BOOK REVIEW: "Shadow of Night," by Deborah Harkness

BE WARNED: SPOILERS TO COME. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

Shadow of Night, the second book in the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, is a fairly good follow-up to the first book. The book functions well as the second act in a three-act narrative, which is fairly important for a trilogy.

A brief summary:

Diana and Matthew go back to 1590 England (and Prague, and France) to learn more about the mysterious Ashmole book and to teach Diana more about her magic. While there, Matthew's backstory unfolds and they get clues to the future of their relationship.

As a standalone narrative, Shadow of Night is a pretty good book. As a sequel to Discovery of Witches, it's even better. Matthew and Diana develop more character, independently and together, and they handle threats to their relationship in ways that reflect their character development. This includes one part where Matthew will not sit down and have a much-needed Big Boy Relationship Talk, so Diana finds a way to make him have the much-needed talk without resorting to anything too dangerous.

Now I'm going to do something that I've never done in a book review: Making a List of Favorites/ Least Favorites.

spoilers ahead

new character

Favorite: Gallowglass or Jack Blackfriars. Though Henry Percy, Walter Raleigh, Rudolf II, William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and a number of other historical figures make appearances, these two fictional ones are my favorites. Gallowglass is Matthew's nephew (in vampire lineage), and, once he gets used to the idea that Matthew is married to a witch, is a very fun character. Though I always imagined him at around the same age as Diana, he always calls her "auntie," which is funny in contrast to his description (tall, Scottish, and burly). If this were a movie, I would probably ask Chris Hemsworth to style his hair like he does when playing Thor and learn a Scottish accent.

STOP LOOKING SO SERIOUS, GALLOWGLASS.

Source: screenrant.com

Jack is a street rat. I wasn't sure about his function at times, but he allowed Matthew to show his paternal side occasionally. For the record, "Matthew" and "Paternal Side" are things that I didn't think would go together, but it happened and it was adorable.

Least Favorite: Diana's father. Though Diana and her father meeting by chance in 1590 was an interesting chapter, it felt thrown in at the end. He did make a few important points to help his daughter's marriage and magic, they all seemed like things that could have been said by someone else. William Shakespeare could have sent them on their first real date, and the coven that Diana learns from could have pushed her a little bit farther without the help of her father. It was interesting to read Diana's encounters with the father she lost at age 7, but it felt unnecessary somehow.

scene in the book

Favorite: okay, I've narrowed it down to two.

First, there was when Philippe, Matthew's vampire father, finally accepted Diana into the family. The entire chapter was intense for a number of reasons, but when he finally accepts her into the family, every interaction he has with her makes much more sense. There is one final test, which results in perhaps my favorite line in the book: "I just killed a man! Now is not the time to discuss our marriage." (Philippe throws Matthew and Diana a Real and Proper Wedding after that, which is a pretty good scene in itself.)

Second is when Diana and Matthew somehow get on the topic of vampire romance novels. It's only a brief exchange and I'm not sure I should include it, but whatever. It's very funny because, in the context of a vampire romance thread, it calls out basically every vampire romance novel ever. It concludes with my second-favorite line in the novel: "Help! I think I married a vampire!"

Least Favorite: It's hard to say. As a whole, the novel stands out as a fairly cohesive work. The final scene is good for showing how each artifact from Matthew's modern-day life winds back up at his home 420 years later, but I would rather the work end on more of a cliffhanger to race through to the third book.

Some of the flash-forward scenes are somewhat weak as well, but help to introduce at least a few new people. It does make more sense to show these connections rather than have someone say "hi, this is _________ we met when we were searching for you" or something.

overall impressions

this is one rollicking ride. If you like vampire romances where vampire romance is only half the point, definitely pick up this series.

Shakespeare's Rehearsal Conditions

Right now, I'm on the travel portion of a Shakespeare-related travel course. We've been studying the theatrical context of Shakespeare's writing - what it took to write and stage a show in Elizabethan England. The theater we're visiting is a replica of an Elizabethan stage (yes, they had closed-roof theaters back then). During their Renaissance season, they stage shows similar to how Shakespeare's actors would have done it.
What does that mean for the actors?

1. Instead of getting full scripts of the whole show, the actors only get "cue scripts."  This means that the 12 members of the company get books with their lines and 1-3 words of the line before.
2. The actors have about 48 hours to do group rehearsals before the show goes up. If a show is supposed to open on Friday, this does not mean the actors put in 8 hours a day from Sunday to Friday. This means that they start rehearsing in group for Friday's show on Wednesday. (I assume the actors DO have their lines at least 80% committed when they walk in for rehearsal on Wednesday, though.)
3. The actors direct themselves. When we sat in for part of a rehearsal on Friday, one of the actors mentioned bringing in a bed, since the scene was in a bedroom, and her character "probably wouldn't sit on the floor" for one of her scene partners. The actors in the scene, after some discussion of How To Get The Bed Onstage, took the note and ran with it. (This resulted in an action-movie-style dive over the bed to aim a gun at someone.) The staging, the props, the blocking, the costumes - everything is up to the actors.

