Shakespeare's Ear

July 1, 2017
In entertaining, bite-size biographies of notable playwrights and entertainers from ancient Greece to modern times, and in accounts of strange doings behind the scenes, Rayborn focuses on the dark side of theaterthe staging of gory scenes in Elizabethan and commedia dell'arte theater, debauched players and playwrights, ghost tales, and famous superstitions. Characters range from the well known, like Shakespeare, who gets a chapter of his own, in which Rayborn examines the ongoing research to prove the Bard's identity, to Moll Cutpurse, a notorious cross-dresser, pipe smoker, and pimp. By emphasizing gore and violence, Rayborn means to reveal a timeless side to the theater worldour fascination with the underbelly of things extends from the ancients to today's news. This single perspective may feel reductive to those looking for something more nuanced, but there is method in Rayborn's seeming tunnel vision: learning about the astonishing and often violent antics that happened behind the scenes of great dramas makes the whole genre even more fun. For many readers, it's likely to do just that.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)