Borrowing the Bard

...consisting of loosely connected dramatic scenes that rely entirely on the dialogue to propel the action along This technique results in considerable ellipsis, not of words, but of transitions, thought processes and background details When a play is presented on stage, the actors, scene designers, lighting technicians and costumers provide the necessary transitions, motivations and setting The playwright, of course, gives specific directions for each of these But the most significant instructions lie m the context, in the unspoken needs and conflicts that are always evident, yet never uttered In his novel, Maclnnes has failed to supply the dramatic context His dialogue speeds characters from one adventure to the next, seldom pausing to examine events or motives Nothing resonates Except for Aubrey, the characters are indicated rather than revealed Maclnnes is sometimes more careful to lend concrete detail to the scenes of his own invention, endowing them with vitality and dimension Take, for example, the delightful episode in which Doll Pretty, a blowsy prostitute, is won over by the blandishments of a swashbuckling blackamoor "At the table, with the grandiloquence of a Don, he seized the Doll's plump paw he released not her hand, but clutched at the other, which he laid upon his oaken thigh, nuzzling her neck the while 'Thou hast a scent,' said he at last, "as sweet as the four winds of Africa' "Doll Pretty, who was unused to courtesies of this specie, but rather to 'Unfrock, trull, and that speedily,' beamed mightily at his words and, taking up his huge ham hand, planted upon its interior, or pinker side, a lingering buss, saying to him, This comes with mine heart, good master blackamoor ' " Had Maclnnes invested his resources as carefully throughout, we would have more cause to praise his enterprise...

...Borrowing the Bard Three Years to Play By Colin Maclnnes Farrai, Straus and Giroux 365 pp $6 95 Reviewed by Eugenie Bolger Shakespeare paid scant heed to Polonius' counsel against borrowing Dipping shamelessly into every promising pocket for plots and characters, he parlayed small sums into a literary fortune and enriched an already venerable tradition In his new novel, Three Years to Play, Colin Maclnnes has made bold with Shakespeare's As You Like It, and Polonius is vindicated January 11, 1971 17 Not that Maclnnes is a poor risk for such a venture--both temperament and talent admirably suit him for Elizabethan gambols--but he simply fails to make sufficient use of the loan Several assets save the enterprise from complete bankruptcy Chief among them is the quality Nat Hen-toff singled out in his introduction to a collection of Maclnnes' earliei novels " coursing through each of the novels is a highly sensate appreciation of being alive, of being able to react spontaneously, whether with rage or tenderness " This vigor and gusto, so essential to any portrait of Elizabethan England, enlivens the pages of Three Years to Play, as does the skill with which the author indulges himself in extravagant wordplay His characters parry words and bandy puns as outrageously as any of Shakespeare's contemporaries Then there is Maclnnes' demonstrated knowledge of London Who else could write so well about this city in the bloom of the Renaissance9 It could be said that London is the true subject of much of his work, certainly it is central to Three Years to Play The city he has referred to elsewhere as "the ugly, old indifferent capital," is presented here in the heyday of its youth " ' the walled city with its seven gates, the supplementaries that have ensconced themselves, like warts upon a bloated nose, on both sides of the river already far too vast for control of the plagues and disorders that perpetually affect it' " Maclnnes capitalizes on his ability to capture the perspective of the outsider His narrator, Aubrey, is a country youth whose canniness and forthright good sense insure not only his survival in the city but also his vision He is quick to discern folly and extravagance, pomp and pretension, injustice and hypocrisy --and he puts them in their place with a few shrewd comments and a minimum of moralizing No one with a position to defend could have viewed everything so treely or so clearly But this device leads to another difficulty How is a writer to submerge himself in the sensibility of another era so completely that he produces, as it from the original spring, the identical stream9 While Three Years to Play aspires to be Shakespearean frolic as well as historical novel, the author's insistence on observing from without, rather than feeling from within, presents it from succeeding at either As if bearing witness to the pitfalls of borrowing, the weakest portions of the novel are those most closely related to their Shakespearean source The description of Aubrey's arrival in London, and his apprenticeship as pander and touchman to the Doge of Genoa, who was lord over a kingdom of brothels and thieves, has wit and credibility A later account of the Elizabethan theater boils with excitement, depicting a carnival of milling crowds, harried producers, temperamental actors, waving banners and trumpet flourishes, concluding with a murderous not that makes our recent disturbances seem like school-yard rumpuses In between fall the chapters recapitulating the story of As You Like It Here Aubrey's new master, Venice, brother to Genoa and overlord of a rival empire, is threatened by the authorities and his brother's treachery Aubrey arranges for Venice and his henchman to take refuge with Martin, Aubrey's stepfather, in the forest near Harden In these pages, crammed with chance encounters and sudden reconciliations, Maclnnes reproduces Shakespeare's subject matter without equaling his manner It is a failure that informs much of the novel Maclnnes flaunts his indebtedness Not only does Shakespeare appear as a character and supply the plot, he influences language and dictates structure too The novel is a rambling picaresque adventure...