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Dec. 7th, 2024 08:48 amI learned from a shitpost on tumblr that Arthur Phillips -- who wrote one book (The Egyptologist) that I remember liking very much a long time ago and a couple other books that I read around the same time that have not stuck in my memory at all -- had written a book a few years back called The Tragedy of Arthur, around the premise of 'what if someone found a lost Shakespeare play about King Arthur'?
As someone who is deeply interested in a.) weird Arthuriana and b.) Shakespeare it seemed extremely necessary for me to read this book, and I regret to report that I ended it somewhat frustrated.
It's a kind of a fun and funny conceit structurally -- sort of a William Goldman & The Princess Bride situation run amok -- in which Arthur Phillips, writing as the author Arthur Phillips, declares that he has been contracted to write the introduction to a lost Shakespeare play discovered by his father and this is said introduction and fortunately it is written into his contract that the introduction cannot be abridged or edited without his approval. Then he spends three hundred pages complaining about said con artist father, how much his father and his twin sister love Shakespeare, how much he himself dislikes Shakespeare, and every bad decision that everybody in his family ever made. Some of those bad decisions are fun and interesting (my favorite bit is the loving description of the period during which the twin sister rebels against her father by deciding to become a passionate anti-Stratfordian and writing lots of fanfictional theories about the forbidden romance and writing partnership between the Earl of Oxford and an Unknown Brilliant Young Jewish Man) and others are extremely boring (every single time Fictional Arthur Phillips made a bad heterosexual decision I immediately went to sleep, and during the heavily foreshadowed and agonizingly slow period leading up to Fictional Arthur Phillips making a pass at his sister's girlfriend I very nearly never woke up again).
Taken on a broader level, the book has some interesting things to say about art and forgery and the Cult of Shakespeare and why we care about the particular stories that we care about. It does not really have any interesting things to say about King Arthur. Nonetheless, I am interested in art and forgery and why we think the way we do about Shakespeare and so I did have fun with the large swathes of the book, between passages of Fictional Arthur Phillips being annoying in a way that I suspect is intentional and dull [for me] in a way that I strongly suspect isn't.
And then, of course, by virtue of the structural conceit, it is required that we have the Whole Play to which the rest of this book has been the introduction. A Whole Fake Shakespeare Play! about King Arthur! which unfortunately commits the unforgivable crime of being perhaps technically plausible, but extremely tedious. Occasionally we do get Fictional Arthur Phillips arguing in the footnotes with noted Shakespeare scholars about whether particular lines in the fake play are evidence of Shakespearean authenticity or shout-outs to things that Fictional Arthur Phillips' dad particularly liked, which is fun for a little while and then also gets tedious once it becomes clear that these footnotes are building to no greater meta-narrative catharsis or resolution but just the continuation of Arthur Phillips' Fun Little Game.
Coming at the end of the book as it does, I was really expecting the structure of the fake Shakespeare play to pull some kind of interesting narrative rug out from under me or provide some more commentary or resolution of the three hundred pages of narrative that came before, but instead it really does just seem to be Arthur Phillips showing off that he can write technically plausible but fairly tedious Arthuriana-Shakespeareana. After three hundred pages of Fictional Arthur Phillips making boringly bad decisions, I admit that a further ninety pages of yet another Fictional Arthur making boringly bad decisions in blank verse was kind of a grim slog. I am sure the pastiche was a ton of fun to do but please, Mr. Phillips, couldn't you at least make the play a little bit zanier? Couldn't you put in any of the weirder Arthurian lore instead of just endless battle scenes and angst about bastardy and inheritance? You couldn't even have Kay or Gawain in there? For me? No? Alas, and ah well.
As someone who is deeply interested in a.) weird Arthuriana and b.) Shakespeare it seemed extremely necessary for me to read this book, and I regret to report that I ended it somewhat frustrated.
It's a kind of a fun and funny conceit structurally -- sort of a William Goldman & The Princess Bride situation run amok -- in which Arthur Phillips, writing as the author Arthur Phillips, declares that he has been contracted to write the introduction to a lost Shakespeare play discovered by his father and this is said introduction and fortunately it is written into his contract that the introduction cannot be abridged or edited without his approval. Then he spends three hundred pages complaining about said con artist father, how much his father and his twin sister love Shakespeare, how much he himself dislikes Shakespeare, and every bad decision that everybody in his family ever made. Some of those bad decisions are fun and interesting (my favorite bit is the loving description of the period during which the twin sister rebels against her father by deciding to become a passionate anti-Stratfordian and writing lots of fanfictional theories about the forbidden romance and writing partnership between the Earl of Oxford and an Unknown Brilliant Young Jewish Man) and others are extremely boring (every single time Fictional Arthur Phillips made a bad heterosexual decision I immediately went to sleep, and during the heavily foreshadowed and agonizingly slow period leading up to Fictional Arthur Phillips making a pass at his sister's girlfriend I very nearly never woke up again).
Taken on a broader level, the book has some interesting things to say about art and forgery and the Cult of Shakespeare and why we care about the particular stories that we care about. It does not really have any interesting things to say about King Arthur. Nonetheless, I am interested in art and forgery and why we think the way we do about Shakespeare and so I did have fun with the large swathes of the book, between passages of Fictional Arthur Phillips being annoying in a way that I suspect is intentional and dull [for me] in a way that I strongly suspect isn't.
And then, of course, by virtue of the structural conceit, it is required that we have the Whole Play to which the rest of this book has been the introduction. A Whole Fake Shakespeare Play! about King Arthur! which unfortunately commits the unforgivable crime of being perhaps technically plausible, but extremely tedious. Occasionally we do get Fictional Arthur Phillips arguing in the footnotes with noted Shakespeare scholars about whether particular lines in the fake play are evidence of Shakespearean authenticity or shout-outs to things that Fictional Arthur Phillips' dad particularly liked, which is fun for a little while and then also gets tedious once it becomes clear that these footnotes are building to no greater meta-narrative catharsis or resolution but just the continuation of Arthur Phillips' Fun Little Game.
Coming at the end of the book as it does, I was really expecting the structure of the fake Shakespeare play to pull some kind of interesting narrative rug out from under me or provide some more commentary or resolution of the three hundred pages of narrative that came before, but instead it really does just seem to be Arthur Phillips showing off that he can write technically plausible but fairly tedious Arthuriana-Shakespeareana. After three hundred pages of Fictional Arthur Phillips making boringly bad decisions, I admit that a further ninety pages of yet another Fictional Arthur making boringly bad decisions in blank verse was kind of a grim slog. I am sure the pastiche was a ton of fun to do but please, Mr. Phillips, couldn't you at least make the play a little bit zanier? Couldn't you put in any of the weirder Arthurian lore instead of just endless battle scenes and angst about bastardy and inheritance? You couldn't even have Kay or Gawain in there? For me? No? Alas, and ah well.
