King of Shadows

June 18, 2001
"Cooper brilliantly weaves past and present together, using London's Globe Theatre as a backdrop, to demonstrate the timelessness of Shakespeare's works and the theater at large," said PW
in a boxed review. Ages 10-14.

Starred review from October 4, 1999
Cooper (The Dark Is Rising) brilliantly weaves past and present together, using London's Globe Theatre as backdrop, to demonstrate the timelessness of Shakespeare's works and the theater at large. The first segment of the novel, set in the present, details Nathan Field's rehearsals for the part of Puck in an upcoming production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, to be mounted in the newly renovated Globe. He has been chosen, along with a group of other boys from America, to travel to England for the performance. When Nat is suddenly stricken with a serious illness, he awakens to find himself once again cast as Puck at the Globe Theatre, but the year is 1599. Cooper meticulously conveys Nat's impressions of the sights, sounds, smells and textures of Elizabethan England. She is equally adept at evoking the boy's respect and awe for his "new" director, the bard himself. Shakespeare, cast as a wise, intuitive father figure, takes orphaned Nat under his wing. In return, Nat saves the playwright's life by unknowingly changing the natural course of history. Through the boy's relationship with "Will," as Nat calls him, Cooper deftly reveals Nat's unresolved feelings about his own deceased father. The judicious use of quotes from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets will awaken in novices an interest in his works and command respect from seasoned fans. Fascinating details of 16th-century troupe life as well as how costumes, make-up and stage effects were carried out add depth and layers to the depiction of life 400 years ago. An unexpected, appropriately enigmatic ending brings this masterful novel to a close--and brings home the resounding message that the show must go on. Ages 10-14.

November 1, 1999
Gr 5-8-Orphan Nat Field is chosen as part of an American theater group to perform at the new Globe Theatre in London. Nat's big role will be Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, his debut is pushed 400 years into the past when he is put to bed with a high fever and wakes up in Elizabethan England. Forced to adapt or be discovered, Nat figures out his situation quickly with judicious questions that result in naturally occurring explanations of the times, the plays, and the theater. The time-travel element is well constructed. Through occasional flashes to the present, readers learn that a boy presumed to be Nat is being treated for bubonic plague. Nat Field has switched places with the infected Nathan Field, who is just about to arrive at the old Globe on loan from another company-thus, thanks to modern medicine, Shakespeare and his plays are saved for the ages. Something in the boy attracts the attention of Will himself and Nat soon becomes his prot g . The father/son relationship between the two fills a need for Nat, whose suppressed sorrow at his father's suicide after his mother's death is finally expressed. The circumstances of his father's death and Nat's reluctance to deal with it are hinted at rather clumsily in the beginning of the book and dispatched succinctly when finally addressed, and come off as clearly secondary to the involving theater experiences. Still, Cooper's readers and fans of Gary Blackwood's Shakespeare Stealer (Dutton, 1998) will revel in the hurly-burly of rehearsals and the performance before the queen, the near discoveries, the company rivalries, and some neatly drawn parallels.-Sally Margolis, Barton Public Library, VT

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 1999
Gr. 5^-8. Nat Field is thrilled when theater director Richard Babbage chooses him to become a player in the Company of Boys, an American summer drama troupe that will appear in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the new replica of the Globe Theater in London. Shortly after his arrival in England, though, Nat feels ill and falls into a troubled sleep. To the doctor's astonishment, he seems to be suffering from the effects of the bubonic plague. He awakens in 1599 as another Nat Field, a child actor from St. Paul's School who is about to go to the Globe to rehearse "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the role of Puck. In the weeks of rehearsal that follow the time switch, Nat, still numb from his father's suicide some years before, opens up to William Shakespeare, who is still pained by the death of his son. Shakespeare offers his young Puck sympathy, respect, affection, and a sonnet on the constancy of love, which comforts Nat at the time and after his return to the twentieth century. Few writers have used historical characters in fiction with such conviction and grace as Cooper in her down-to-earth portrayals of Shakespeare and theater founder Richard Burbage. Nat's disorientation during his initial illness works surprisingly well as a transition between one time period and the next. The mysterious role Richard Babbage/Burbage seems to play in understanding or directing the time travel is less satisfying. Still, the book provides a sympathetic first-person narrative, a vivid evocation of everyday life in Elizabethan England, and a lively dramatization of the tension and magic as a play moves through rehearsals to performance. As the two companies of players prepare for their productions and the story rises to a crescendo, the play becomes a constant, a fixed point and in both centuries. Part historical fiction, part fantasy, and wholly entertaining reading. ((Reviewed October 15, 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)