The Tragedy of ArthurA Novel

A visit to the Bard via Eco

Of all the ways The Tragedy of Arthur offers to impress a reader, its most delightful is that it manages to bring together two authors I thought I’d never see in the same book: William Shakespeare and Umberto Eco. The first half of Tragedy — a “preface” written by a man named Arthur Philips for a newly-discovered play by Shakespeare — is the Eco half, wherein Philips constructs an elaborate back story around said play. In the coy mixture of family history (Philips’s father inspires him to believe in the play’s authenticity), publishing and Shakespearian minutia (we even get to read Philips’s decidedly personal correspondence with his editor at Random House), and good old obsessive detective work, the book seethes with the treasure-hunting, vaguely Indiana Jones-esque energy that Eco brought to books like Foucault’s Pendulum.

The second half, where we read the play itself, is obviously the Shakespearian half. While it’s one thing to take on the mantle of an author like Eco, it’s another entirely to invent a five-act play purportedly written by the greatest writer in the English language. But two things save Philips. The first is the incredible care with which he has constructed this play, going so far as to vet it through Shakespearian scholars for tone, wit and word choice. The second thing is that both the character Philips and the author Philips eventually come to agree that this play is a forgery, which lets Philips the author off the hook for not being nearly as good as the Bard (no one can be, after all). The result is an enchantingly enjoyable book by a rising novelist who continues to stretch his legs and take on every more ambitious and interesting projects.