King of Shadows

Susan Cooper (author)

Puffin Books, UK: 1999; 181pp

ISBN: 0141307994

Genres: adventure, fantasy, historical fiction

Issues: creativity, friendship, giftedness

Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Nat Field has been selected as one of the best child actors in America to travel to England as part of a Company of Boys to act at the New Globe, a perfect copy of Shakespeare's original theatre.

He is to play Puck in their performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. When they arrive in England, the boys are full of the excitement of visiting London, of performing before a foreign audience.

Nat, however, begins to experience strange dizzy spells and to feel disconnected from the world around him. After only a week or so in England he wakes up one morning to find that it is 1599 and he is being mistaken for Nathan Field, a child from St Paul's Boys drama school, who has been lent to the Globe players for their performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He knows the lines, so that's not a problem - but how is he to cope with this incredibly strange and frightening world where sewage is thrown into the streets and bear-baiting is an acceptable form of entertainment?

Extremely well-researched and written with a sound knowledge and love of Shakespeare, his times and his plays, this is a very skilful piece of writing. Cooper is best known for her fantasy series, The Dark is Rising, but this novel demonstrates once again her ability to create not only strong, three-dimensional characters, but also the sights, sounds, and smells that surround them. The reader becomes caught up in Nat's initial confusion and terror as he realises that he may well be trapped forever in this Elizabethan world, then feels his growing delight in working with Shakespeare himself as they develop their relationship through their roles as Oberon and Puck.

The great advantage of presenting the novel in first-person through the eyes of Nat is that the reader can experience both the skill of Cooper's recreation of the Elizabethan world in historical detail, and the way that world appears to those of us who live in modern times. Nat gives a constant commentary on his experience, finding similarities to reassure himself - mostly in the world of the theatre - and then jangling his nerves against the bizarre differences, the habits and routines that seem almost barbaric to our modern eyes.

More than anything, however, the novel focuses on A Midsummer Night's Dream, with all its fantastical happenings. It gives the reader insight both into the play itself and to how it might have been received by Elizabethan audiences - and the Queen herself.

Highly recommended and very readable, with a thought-provoking twist at the conclusion.