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    Fools and Mortals: A Novel
    Fools and Mortals: A Novel
    Fools and Mortals: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    Fools and Mortals: A Novel

    Written by Bernard Cornwell

    Narrated by Thomas Judd

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    New York Times bestselling author Bernard Cornwell makes a dramatic departure with this enthralling, action-packed standalone novel that tells the story of the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream—as related by William Shakespeare’s estranged younger brother.

    Lord, what fools these mortals be . . .

    In the heart of Elizabethan England, Richard Shakespeare dreams of a glittering career in one of the London playhouses, a world dominated by his older brother, William. But he is a penniless actor, making ends meet through a combination of a beautiful face, petty theft and a silver tongue. As William’s star rises, Richard’s onetime gratitude is souring and he is sorely tempted to abandon family loyalty.

    So when a priceless manuscript goes missing, suspicion falls upon Richard, forcing him onto a perilous path through a bawdy and frequently brutal London. Entangled in a high-stakes game of duplicity and betrayal which threatens not only his career and potential fortune, but also the lives of his fellow players, Richard has to call on all he has now learned from the brightest stages and the darkest alleyways of the city. To avoid the gallows, he must play the part of a lifetime . . . .

    Showcasing the superb storytelling skill that has won Bernard Cornwell international renown, Fools and Mortals is a richly portrayed tour de force that brings to life a vivid world of intricate stagecraft, fierce competition, and consuming ambition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJan 9, 2018
    ISBN9780062798404
    Author

    Bernard Cornwell

    BERNARD CORNWELL is the author of over fifty novels, including the acclaimed New York Times bestselling Saxon Tales, which serve as the basis for the hit Netflix series The Last Kingdom. He lives with his wife on Cape Cod and in Charleston, South Carolina.

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    Reviews for Fools and Mortals

