Master Skylark: A Story of Shakespeare's Time

by John Bennett

A young boy with the voice of a skylark, joins a troupe of traveling minstrels. Spirited away from Stratford-on-Avon, he has many adventures, both frightening and triumphant, and finds love through one of the players. No other contemporary work has portrayed the life and times of Elizabethan England with such accuracy.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Classics, Juvenile, Fiction, Shakespeare, Young Adult

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

John Bennett wrote and illustrated children's books. He was born in Chillicothe, Ohio. He wrote The Pigtail of Ah Lee Ben Loo with Seventeen other Laughable Tales and 200 Comical Silhouettes, which won the Newbery Honor in 1929.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John^^^Bennett

Reviews

[Charlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

MASTER SKYLARK is an early children's/YA book set in Elizabethan England - it was published in 1896 by American author John Bennett. It has the reputation of being one of the most successful book of its type. An 11-year-old boy in Stratford, who knows Shakespeare slightly, is kidnapped by an unscrupulous player because of his remarkable singing voice and taken to London. He is sold to "Paul's Boys," the boys' acting and singing company associated with St. Paul's Cathedral, where he sings and acts, but is kept under house arrest by his kidnapper, who also takes his earnings.

The story is full of wonderful detail and description, although it is historically inaccurate in some details (it says Will Kemp, the comedian, was a tragedian, and puts him in the Lord Chamberlain's company at the same time as Richard Tarleton (who was dead by then), and Robert Armin (who replaced Kemp). Minor details, though.

My main criticism is that Nick, the young protagonist, feels little if any sense of adventure or wonder at being part of the London theater world and meeting Shakespeare's company, and even getting to meet the Queen; he just wants to go home to his mother. This is believable, of course, but I think an eleven-year-old would be a little bit more curious and adventurous. The late-Victorian sentimentality about mothers puts me off a bit.

But since I love to read anything about Shakespeare and his life and times, sentimental or revisionist, hard-edged or bathed in nostalgia, I read it with mostly enjoyment. If you liked THE SHAKESPEARE STEALERS, you'll enjoy this early book in the genre of historical YA.

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up a long time ago at DI, just felt like reading it--so glad I did!

This was a fabulous book! I think I'll read it aloud to my kids sometime. Young Nick is endearing for many reasons, but most of all for the love he has for his mother.

The author dedicates the book this way:

"All that Nicholas Attwood's was to him, and more, my own mother has been to me. And to her here I inscribe this book with a never failing love."

Isn't that sweet? It sets the whole tone for the book.

An adventure tale set in Shakespeare's time, it was a great and detailed story of life in that time. I love the descriptions and the characters are interesting and compelling. One think I appreciated was that the author didn't see fit to make the characters speak in Elizabethan English :) I loved the descriptions of Shakespeare and others.

And I freely admit to shedding some tears at the end.

[Jennifer Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

During the time of Shakespeare, a young boy from Stratford-upon-Avon gets way more of an adventure than he was expecting and meets some of the most famous people in England along the way.

This book was published in 1897, and that’s important to know, because it definitely has a very old-fashioned style. I got drawn in from the beginning because I was enjoying the prose, and then I got interested in the story. On the whole, it was a really enjoyable book, even if it has a laughably idealized version of William Shakespeare and his associates.

Unfortunately, the happy ending suddenly becomes so saccharin and maudlin (and so long and drawn out) that it really kind of ruined it, except for the fact that now I had something to laugh about.

I kid you not, this is an actual quote:

“For then--ah, then--a lad and his mother; a son come home, the wandering ended, and the sorrow done!

“She took him to her breast as though he were a baby still; her tears ran down upon his face, yet she was smiling--a smile like which there is no other in all the world: a mother's smile upon her only son, who was astray, but has come home again.

“Oh, the love of a lad for his mother, the love of a mother for her son--unchanged, unchanging, for right, for wrong, through grief and shame, in joy, in peace, in absence, in sickness, and in the shadow of death! Oh, mother-love, beyond all understanding, so holy that words but make it common!”

🤮😂

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to my liking this novel more than I did is that I'm long past the target age for the book. I also suspect that my admiration and affection from Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Becky Thatcher, and even both the Prince and the Pauper due to their respective gumption and resolution leads me to wonder what took this lad so long to act in response to his situation! Granted that he offered some resistance at times and Tom Sawyer did play along the Duke and the Dauphin probably longer than he should have. I enjoyed the background details and events that reflected the state of the theatre and the stage of the Elizabethan era, and the mention of a number of key characters from that milieu. The book is the product of an earlier age when things moved along more slowly and is set in another era even farther in the past which needs to be taken into account.

