‘Not for an age but for all time’: The depiction of Shakespeare in a selection of children's fiction

Abstract

The figure of Shakespeare is to be found in many novels, for both adults and children, written during the last two centuries. From his appearance as a mature dramatist in Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth (1821) to the young and promising lad in Jan Mark's Stratford Boys (2003), the images of Shakespeare portrayed inevitably carry with them much of the cultural and political baggage of the era in which the novels were written, as well as the conscious or subconscious ideology of the authors. Geoffrey Trease's Shakespeare in Cue for Treason (1940) is a focus both for the patriotism concomitant with the wartime publication date and for the author's radicalism, while the playwright's Catholic origins come to the fore in Antonia Forest's The Player's Boy (1970). In many of these books, as well as in more recent children's novels such as Susan Cooper's King of Shadows (1999) and Gary Blackwood's Shakespeare's Scribe (2001), Shakespeare also tends to appear as something of a father figure for the young protagonist. He is often associated with qualities such as humour and understanding which teenage readers may sometimes find lacking in their own parents. The depiction of Shakespeare seems not only to serve the purpose of interesting young readers in his plays, but also to lend support by his authority to the writers’ own convictions. Study of a range of these fictional texts suggests that there is in process a constant ‘re-invention’ of Shakespeare for each new generation.