John Reed (2) (1969–)

‘All the World’s a Grave’ is a mashup of five Shakespearean tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, with some incidental offcuts from Henry V. The principal characters are Hamlet, Prince of Bohemia and Juliet, her father, King Lear of Aquitaine, Romeo, Macbeth and his Queen, the mother of Prince Hamlet. Rosenkranz and Guildenstern frolic in supporting roles. In a substantial Afterword, ‘Outro: Gist and Gybe’, John Reed justifies his travesty. Elizabethan dramatists were unconstrained by copyright: their inventions and innovations alternated with the cut and paste of old stock. ‘Shakespeare’s plays were monsters assembled from other monsters [so] that a fresh monstrosity can be assembled from Shakespeare. And, because of Shakespeare’s use of stock players and storylines, a new Shakespearian narrative is equally possible.’
Shakespeare’s texts constrain Reed's newly created monstrosity. He constructs his mashup by rearrangement and reattribution of the original texts. Apart from necessary name changes, altered pronouns, minor grammatical adjustments and occasional impudent asides Reed adds nothing to the texts. Prince Hamlet fights a war with Lear, captures Juliet as his bride and on his return to Bohemia discovers that his mother has murdered his father and married Macbeth. His father’s Ghost commands him to take vengeance on Macbeth but Hamlet is distracted by his groundless apprehension, stoked by Iago, that Juliet is playing false to him with Romeo. Hamlet goes mad. Everyone ends up dying, either murdered or by their own hand. The play ends when Lear, mourning his daughter Juliet, stabs himself – ‘O happy dagger! There is no evil lost. This is thy sheath’. Lear’s last words here are of course Juliet’s own quietus in the original.
What’s the point of reading ‘All the World’s a Grave?’ I found stimulation and enjoyment in the way familiar lines take on renewed intensity and psychedelic colour when transplanted to this new plot in the Shakespearean terrain. Hamlet compounded with Othello, believing himself twice betrayed, is an even more formidable madman: ‘How stand I that have a father killed, A mother stained, and a harlot for a wife? What sense had I of her stolen hours of lust? I saw it not…’ Hamlet's madness has its apotheosis in the brutal horror of his last command to Romeo, uttered in the false belief that Romeo has seduced Juliet, Hamlet's wife. Romeo says, ‘Sir, what you will command me will I do. Hamlet: ‘Romeo, kill Juliet; kill her dead’. [Romeo reaches for his sword]. Romeo: ‘What I can do, I will’. Hamlet: ‘Do it not by the sword; strangle her’ [he does so] Hamlet: ‘Good; good: the justice of it pleases’.
It’s not serious of course. It’s an exercise in travesty and enjoyable As such. Hamlet meets his own end at the hands of his old school-fellow, who also accounts for Iago. Hamlet's last words To his murderer are transposed, with felicitous impudence from another tragedy: ‘Et tu, Guildenstern?’
The reconstructed play is seriously disorienting. I would advise anyone taking it on to read the afterword, which contains the ’Gist’ of the play, first. Otherwise the magnetic pull of one’s existing knowledge of the characters and plots of the original plays will impede understanding of what’s going on. The Kindle version would be preferable to the printed version for its ready internet access to the originals but for a maddening defect. The electronic Kindle version takes no account of line lengths in the original verse with a consequent loss of fluent sense in reading the play.… (más)

I really had high expectations...I loved the time period and the setting. Alma was a sweet likeable character from the very beginning. Highly descriptive and attention to small historical details, it started out very charming. Midway it became very slow and there was little to look forward to with what seemed this "puppy love" relationship Alma finds herself in. I would have loved more about the Cleveland estate or perhaps it jumping forward a bit faster for a more mature Alma and her relationships. The small sketches are so delightful and I had to smile when I scanned through the book when I first picked it up.… (más)

The first time I have ever aborted a play. Usually I plunge on through no matter how boring, trite, or even revolting they might be, but this was the length of a full length book, and it had failed to capture my attention by Scene 5, and I couldn't face finishing it. Life's just too short to read bad books. It wasn't that it was bad...after all, it was using Shakespeare's own words...but it does show how trite and banal those words can be when put together in a different order and set in a different context. Mixing the characters might seem amusing, with King Lear's daughter, Juliet, marrying Romeo, who had just defeated Lear and won back Acquataine might seem interesting (it was interesting enough for me to buy the play), but it fell totally flat. Whether that is my own jaded worldview on re-writes of Shakespeare (frankly, if you really want to do that, why? Just write your own play, and ignore the bard if you think he's out of date or boring), or whether it is an author who failed to pull off what he was attempting to do, I have no idea. All I know is it really wasn't worth spending my time on.… (más)