The Player's Boy

Nicholas Marlow #1

by Antonia Forest, Hilary Clare (Introduction), Sue Sims (Introduction)

The Player's Boy

Genres: Historical Fiction, Historical, Childrens

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Antonia Forest was the pen name of Patricia Giulia Caulfield Kate Rubinstein. She was born in North London, the child of Russian-Jewish and Irish parents. She studied at South Hampstead High School and University College, London, and worked as a government clerk and a librarian. Best known for her series of novels about the Marlow family, she published her first book, Autumn Term, in 1948.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh wow, I really loved this! I wasn't sure at first. It took a little while to get my bearings, and I honestly despised Christopher Marlowe's character and his bating of Nicholas's brother Geoffrey. But I loved seeing how Nicholas finally gets connected with Shakespeare through Marlowe and then through Lord Southampton. Nicholas is only 11 years old when he joins Shakespeare's company of actors. They're on hard times at the beginning because of the plague having closed theatres in London, so they've been on the road. But some towns are Puritan and so they won't let the company perform. I think this is around 1592 or so.

When the plague recedes in London, Will takes Nicholas back to his London lodgings. Will meets up with Richard Burbage, whom they call Dickon, and they begin to form the Lord Chamberlain's company with all the familiar names I've heard from learning about them in real life. Dickon has a wife and five daughters and Will and Nicholas often end up there for meals. It's so fun because the little girls idolize Nicholas and Dickon's wife, the motherly, kind, sensible Winefriede, takes him under her wing.

Five full years pass with Nicholas in the company. He slowly takes on more parts that the boy actors played, including a very memorable chapter where he has to step in to play Juliet at the last minute. His talent and dedication and love for the company and the theatre slowly grows and by the end he's fully a member of its ragtag family. The company is on firmer ground financially and it often mentions Shakespeare plays from the time, like the Henriad, Love Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet, etc.

I love Will's character. He is everything I'd want Shakespeare to be--he has a terrific sense of humor, he's just and fair-minded, he's slow to anger, and he walks a fine line between all the tensions of the day (Catholic v. Protestant). We never meet his family (besides his young brother Edmund who joins the company), but we hear of his parents, his wife, and the death of his son. It was so fun to be reading Jonathan Bate's book at the same time because I'd often come across details in one book that came up in the other.

By the end, Shakespeare has become a surrogate father to Nicholas and Nicholas has filled a Hamnet-shaped hole in Will's heart. It's most likely too tidy compared to Shakespeare's real story, but it's very satisfying and lovely to read. The details of the time period feel so naturally and vividly woven into the story. There's real depth and heart here. I'm so glad I saved this to read for Shaketember!

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eleven-year-old Nicholas Marlow, an ancestor of the modern Marlow family, whose school and holiday adventures Antonia Forest chronicled over the course of ten books, runs away from home in this engaging work of historical fiction, set in the later days of Queen Elizabeth's rule. Dismayed to learn he is no longer welcome at Trennels, because his older brother is expecting a child, and his sister-in-law doesn't wish to be bothered with him, and facing a terrible punishment at his grammar school, for repeating a statement made to him by that notorious atheist, Kit Marlowe, Nicholas joins Kit on his journey to London. When this new friend is killed, he finds himself in the keeping of Marlowe's patron, Lord Southampton, and then eventually given over to one William Shakespeare, to be his player's boy. Over the course of several years, Nicholas becomes more experienced in the world of the theater, determining that being a player (i.e.: actor) is what he wants to do with his life...

Originally published in 1970, The Player's Boy is the first part of a story that Antonia Forest had intended to be one novel. The publisher felt the tale was too long for a single children's book however, and so the story was split, with the second half being published in 1971 as The Players and the Rebels . I read the 2006 reprint edition from Girls Gone By Publishers, which included introductory matter from Hilary Clare and Sue Sims - co-authors of The Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories - as well as Laura Hicks, editor of Celebrating Antonia Forest . The historical background, details about William Shakespeare, and discussion of London during Nicholas Marlow's time, was all quite interesting. The story itself was immensely engrossing, and I found Nicholas a sympathetic hero. All of the details about the world of the theatre - the parts, the costumes, the rehearsals, the theaters themselves - were fascinating, as were the historical events occurring in the background. The dawning of the Age of Exploration - Sir Walter Ralegh is one of Nicholas' heroes - and the conflict between Catholic and Protestant in this period both inform the story, and the episode in which Antony Merrick, an ancestor of Patrick Merrick in the books about the modern-day Marlow family, is hung and then drawn and quartered, presumably for the sin of being Catholic, and consorting with a priest, was terribly moving. So too was the discussion between Nicholas and Will, about the question of religion, and which creed was in the right. I was surprised at Forest's evenhandedness here, as I found her somewhat biased in End of Term . All in all, a wonderful work of historical fiction, one that has me eager to pick up the second installment, The Players and the Rebels , in which Nicholas apparently becomes inadvertently involved in the Earl of Essex's rebellion.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here, Forest departs from her modern-day setting for the Elizabethan era to tell the story of Nicholas Marlow, a forebear of the Marlow family of her other books. Nicholas runs away from his family and falls in with first Christopher Marlowe, until something terrible happens in Deptford, and then with William Shakespeare and his group of players.

As usual for Forest, the characterization is excellent and the plot very engaging (in the second book, The Players and the Rebels, Nicholas is unwillingly involved with the rebellion of the Earl of Essex), and her feel for Elizabethan life is good, though I think she sees class divides as more fluid than they actually were (especially in Nicholas's friendship with the Earl of Southampton's page, Humfrey). I do love her sensible, relaxed, steadfast Shakespeare and her portrayal of Nicholas's life in the theatre company.

[Penelope Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my review, see "The Players and the Rebels", which is part 2 of Nicholas' story.