Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ 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)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews
Horn Book Guide Reviews
A young actor travels back in time to 1599 and performs at the Globe Theatre alongside Shakespeare himself. Nat and Will form an intense attachment, and when Nat wakes again in 1999 he's devastated--even after he learns that his time-traveling saved the playwright's life. Ultimately, Nat learns that love is stronger than death in this powerfully rendered historical novel/fantasy/love story.Copyright 2000 Horn Book Guide Reviews
Horn Book Magazine Reviews
Nat Field, whose mother died when he was young and whose grief-stricken father later killed himself, finds solace in acting. He's thrilled when, recruited by a boys' theater company, he travels to London to perform at the rebuilt Globe Theatre. Once there, though, he becomes ill and wakes up to find himself transported back in time to 1599. He soon figures out that he's traded places with a boy by the same name, an actor on loan from another company who, like Nat, is slated to play Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream-though in this production, the role of Oberon will be performed by none other than William Shakespeare himself. Nat forms an intense attachment to the playwright, who helps him understand that his father's love for him didn't end with his death. The interior drama of the story is compelling: Nat's first-person narration aptly conveys not only his grief for his father but also his adoration for Will Shakespeare, his ecstasy about getting to act alongside him, and his despair over their separation when he wakes up again in 1999. Occasional chapters fill the reader in on the other boy, lying in a hospital in modern-day London, delirious with bubonic plague; it is later revealed that they were switched so that Shakespeare wouldn't catch the plague from the boy and die. The emotional story here-that Nat has saved, not lost, his dear friend-is more powerfully rendered than the mechanism operating the fantasy, which leaves some questions dangling. But readers will be swept up in Nat's detailed, sensory-filled observa-tions of life in Shakespeare's time and in Shakespeare's theater. And the overall shape of the novel, with its finely drawn connections between Nat's story and A Midsummer Night's Dream, is superb. Like the novel, the play tells of two worlds: one of fantasy and one of fact, one of immortality and one of death. The play's concern with love and death and its focus on the relationship between art and life and between reality and illusion make it the perfect mirror for Nat's experience. Oberon's closing comments in A Midsummer Night's Dream about a blessed and peaceful future reflect the novel's conclusion, in which Nat learns that next summer he will play Ariel in The Tempest-a play that, he discovers, was written for the unearthly boy from the future, the "aerial sprite" whom Shakespeare once met and vowed he'd never forget. Readers of King of Shadows aren't likely to forget Nat, either. j.m.b. Copyright 1999 Horn Book Reviews
Publishers Weekly Reviews
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. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
"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. (June)n Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
School Library Journal Reviews
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 Cahners Business Information.
Voice of Youth Advocates Reviews
"Listen to it. . . . All those voices which become one-the voice of that single great animal, the audience. The Leviathan. A very large and frightening animal-which we shall tame." William Shakespeare confides this observation to Nat Field, whotravels to England with an all-boys company to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at the new Globe Theatre. Cast four hundred years back in time, when the original Globe has just been built, Nat is taken for Nathan Field, an eponymous actor on loanfrom another company, and must play along. Shakespeare's company is getting ready to stage A Midsummer Night's Dream, with Shakespeare playing Oberon opposite Nat as Puck. Through his relationship with Cooper's compassionate, pragmatic, and quietlyambitious Shakespeare, Nat works through a deep loss and grows as an actor. Young adults will appreciate the light tone and informal language that Cooper, author of The Dark Is Rising sequence, uses to demystify her subject: Elizabethans were "slightly buzzed all the time" from ale and Oberon is "pissed" at Titania. Shegrounds the story in a wealth of details about daily life in London including bear-baitings, beheadings, and food and drink. Insights into Elizabethan theater include staging, costumes, special effects, the apprenticeship system, and the audience.This is a wonderful supplemental text for literature, drama, European history, and related courses. Refer to The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642, Second Edition, by Andrew Gurr, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), for background information as well asthe Nathan Field portrait described in the book.-Mura Venters. Copyright 1999 Voya Reviews