[Kathy Brower · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an older book, but I took a chance and read it out loud to my 9 yr old son. We loved it!! No language. Adventure was big, but violence was minimal. And now my thoughts are all in old English as well. So there’s that. But it’s the story of a young boy who finds himself transported from a tiny English town to great big London where he performs for many audiences. Will Shakespeare is in it, but he plays a back role. Not front and center. He was cleverly written in throughout the book, even though the story was not about him, per se. If you are a parent of kids 3rd grade and up, I recommend trying it. Even if you just read 2 chapters a day. The story is memorable. And it’s an easy introduction to Shakespeare.

[Carfig · Rating 3 out of 5]

True enough a good tale of Shakespeare's day, with a lad from the bard's very own Stratford. At first Nick Attwood thinks he is off to Coventry to see a play, but he is stolen by Gaston Carew, master-player of the Lord Admiral's Players. He hears Nick sing and cannot let him go, taking him all the way to London. Nick's voice takes him as far as possible--to Queen Elizabeth, in fact, but that is not what's in his heart.

[Ann-Marie Messbauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grabbed this, another "children's book", off the give-away shelf at the library. I liked the title. Turns out I also liked the plot, and Bennett's wonderful use of language and description. There were complex characters, not merely types. And I did feel that I got a plausible sense of what it might have been like to live in England when Shakespeare (who is, in fact, one of the characters) was in the thick of it as a playwright and actor. Good illustrations, too!

[Shelly Sauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book

I loved this book not only cause I could feel the emotion but I could also feel the good energy in the book. I recommend it to the age group 15 and up because there’s some things little ones can’t comprehend. So I give this AMAZING book five stars.
- shelly Sauer

[Jayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

A lovely childrens' historical fiction, first published in 1896, about a young boy who finds himself whisked away to be a player in the Lord Admiral's company and eventually meets William Shakespeare. Worth reading for the descriptions of clothing alone.

[Gwyneth Bare]

DNF

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good addition to our current Shakespeare study of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This story was enjoyable and gave insight into the time period of Shakespeare's writing.

[Bella Rolofson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had to read it for school it was eh

[Perry Whitford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Son of a Stratford tanner becomes an Elizabethan singing sensation. (The son of a Stratford glover once did OK down South, too.)

Nick Attwood defies his father by running away from home to watch the travelling players of the Lord Admiral's Men and falls in with the exploitative Master Gaston Carew, who takes him down to London and trains him to sing before the paying public. Maybe Nick's famous fellow Stratfordian can save him?

As I expected, the Bard's appearances are few and far between, though ultimately decisive. Along the way the author treats us to snapshots of playwright Thomas Heywood, impresario Philip Henslowe and the Rose Theatre. (The Globe hadn't been built at this time.) The story also visits the contrasting charms of Greenwich House and Newgate prison.

In an early scene set in a bucolic Stratford beautifully brought to life, Sir Thomas Lucy refers to his old enemy Shakespeare (if the historical rumours are to be believed) as "neither more nor less than a deer-stealing scape-gallows."
I adore those old Elizabethan insults and intended to make a note of more, but forgot to!

Not to worry, I also enjoy descriptions of the incredible dinners those Tudor gluttons used to stuff their bellies with, and here is an extended example of one:

'a green Banbury cheese, some simnel bread and oat-cakes; a pudding, hark 'e, sweet and full of plums, with honey and a pasty--a meat pasty, marry, a pasty made of fat and toothsome eels; and moreover, fellow, ale to wash it down--none of thy penny ale, mind ye, too weak to run out of the spigot, but snapping good brew--dost take me?--with beef and mustard, tripe, herring, and a good fat capon broiled to a turn!"

The period detail was admirably authentic throughout, though I can't help thinking that Gaston Carew's more than mercantile interest in his young protege, consistently hinted at by the pointed use of the word 'queer,' was going a bit far for a novel primarily aimed at a juvenile readership.

Naturally, the the glover's son saves the day.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Take the chance and read this fantastic tale. My sweet nine year old begs me to keep reading it aloud. It'll warm the cockles of your heart.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Young adult historical fiction from the nineteenth century! How adorable! Reading like a cross between The Shakespeare Stealer and Oliver Twist, this heavily romantacized little tale of a young Elizabethan boy coming to London and meeting Shakespeare had very little historical accuracy, emotional realism, or thematic complexity, let alone thoughtful characterization of Shakespeare himself and addressing of his legend. But there was still something entirely charming about it, as with much children's literature from that era.

[Jobiska (Cindy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Own a much older copy. It was a little hard to get into at first, but it picked up.

[Armatstorage]

Loved it! Great read.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was definitely a book of its time, with meandering prose. Some parts were quite repetitive but overall a charming read with a predictably happy ending.