The Solitary Woman of Shakespeare
Think you know your Shakespeare? Think again! We’re in the Territory, before it became New Mexico, in a frontier mining town – along with the burros and coyotes. What Shakespeare needs is its first heroine: enter stage left (and train right) the adventurous Abigail, leaving her home in the east to marry a man she has never seen but whose romantic letters paint a picture of a rosy future.
James Terry wittily structures his novel in five acts: the drama of Abigail’s shock when she discovers that her bridegroom is an elderly bartender; her adulterous love affair with Shakespeare’s young bank official (the true author of the love-some epistles) which has the unexpected bonus of reviving Henry’s flagging libido and, as part of her survival mechanism coping with being the only female in town, her audacious staging of an all-male version of As You Like It, with unforeseen consequences.
A cast as colourful as any in the Bard’s comedies struts through the novel. It’s possible to perceive many other clever references, too; the isolated township is akin to Prospero’s isle, but the storms are of the sandy or snowy variety and, like any Shakespearian drama, the plot centres on the timeless “battle of the sexes” and the emotions that drive us. Terry has a great ear for realistic dialogue; you can hear the lilt and twang of the Wild West in every conversation, and there’s much to enjoy in his fine descriptions of landscape, weather and place. His prose is balanced, lucid and intelligent. James Terry’s imagining of what drove men and women to the edge of civilisation in 19th-century America is a masterclass in the historical novel genre. He knows his Shakespeare, in all senses of the word.
