The Fool's Girl
Synopsis
Violetta and Feste are in London, the year is 1601 and William Shakespeare is enjoying success at the Globe Theatre. But Violetta is not there to admire his plays; she is in England to retrieve her country's greatest treasure, stolen by the evil Malvolio, and she needs help.
In an adventure that stretches from the shores of Illyria to the Forest of Arden, romance and danger go hand in hand. In a quest that could mean life or death, can Violetta manage to recover the precious relic and save her country and herself?
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Celia says:
The Fool's Girl…
… wasn't always called that. For a long time it was called Illyria.
I was watching a performance of Twelfth Night in Stratford. Not in the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre, but on an open air stage set up by the river, on a very hot day in June. My presence was purely serendipitous. I live near Stratford. I go there some Saturdays to the Farmer's Market. As mundane and ordinary as that. A student theatre company were giving an outdoor performance, barking up their play, giving out flyers. The stage was made from boards set up on poles, the amphitheatre a natural dell, the backdrop was the Avon, the changing rooms a couple of bushes. It was only a hundred yards from the RSC, but nearer by far to the original Elizabethan touring companies, than that grand theatre could ever be. The play was Twelfth Night. Another reason why I sat down to watch. Twelfth Night is my favourite Shakespearean comedy. It is short, laugh-out-loud funny and impossibly romantic, but it is the element of disguise that I've always loved. The heroine, Viola, is a girl who is really a boy who is pretending to be a girl who is pretending to be a boy. This ambiguity gives the play a powerful sexual charge and frisson, like the Blur song, 'Girls and Boys'.
While I was watching, I began to wonder: What happens next? What happens after the end of the play? The play walks a knife edge between tragedy and comedy. It is perfectly balanced, but one false move and it could all go horribly wrong. The play ends, as all comedies should, with disguises removed, couples united, but I've always had the feeling that they are slightly uncomfortable with each other. Not only that, but characters stomp off swearing revenge, are sent away and banished, so as not to disrupt the happiness and harmony. What if the couples are not entirely satisfied with each other? What if the troublesome characters come back? What if… My mind was busy while the actors ran on and off the stage and changed behind bushes. By the time they linked hands to take their final bow, I had an idea for a book.
What country, friends, is this?
Viola says at the beginning of the play. What country indeed? That's what I wanted to discover. I decided to begin some time after Shakespeare ends his play and I immediately broke two of my own rules: not to write about real historical characters (especially not famous ones); not to set a book in Elizabethan England. Rules are made to be broken, so I decided that Shakespeare would be a character in the book.
There are hundreds of books written about him, thousands, whole libraries, but there are surprisingly few indisputable facts. This gave me a way into the man and his life. He would be Will Shakespeare from Warwickshire (my own county, so I feel a kind of kinship): actor, playmaker, theatre manager; not impossibly famous William Shakespeare, Bard, Swan of Avon, home a heritage centre and mecca for tourists from all over the world. He would be Shakespeare before he knew he was Shakespeare. If he ever did. I wanted to make him real, sexy. More Shakespeare in Love than the Droeshout engraving from the First Folio.
He would be a jobbing writer with inky fingers, trying to make a living, juggling his life in London with his life at home in Stratford, trying to survive, keep his nose clean, in the dangerous, violent, difficult and volatile world at the end of Elizabeth's reign. Hard at work, trying to keep his Company going, writing and re-writing, always on the look out for stories to keep up with the need for plays and more plays. When he happens upon two street performers, a Fool and his beautiful young girl assistant, he finds one. He meets Feste the clown and Viola's daughter, Violetta, survivors from the wreck of Illyria, but they bring with them more than just their story and Will Shakespeare's life is about to get a whole lot more complicated.
Reviews
"It's always exciting to see a new novel by Celia Rees: she's one of those rare writers who are consistently excellent yet always surprising. In the recent past she's written about female pirates and female highwaymen, (Pirates and Sovay) and Mayan prophecies and suicide cults (The Stone Testament).
"Here she breaks more new ground: The Fool's Girl is a dark take on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. It's told in a number of different voices, and begins with Violetta, Viola's daughter, describing the sack of her city by Venetian and Uskok pirates led by none other than her own uncle Sebastian.
"In some ways, the book is a fascinating extension of the play. Rees explores the currents of cruelty, melancholy and madness flowing under the play's lyrical surface sparkle. It's a writer's business – a writer's delight – to ask 'what if…?' and spin a story out of it. So Rees asks: what if Viola and Olivia, whose faux courtship is so central to the play, actually did prefer one another to their oh-so-suitable husbands? What if Viola's twin brother Sebastian was jealous of his sister on two counts: for making a better marriage than himself and for stealing his wife Olivia's affections? What if cross-gartered Malvolio harboured a furious and lasting grudge against the merry crew who tricked and abused him? What if the ending wasn't happy-ever-after at all?"
Katherine Langrish, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles – also including an interview with Celia!
"I read two of Celia Rees' books last year and fell completely in love with her writing. I was extremely keen to read her latest book, The Fool's Girl. Once again Rees spins a fantastic adventure that brings history to life and has it jumping of the pages.
"Where Celia Rees absolutely excels is bringing history to life. Descriptions of sights, sounds and smells all create such imagery that for a while I actually was in seventeenth century London. She doesn't shy away from the grisly truth so at times the book is violent and slightly disturbing, especially in her descriptions of the fate of prisoners and betrayers. But this makes the book seem all the more authentic. Seventeenth century London wasn't the nicest of places after all, with the heads of criminals hanging from London Bridge and the lack of sanitation.
"Celia Rees remains one of my favourite authors, and The Fool's Girl does nothing to change that. I remember when reading the magnificence that is Witch Child, thinking how fantastically it would have tied in with studying The Crucible at school. I think the same applies with The Fool's Girl and Shakespeare, I'm fairly certain I would have found him more interesting had I read this book at that time. But The Fool's Girl is also a great book just to read for enjoyment. It's fast, it's gripping, and it's entertaining. I'd recommend this for anyone who enjoys an exciting historical novel, from aged 13 up, or as an introduction to this genre."
Rhiana, Rhiana Reads
"Celia Rees specialises in writing about strong, independent heroines, and Violetta certainly doesn't let the reader down there. She's continually brave, defiant in the face of danger, and ready to stand up for herself, her country and her friends. The supporting cast here is also really well-described – the mixture of fictional and real characters works well, and the historical figures always seem very believably written. Her description of Elizabethan times is also very good, and her depiction of Illyria – based on Croatia at that time, according to her acknowledgements – is excellent. "
Robet James, The Bookbag
"'I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you,' says Malvolio at the end of Twelfth Night. Celia Rees has taken this unresolved threat as an invitation and followed the characters – and their descendents – to London, where they meet Shakespeare and involve him in their story, provoking him, in turn, to write a play called Twelfth Night. It's a cunning way to structure a story, allowing Rees to have a lot of fun with the characters from the original play, using them as an inspiration while toying with the idea of who and what might have inspired Shakespeare."
Josh Lacey, The Guardian
"Violetta and the fool, Feste, take refuge in Tudor London after a usurper seizes her Illyrian throne. As street performers on Bankside, they attract the attention of one Master Shakespeare. Rees spins an elaborate tale that plays wittily upon the plot of Twelfth Night."
Suzi Feay, The Financial Times