Marchette Chute
I’m reading Marchette Chute’s Stories from Shakespeare, which I’ve discovered late in life. These retellings compare favorably with those of Charles & Mary Lamb and Leon Garfield. Chute outdoes those authors by discussing nearly all of the plays, even those that the Lambs and Garfield won’t touch. For example, Chute writes separate chapters for each of the three dreadful parts of King Henry VI. She mentions, but avoids dwelling upon, the chief plot points and characters of that trilogy. Its ambitious nobles – and, for that matter, commoners like Joan of Arc (who, according to Shakespeare, definitely was a witch) – rise up and are mowed down at a nice clip, as in Judges or 2 Kings. But Chute is uninterested in gore: Titus Andronicus is dispatched in a little more than a page. And the misanthropic Timon of Athens gets just three and a half pages. I was eager to read a quick dismissal of Pericles, which, apparently, Shakespeare nonchalantly co-authored with a brothel keeper; and then I realized that Chute avoids that play altogether by restricting herself to those of the First Folio. Well played, Madam, well played.
When I was a child, I loved Shakespeare and Shakespearean retellings, and then I put away childish things; and now I wonder if I ought to have stayed with with my first love.
When I was a child, I loved Shakespeare and Shakespearean retellings, and then I put away childish things; and now I wonder if I ought to have stayed with with my first love.