Award-winning author and former Stratford Festival associate director to launch new book in Stratford
Article by: GALEN SIMMONS
Award-winning author and former Stratford Festival associate director Rod Carley may not be able to launch his new book, RUFF – a fictional tale about William Shakespeare’s efforts to remain relevant in a changing world – in Stratford Upon Avon, but Stratford, Ont., will do just fine.
From noon to 4 p.m. Aug. 24, Carley will return to the Festival City to launch his North American book tour at Fanfare Books.
“Since the novel concerns itself with a bad year in the life of Will Shakespeare, what better place to hold the launch than in Stratford?” Carley said.
RUFF, Carley’s fourth novel, is described as a theatrical odyssey packed with an unforgettable cast of Elizabethan eccentrics. Suffering from a mid-life crisis, a plague outbreak and the death of the ancient queen, Shakespeare’s mettle is put to the test when the new king puts his witch-burning hobby aside to announce a national play competition that will determine which theatre company will secure his favour and remain in business. As he struggles to write a Scottish supernatural thriller, Shakespeare faces one obstacle after another including a young, rival, punk poet and his activist wife fighting for equality and a woman’s right to tread the boards.
Shakespeare and his band of misfits must ensure not only their own survival, but that of England as well. The stage is set for an outrageous and compelling tale of ghosts, ghostwriting, writer’s block and the chopping block.
“It goes back, originally, to my second book, KINMOUNT, where the central character, Dave Middleton, who was a down-and-out Shakespearean director; I wrote him as a descendant of an Elizabethan playwright named Thomas Middleton,” Carley said. “We have evidence that Thomas Middleton possibly wrote some of the supernatural scenes with the witches in Macbeth and possibly added scenes
during Shakespeare’s lifetime or after his death. That’s kind of fuzzy, but we know there was some kind of collaboration.
“So, I thought that was kind of the magic what-if. What would happen if I put these two characters together in a book. And if you look at it, there’s an age difference of 17 years. Shakespeare’s turning 40, so I imagined, like many writers, he’s middle-aged, he’s having a mid-life depression, he’s got domestic troubles back in Stratford, he’s never home – his daughters think he’s an uncle they see only at Christmas – and he’s grieving the death of his son, and his father’s just died. There’s a plague outbreak, the queen died, so everything is topsy turvy and he’s facing a
lot of financial stressors. Then you add to it the new rival writers – the punk writers – are coming up and they view him as yesterday’s news.”
Carley, who has directed Shakespeare’s plays and written about people directing Shakespeare and, now, about the man himself, said he wanted to humanize the larger-than-life playwright by portraying
him as a man struggling with the same personal insecurities and fears of what the future will bring that many of us struggle with today. And while Shakespeare, as Carley writes him, is terrified of the supernatural, he teams up with Thomas Middleton – a man obsessed with ghosts and witches – to help him write a play that appeals to the new King and the monarch’s own fascination with the occult. Carley purposely set his story at a time in history not unlike today.
“The same way there’s no point in doing a Shakespeare play unless it’s accessible to audiences today … there’s no reason to write a novel about William Shakespeare unless it’s fresh and it’s got something new to say. … One of my quests in writing this was to also write a book that’s more modern than tomorrow. The book is set in 1604 … but it’s amazing the similarities between what was happening then and what was happening now.
“ … For example, Shakespeare was dealing with the plague; we are dealing with the pandemic. He was dealing with the hyper-conservative puritans who now had a majority in Parliament; we’re
dealing with the crazy, right-wing evangelists in the States. We’re fighting global warming; during his era, they were fighting what’s called ‘the little ice age’ where the climate changes and everything got unseasonably cold. … Fake news then; fake news now. … The homeless situation was terrible in Elizabethan society. They would go down to the ports and steal all the sails form the boats and they made makeshift camps in London. That’s not too far from what’s happening right now.”
While his novel is fiction, Carley did extensive research to ensure it was grounded in real history, and he used whatever details we know about Shakespeare today – though there are few – as inspiration to create a character and a story that seems possible, if not plausible.
With this year’s Stratford Festival production of Something Rotten – another story featuring a fictionalized version of Shakespeare – in full swing, Carley said Stratford is the perfect place to launch his book tour.
“I had an absolute blast writing this story and I think it will be great fun for readers whether you like Shakespeare or you don’t like Shakespeare,” Carley said. “You don’t need to have any kind of Shakespearean knowledge to pick up this book and read it.”
For more information about Carley, RUFF, or any of his previous books, visit rodcarley.ca.