    4/5

    112 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This is a right adventure. The setting is broadly the first staging of "A Midsummer Night's dream" at the house of the Lord Chancellor for his grand daughter's wedding. Along side this we have the building of a new playhouse, the Swan, which is shrouded in secrecy and seems to be short of plays and so sets out to steal the one being written by Will Shakespeare. We see all this through the eyes of his younger brother, Richard, who ran away from his apprentice master and has come to London to be a player. He is just getting too old to play the female roles and want to play a man's part. He is growing up physically, but he remains Will's younger brother and this colours their relationship, Richard wanting his brother's approval, Will unable to see him as he now is. And then there's a brief, but touching romance, with Sylvia being sufficiently independently minded to bring about a dramatic change in events. At times this gets pretty unpleasant, there is quite graphic violence, there are past abuses and there's the nasty overtone of religious oppression and the blinkered puritan view. It tends to support the view that life in the past was nasty, brutish & short. But there is more to this book than those passages. They set up a fabulous view of the performance from the actor's perspective, which is well worth the read. Having not long listened to the play in question, It was fun to see it coming together through the rehearsals and into the performance. And, to borrow the playwright's own lines, all's well that ends well.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this historical novel that made you feel part of Shakespeare's players.
    • 4/5
      A decent historical fiction. William Shakespeare's younger brother Richard, is now too old to play girls, or even Women's parts in the Lord Chamberlain's Company. He wants to move up to men, but for some reason, his brother William doesn't seem to further his promotion. After adventures involving lack of copyright, and court politics, a new play "A Midsummer's Night's Dream," is finally launched.
    • 5/5
      "When men do evil and claim that they are doing God's work, then they are at their most dangerous."This novel by Bernard Cornwell is a bit of a departure from his usual military history. Yes, it’s an historical novel, but instead it centres on William Shakespeare's initial production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and is told from the standpoint of his younger brother, Richard. Little is known about William Shakespeare, about his writing and staging his plays, let alone whether or not he even had a younger brother at all, let alone one who acted in his theatre company. This allows the author to allow his imagination run wild with speculation and hypothesis.The play is thought to have been written around 1595 or 1596 but no one knows when or where it had it's début. For this book Cornwell opts for it being staged at the wedding of Baron Hunsdon’s daughter (the baron is Elizabeth’s cousin and Lord Chamberlain).Richard, 10 years younger than his famous brother, he flees the family home in Stratford after he attacks the man that he has been apprenticed to and heads for London to join his brother. However, William initially rebuffs Richard and instead sends him off to Sir Godfrey, a cruel priest who trains young boys for the theatre amongst other things. When Richard finally joins William’s players he is given female roles to act. This only makes Richard more resentful because he is now 20 and wants to take on male roles.The first half concentrates on the background of Elizabethan theatre and how the Puritans, whose job it is to root out enemies of the Queen, despise the “sinful” playhouses and their companies. A new theatre is being built to rival those already in existence and competition for audiences is fierce meaning that there must be a regular supply of new material to perform. Whilst there are plenty of out of work actors available writers, especially good ones, are few and far between especially to the calibre of William Shakespeare. Feeling resentful of his brother Richard visits the new theatre in the hope of being offered regular work, he is only a jobbing actor in his brother's company, but is instead is asked to steal the scripts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the newly completed Romeo and Juliet. When the scripts are indeed stolen, suspicion naturally falls on the younger Shakespeare. Scripts are precious and are the lifeblood of any company so Richard offers to recover them in return for the role in Romeo in any future production. This involves Richard taking on his old enemy, Sir Godfrey. In many respects this section of the book provides the only action therein and it is pretty brief and relatively bloodless at that.However, this shouldn't put any readers and particularly Cornwell fans off. He brings his usual penchant for setting the scene to the fore, so much so you can almost smell the filthy Elizabethan streets, the depravities of the day, the Catholic witch-hunts where power is given to petty tyrants, the struggle to survive and strive to bring some enjoyment into their fairly joyless existences, making their pleasure or displeasure at what they see quickly apparent. Similarly, I like the fact that this is no fawning portrayal of the elder Shakespeare, he is seen as being human with all it's faults, unlike how he is shown in most books that I've read about him. Overall I loved this book, it grabbed my attention straight from the start and despite the lack of bloodshed managed to keep it as it careered through the filth strewn streets of the metropolis. So much so that it's made me want to re-read the original, A Midsummer Night's Dream, next.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this envisioning of life as a "player" in Shakespeare's company in the 1500s. Bernard Cornwell - as always - is such a master of immersing us in the day to day of the society of which he's writing. Really well done!
    • 4/5
      Bernard Cornwell takes a break from his traditional military-based historical fiction to tell the story of an actor, Richard Shakespeare, the younger and estranged brother of William Shakespeare. It is a coming-of-age story about Richard, but it is more a story about late 16th century theater and politics. The story itself would have made a good Shakespeare play, it has love, politics and betrayal. The author brings the stage to life and gives the reader a good feel for life in the Elizabethan period. In his usual way, Cornwell tells a very good story. The characters are real and the situations believable. This isn't what I expected when I started, I didn't read the jacket and was expecting a typical Bernard Cornwell novel, but I was pleasantly surprised and could not turn away.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of William Shakespeare's brother, Richard. Not much is known about him, but here Mr. Cornwell sets him as one of the players in his brother's company of actors. As a younger man, he's been playing women in the plays but now wants to graduate to men's roles.Meanwhile, the company is rehearsing for the first performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream, to be performed at their patron's granddaughter's wedding. There is intrigue as rival companies try to steal the manuscripts of the company's plays. Also, religious differences still hold sway in London under Protestant Queen Elizabeth.I'm a huge Shakespeare fan, and I also enjoy Mr. Cornwall's books, so I expected to find myself engrossed by this story. However, I had a lot of trouble getting into this book and never really succeeded. Some of it was the writing; the action is fairly passive and often told in flashbacks that seemed to lessen the impact for the reader. There's also a lot of telling rather than showing. Other reviewers have complained about this; for me, the worst was the retelling of the performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream. Maybe his usual readers don't know the play, though I doubt that, but to me, it was just repetitious to detail the story. Certain phrases were also used over and over. I'm not sure why every little boy was 'picking his nose' constantly, but enough about it.There's a section where Richard talks about a play having a moment when all that goes wrong is magically set right. This book was a great example of that. One of the actors complains "It's too pat, too convenient!" All through the book there's talk about Lord Hunsdon, the patron, not wanting to be bothered about the mishaps going on, but magically he solves the issue though we never find out how. It may work in a play or even a book that has the reader enthralled, but it didn't work for me.I'll just go back to Mr. Cornwall's series, I think.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this story! Oftentimes, Elizabethan England and all its players feel so far away, but Cornwell does a wonderful job of bringing the Lord Chamberlain’s men to life, allowing the reader to step into that distant past and catch a glimpse of the daily life and relationships as they once may have existed.More than halfway through this story and I thought it would be a solid 4-star rating, but as the plot took me once again back to the theatre and to Shakespeare’s players, I found myself laughing along with all their odd character quirks and discovered they’d become somewhat endearing between the start and the finish. I discovered I was sad to end the book and wanted a bit more of these day-to-day interactions, the witty quips back and forth, the quirky superstitious pre-play rituals, the atmosphere of the Elizabethan world (and a time I’m grateful I was not born to!). For all of that, this was a surprisingly wonderful read and entirely worth picking up, especially if you happen to be an English teacher or an appreciator of Shakespeare and his time!
    • 2/5
      I am a fan of Bernard Cornwell's historic novels, and this one is a disappointment. While the characterization is barely adequate, the action is suppressed and the interactions between characters is stilted. A good novel in some aspects, the atmosphere and descriptions of 16th century life are well done. Bernard Cornwell certainly has his finger of history's pulse. However, the plot is disjointed and needs editing. The book seems to be a glimpse of life in Shakespeare's theaters, but the connection of Richard, William Shakespeare's younger and prettier brother, seems more like an excuse for a story rather than a story around the character.People interested in the theater, acting and direction may like this book. So will high school students who need a book report (warning: 369 pages long!) on William Shakespeare for English class. However, this is a book with many possibilities, that doesn't come through and meet it's potential.