamnet is lost in the crowd. Just like last week they play “family” well, with the kids pointing at everything in every direction, wanting to buy everything they see, the parents having to slap hands away and say no. I like Shakespeare as family man – although the more they do it, the more plain it looks that he is too young to be father to these children.
There’s soon a riot as the pro-Catholics start handing out literature and the fighting begins. Enter the Queen’s guard who just start….stabbing people indiscriminately. There’s literal blood spraying everywhere. This I guess is the reminder that we’re trying to be Game of Thrones. We get it already. This is a violent time. Move on.
Shakespeare’s trying to come up with his next play, and nobody likes his idea for the sequel to Henry VI, so Alice convinces him that he should write the prequel. Meanwhile the flippin’ Dark Lady is introduced! Of course “Big Dick” Burbage wants her, and commissions a sonnet from Shakespeare to woo her. For some reason Shakespeare pulls Sonnet 29 out of nowhere and gives it to him, but she immediately sees through it, tells Burbage, “You didn’t write this,” and demands an audience with the real poet.
In other news, James Burbage is trying to get funding for a new theatre so we have plans for the Blackfriars Theatre in the works. That’s kind of nice to keep the chronological pace of the story moving forward, as it’s a minor story arc at best. In a show that’s so interested in pushing the boundaries of sex and violence, it’s odd to see the devote any time at all to real estate deals. But, looking at the whole episode, we can predict where that story is going and what’s going to happen next.
Speaking of which, I continue to be embarrassed by the sex in this thing. It’s like softcore, it reminds me of when we first had cable when I was in middle school and we’d come up with reasons to stay up until midnight so we could catch a show on “Skinemax’ that never really showed anything but at the same time didn’t leave much to the imagination. We even get a walk through of the brothel where there’s a fully naked woman bouncing up and down in the lap of a customer. Move on already, unless the audience for this show is horny twelve year olds. We have the internet now, if we want that we know where to get more, more easily.
I wish I knew more about Marlowe’s history, because his story is getting interesting. Last week he met a new friend, obviously someone very important to him, but I have no idea who it is. This week we see Marlowe’s portrait! Now I’m hoping a Marlowe historian fills me in and tells me everything I’m seeing is historically accurate.
The “urchin” story (I’ve learned his name is Presto) gets as dark as it’s going to get this week, where we’ve not only confronted the child rape angle, but when the sister tries to rescue him we get to watch her whipped until he comes back. I won’t spoil how it all plays out, but I hope they’re done with it. We really don’t need it to be that dark. Who do they think they’re appealing to, exactly?
In the WTF scene of the week, Anne comes to visit Shakespeare at the tavern and meet his friends. This is incredibly awkward – they don’t know anything about her concerns (like the price of fish) and she hasn’t even bothered to see their play yet. But then Kemp appears and it’s wonderful. He starts flirting with her, composing a poem on the fly that turns into a song. It feels so in character, his personality perfectly matches the action on screen and how he makes himself the center of attention…
…and then it turns into a music video set to James Brown. I’m not kidding. I loved it right up to that moment, then it was just laughably stupid.
Overall I liked this episode (even the urchin stuff, dark though it may have been, did move the plot forward). There’s plenty of content, lots of Henry VI action (Anne does eventually go see the play), sonnet 29, Burbage, Kemp, Dark Lady, Marlowe … if they focused on those stories and less on the violence and torture (I haven’t mentioned Topcliffe at all this week, even though he’s here), I’d be much happier.
Ok we’re heading toward a big finish and lots of plots are moving forward.
