Enter the Body
The conceit of this young-adult narrative, told almost entirely in verse, is that several characters from Shakespeare’s dramas gather in a room underneath a stage and discuss the stories the playwright has given them. Juliet, Ophelia, and Cordelia—all young women whose plot trajectories lead toward death and possibly maiming—express modern ideas about women’s place in society, trauma, and relationships, and devise new endings for their stories.
McCullough’s verse does not rival Shakespeare’s, but it is very clever and, at times, very beautiful. She picks up on imagery in the plays and reworks it to better serve her characters. For example, Ophelia develops a metaphor in which she functions like water, not being overpowered by it as she is in Hamlet but drawing strength from it that nurtures life and sunders mountains. The first part of the narrative, when the characters retell their stories from their own perspective, is engaging if not enlightening.
The second part of the narrative, in which the characters decide to take ownership of their stories, retelling them with changes that minimize or eradicate the traumatic events, suffers from being slightly predictable and possibly trite—Juliet, for example, asserts herself to her father, explaining that she can’t marry Paris because she’s already married to Romeo, and her father accepts this.
Another character is also present: Lavinia, whose tongue has been cut out and whose injuries do not magically heal like those of the other characters. She is unable to tell her story and seems to represent the effects of trauma that are so deep and irreparable they will never go away. This exception in the narrative is important, since otherwise it risks treating trauma too lightly.
Overall, McCullough’s experiment is successful, reflecting the marvelous plasticity of literature that continually yields new meanings.
