Posted by Steven on 9/4/2012, 20:23:08, in reply to "Nothing like the Sun"
76.186.47.15
I enjoyed the language--it was enough of a taste of Shakespearean English without being too difficult to read.
It seemed that the purpose of the novel was to imagine the personal life of the author of the sonnets. Burgess was only marginally concerned with Shakespeare as a playwright, and I don't really see in his Shakespeare a man with the depth to write a Hamlet or King Lear. To me the novel was more valuable as a picture of Elizabethan England than of Shakespeare himself.
Yes, I think the novel does make WS out as bisexual, but in a very subtle way. I suppose that's because in the early 1960s when Burgess was writing homosexuality was still too much of a taboo to include anything explicit.
--Previous Message--
: I finished it last night, and I'm still thinking I'm
: living in Elizabethan London. WS came through as a
: very likable man, a normal human being with his fears,
: passions, business relations, etc. Although Burgess's
: prose is very "sixties", I didn't think it
: was difficult to follow, except perhaps at the
: beginning. The mixture of XX Century's vanguardist
: style with archaic terms worked very well, although I
: had to recur to the dictionary very often. I learned
: many words I'll never use!!
:
: I recently watched the movie "Anonymous",
: which puts forward the old theory that WS didn't write
: his works, but the Earl of Oxford did. The movie is
: quite good, although I think the theory is just bogus.
: Most certainly the movie writers read this book and
: elaborated upon it, but played down the role of HW.
:
: Am I wrong or "Nothing like the Sun"
: portrays WS as bisexual? Or was his relationship with
: HW only the product of, first, interest, and then
: friendship?
:
: A big, welcome byproduct of this book: I read or
: re-read several of WS's sonnets, fragments of plays,
: as well as works by Marlowe, Jonson and others
: mentioned, out of Harold Bloom's "Best Poems of
: the English Language".
:
: Just some random thoughts on this book, while I wait
: for your comments.
:
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