The Tragedy of Arthur (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Tragedy of Arthur Claire M. Busse Arthur Phillips, The Tragedy of Arthur. New York: Random House, 2011. Pp. ix, 368. ISBN: 978–1–4000–6647–6. $26.00. Arthur Phillips’s The Tragedy of Arthur presents itself as an edition of a newly found Shakespeare play, The Tragedy of Arthur, complete with an editorial Preface about the significance of this new find, an introduction by Arthur Phillips, the character who discovered the play, and the play itself. In the play’s depiction of Arthur, Phillips draws from the chronicle histories, particularly Holinshed. Yet he changes this Arthur from the successful martial figure of the chronicles to an individual whose success lies more in the strengths of his advisors than his own merits. Hints of the courtly Arthur of the romances occur, but only through a negative depiction of an Arthur more interested in women than in battle. In Phillips’ play, Arthur does not defeat the Saxons at Lincoln; rather, Arthur’s former guardian, the Duke of Gloucester, leads the troops into battle dressed as Arthur, who shows up after the battle to claim victory. While Phillips is clearly trying to create a character typical of Shakespeare’s [End Page 108] history plays, he misses the mark with Arthur, who lacks the introspective complexity of even Shakespeare’s weakest kings. While Arthur is the subject of this fictional, ‘newly discovered’ Shakespeare play, Phillips’ real interest lies in the other mythic figure at the heart of the book, William Shakespeare. This pairing of Shakespeare and Arthur makes sense—both are culturally central, legendary, yet historical figures of whom many claim great knowledge despite a lack of historical documentation to support such knowledge. In taking on such cultural icons, Phillips’ novel raises interesting questions about the nature of belief and the relationship between belief and authenticity. A struggle over authenticity becomes clear in the first few pages when the editors direct the readers to ‘plunge directly into the play, allowing Shakespeare to speak for himself’ before turning to the ‘very personal Introduction’ offered by Arthur Phillips (ix). The two-hundred-fifty page ‘Introduction’ is, in fact, an autobiography in which the character Phillips endeavors to undermine the editors’ claims of authenticity through his description of his relationship with his father, a talented forger with a passion for Shakespeare who possessed the only copy of the play. The editors seem to suggest that, if we read a play believing that it is by William Shakespeare before reading the suggestion that it is not, we will come to believe in its authenticity. Phillips (the author) suggests that such an argument may have merit, depicting several of his characters quickly rethinking other plays through the lens of The Tragedy of Arthur. Yet, Phillips the character argues that, just as one can easily believe in the truth of authorship, one can easily be dissuaded of it, pointing to the Meegeren Vermeers and James Frey’s memoirs to raise the question, ‘What makes something rapidly and obviously a forgery after it was, sometimes for decades, so obviously genuine?’ (204). The novel suggests that what makes something authentic is based as much on belief as it is on fact, as can be seen in the dueling footnotes between Phillips and his editor, Professor Roland Verre. The character Phillips uses the footnotes to reveal the influence of his father and evidence of twentieth-century pop-culture throughout the play. Verre highlights its historical authenticity, albeit frequently distracted by his desire to show Shakespeare as groundbreaking, in that many words and references in The History of Arthur appear well before any known records of their existence—potential fodder for Phillips’ argument that his father was the author. Phillips shows his talents in his ability to write a play in the style of Shakespeare that could pass as a credible sixteenth-century drama and in his astute understanding of how the cultural and emotional capital of Shakespeare can influence not only bardolatrists but scholars as well. The structure of the novel invokes Nabokov’s Pale Fire, yet the pleasures of that work derive from the clear insanity of its narrator. The Arthur Phillips of Phillips’ novel is a little...