Secret Stratford: Shakespeare's Hometown in Recent Young Adult Fiction

Abstract

In a number of recent novels for the young, Stratford serves as location for at least part of the action, its landmarks invested with both narrative and thematic significance. These versions appear influenced by aspects of contemporary scholarship, particularly new data about visits from theatre companies to Stratford, and revival of critical interest in Shakespeare and religion, especially his relationship with Catholicism, while the Stratford origins of Shakespeare's creativity are explored through plots, allusions or characters that mirror his plays. The myth of Stratford as Shakespeare's loved or rejected home is well suited to youth fiction, where the idea of lost, re-found or substitute homes is so often a central theme or plot device. Shakespeare's hometown takes on varying characteristics, prominence and gendered associations, just as Shakespeare himself is present or absent to different degrees. Although Stratford often represents home, family and security, it also reveals a darker, death-haunted, secret life: both the nostalgic rural idyll embodied in the concept of 'Shakespeare country' and a site in which the violent politics of religion are played out.