Obviously, this is a really intense process, and the theater we're visiting only invites actors who are experienced with the company to work in the Renaissance season. There's a lot of trust involved in the process of staging a show without a director; someone with my level of acting experience (i.e. have barely done acting since high school) just isn't cut out for doing this level of rehearsal intensity. (I was once called upon to be in a show with a few days rehearsal time; however, I had a director, I was in three or four bit parts, and everything was pretty much already staged, I just had to be told where to stand.)

In all, our stay here has been really cool, and I've enjoyed it immensely.

New Shakespearean Information

The works of William Shakespeare can come off to a modern reader as some highbrow material that they hated reading in high school (and maybe college). It's not difficult to see why - we can barely understand the word order sometimes, much less why there has to be two second-person forms of address. How the crap did someone write everything in such a prolific manner and get the second-person pronouns right?

The short story is that Shakespeare was the master of stereotypes. He was writing for a theater company that put up six different shows a week, and not all of them were performed a second or third time. He had to write for his actors, because there was so little rehearsal time; unlike today, when actors have a few weeks to get inside the character's head, Shakespeare's actors had several hours of personal rehearsal time and only one or two group rehearsals total. They had to already be inside the character's head, so Shakespeare wrote characters based on the personality traits of his actors; similarly, the actors could play a prince or a pauper as long as the character had similar traits to him. One actor often played the Fool archetype, but he could do it differently than another actor. One actor played a Natural Fool, who is genuinely just stupid, and so Shakespeare wrote a bunch of Natural Fool characters throughout the plays for this one actor. When that actor left, Shakespeare needed to hire a new actor; the man he hired tended to play a Wise Fool - someone who acted stupid but who was truly insightful (think Touchstone from As You Like It).

It's hard to say whether or not Shakespeare is truly genius because of this. On one hand, the archetypal roles allowed Shakespeare to churn out dozens of plays; on the other hand, though there are some intentional parallels among the plays, there is still a formula to them.

MORE LANGUAGE GEEKERY

Today, we're discussing PRONOUNS. I'm not going to get into the politics of gender-neutral pronouns; it's late-ish, and I still have to do some reading and wash some underpants. I don't have time to do that topic justice, is what I'm saying.

The pronouns I'm talking about is the pronouns of Second-Person Pronouns in the Renaissance (Shakespeare's time) - specifically, "thee" and "you." Both were used, but in different contexts.

"Thee" was the more derogatory of the two. It was used from superiors to inferiors, as well as when you were insulting someone. That's why Shakespearean insults are so frequently seen as "thou vile wretch" or something like that - the speaker is implying, through pronouns, that the listener is inferior in status to the speaker. Interestingly, "thou" was also used intimately.

"You" is the more polite term. It's used from an inferior to a superior, or a child to a parent. Sometimes nobles would use it in derision to their inferiors to mock and embarrass them. If someone doesn't know someone else's status, they would normally address their partner as "you" until they could get a better gauge of it.

How was this used?

Well, firstly, it's really cool to tell character shifts. In Desdemona's final scene of Othello, she and Othello address each other as "you" for the first portion of the interaction. Othello's decision to actually kill Desdemona can be cited to the line where he starts calling her "thee" and not "you" - an interesting point of derision, yes? Even though Desdemona and Othello are supposed to be life partners and all, I think Shakespeare has them address each other as "you" - and has Desdemona continue to address Othello as such - to highlight two things. Firstly, the pronouns point out that there's something definitely wrong in their relationship - if they were truly intimate life partners, they would be calling each other "thee" (the intimate one) all the time. But they're not. That leads me to the second point - that they're calling each other "you" to highlight Othello's decision shift. He could have come into the situation thinking he could maybe not do this, but he decides to go through with it when he changes his address.

In Romeo and Juliet, for example, Romeo uses "thou" to Juliet in their first meeting, because he's fallen INSTANTLY IN LOVE WITH HER, but she doesn't use the same for him until the balcony scene. In that scene, she uses "thou" as both an intimate term and also one instance of "WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON MY PROPERTY?? THIS IS MY SECRET DIARY MONOLOGUE TIME!" Of course, the first term is more frequently used in that monologue, because this is a thirteen-year-old girl doing Secret Diary Monologue Time; speaking as a former thirteen-year-old girl, the Secret Diary Time was frequently filled with things that went along the lines of "OMG, this is the most EPIC/ WORST/ BEST/ MOST GORGEOUS thing EVERRRRRRR." (There were a lot of superlatives, is what I'm trying to say, and Juliet is probably thinking they're going to be together forever and always. She gets married to a dude at 13 after knowing him for fewer than 100 hours, for crying out loud. If that doesn't say "I think we're going to be together forever," then you need to re-evaluate your concept of a healthy relationship.)

