The Book of Will (Lauren Gunderson)
If I waited a year to read The Squirrels because I knew I’d love it, I’ve put off reading The Book of Will because I feared it’d be another frustrating, self-congratulatory, same-sounding historical “comedy” from Lauren Gunderson. It’s as though I wished on a monkey’s paw and Gunderson was created. The most produced playwright in America writes comedies! But they always talk about how comedy isn’t of any use to anyone. She deals in historical fiction! But all of the characters have modern attitudes about everything and sound like they’re from today. The plays move briskly, aren’t boring, and are genuinely funny! But it’s written a quippy-style which makes every character stay the same.
I don’t like her, is my point, and I don’t like Book of Will, but this work actually avoids her worst excesses for most of the text, and is a play that I’m merely disappointed in rather than actively angry at. So, that’s something.
The Book of Will follows Shakespeare Contemporaries Henry Condell and John Heminges attempts to posthumously publish the First Folio dealing with piracy, lack of funds, and their own mortal frailty along the way. Remembering the dead is a common and persistent theme.
So if I dislike most of Gunderson’s tendencies, how does this play stack up?
Derision of comedy while using it? Mostly absent. There are a few times when a character talks about her love of comedies and everyone mostly ignores her.
Modern dialogue in an historical setting? Basically absent. Our more prominent characters have relaxed ways of speaking to each other, but it doesn’t sound like you’re in a college dorm this time around.
Modern attitudes that likely wouldn’t have been shared by that society? Largely contained to opinions about Shakespeare. Although it’s mentioned we don’t have anyone decry how women aren’t allowed to act, and other things which were commonly accepted at the time. However, just about everyone falls to their knees to worship Shakespeare, and the people who don’t are greedy businessman. They even, thankfully, have the same opinions on “the problem plays,” etc. as we do here. The past! It’s just like us!
Gunderson still has indulgent sequences, she hammers the same ideas scene after scene without building on them (how many times must we hear that death comes for us all)?
The play waves away the part of the story I’d be most interested in: how did they reconstruct the plays from memory, or choose what to keep or throw out. It’s a persistent concern but we’re not shown the actual mechanisms of it, but that would be hard to stage, and certainly would be subject to the kind of revisionism that I’m usually against from her.
At the end of the day this is the best play I’ve read by Gunderson, but that is faint praise from me.
As a Producer
Surprisingly, I’d probably be fairly happy to produce this play. It generally fits within our mandate, it’s historical (which I like,) and it is the kind of show that would be easy to sell to prospective audiences.
As a Designer
There is ample opportunity, as much as any other play, for designers here, but sound design in particular would be a treat. Gunderson makes special mention of the sounds of presses constructing the first Folio, and the play ends with a chorus of Shakespeare from around the world being spoken that would be a wondrous theatrical moment to pull off.
As a Writer
Even in the depths of my distaste for her finished work, Gunderson has always excelled at writing snappy dialogue that doesn’t falter and moves the plot along briskly. The cost of that benefit is everyone feeling quippy and little feeling important though, so I don’t know how much I want to emulate it.
