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Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard
By Richard B. Wright
HarperCollins, 342 pages, $33
Details of William Shakespeare's life are so blurred that scholars still debate whether he or someone else wrote all those plays.
At least two of our best novelists have produced delightful takes on his life -- Leon Rooke with his 1983 Governor General's Award-winning Shakespeare's Dog, and now Richard B. Wright with this immensely entertaining romp.
Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard is based on the premise that the young Will, a few years after his marriage to Anne Hathaway, was in London (in 1587) without his wife, working as an apprentice to a theatrical group called the Queen's Players, when he met and seduced a young widow named Lizzy Ward. Unknown to him, his liaisons with Lizzy resulted in a daughter.
That daughter, Aerlene, narrates this bountiful and bawdy tale in a voice that, for authenticity, rivals that of the main protagonist...