Sooooooo yeah. That's what I've been learning.

Romantic Comedies

Last night, I saw a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with my mom. It's one of his comedies, and it's easy to see why - there are romantic plots up the wazoo; it involves twins, cross-dressing, a love triangle that's actually closed, a lusty servant, and mistaken identity (see 'twins' and 'cross-dressing'). Honestly, all it needs is some legitimate same-sex couples and a character that hits on everyone and it will be more romantically confusing than the NaNoWriMo novel I wrote in 2011.

To flesh this out more fully:
Viola and Sebastian are twins. They are on a boat. It crashes on an island. They get separated. Viola, being an opportunist in a sexist society, dresses like a dude and calls herself 'Cesario.' She enters the service of one Lord Orsino, who is trying to court Olivia (whose brother has died and who isn't really interested in romance). Viola falls for Orsino, who sends Viola to do the courting for him. Olivia falls for Cesario, who kind of doesn't want that. Meanwhile, some servants persuade Olivia's servant Malvolio that if he dresses in some yellow garters and gets really bossy, then Olivia is definitely going to fall for him. Add in Lord Aguecheek, and basically everyone wants Olivia except Viola; of course, that means that Olivia wants Viola (as Cesario, of course). Then there's some duel propositions; on the day of the duel, SEBASTIAN ARRIVES. Olivia propositions Sebastian (because he and Cesario look very similar), and then everyone is very confused for a while until they see Cesario and Sebastian in the same room at the same time. Orsino realizes that Cesario isn't attractive but Viola is (Shakespearean logic?), and the only person who winds up not getting someone they desire is Malvolio.


If someone here does not call this a romantic comedy, I would really love to hear their logic. The interesting thing about this, though, is that it's not necessarily the same as romantic comedies today. Though there are themes of staunch heterosexuality, and (usually) at least one person does not wind up with the object of their desire, something like Twelfth Night (or even Midsummer Night's Dream) is a little different than the dominant RomComs of today.

A major reason that Twelfth Night is different from RomComs today is that Viola is not the main object of interest. In Emma, it's the title character, and she has to turn down a few guys before realizing who is right for her. In Pretty in Pink, Andie turns down Duckie and goes with... SPOILERS, but he likes her as well. The point is, there are always several people who are interested in the female main character (henceforth referred to as the FMC), and they're usually dudes, because she's usually straight. In Twelfth Night, though, Olivia has the role of Attractive Female, but Viola is the main character. She's not the object of attraction because everyone thinks she is a guy - which is an interesting perspective, once you think about it.

Additionally, something like Twelfth Night is interesting because, like so much of Shakespeare, it can be translated to a lot of different areas. The production I saw was set in the 1920s; it was essentially a ballet in 20s-style ragtime and jazz.  I don't know how well something like Pretty in Pink would work in that sort of situation.

On Shakespeare

I have just finished reading The Taming of the Shrew, which is my least favorite of the Shakespearean plays that I have read so far.  In Othello, I was really irritated by Emilia's death, sure, but at least Othello had a compelling (albeit depressing) plot.  In Midsummer Night's Dream, even though the females acted stereotypically, everyone was being rather ridiculous, so the result was a lot of lunacy.  In Romeo and Juliet, there are fights and a lot of tension; that's enough to keep me happy.
In The Taming of the Shrew, however, the entire plot is about how Bianca wants to get married and how Petruchio wants to tame Katherine, just because he wants to see if he can do it.  And then he does. Then he shows off how he's tamed Katherine.  THAT IRRITATES ME SO MUCH.

I think my irritation mainly stems from the taming of strong female characters.  Bianca and Katherine make an interesting contrast, sure, but everyone likes Bianca because she's pretty and nice and sweet and submissive, whereas Kate frequently resorts to smacking people when she's mad at them.  At least Kate dares to get mad, though.  That can't be said for Bianca.
Additionally, I feel like it should have been either mostly Kate's story with a bit of Bianca's, or mostly Bianca's story with a little bit of Kate's.  Not both, evenly split.  That irritates me a lot, too.

Still, in all, I'm kind of glad it's happened.  It's introduced me to a story I can rage at.

I mean, really.  Why can't Katherine tame Petruchio?  Why can't they tame each other?  Why can't Petruchio get fed up with Katherine's crap and go off to hit on Bianca?