t is the year 1597, and Spain has been ruling the British Isles for 10 years, the Spanish Armada of this timeline having succeeded where the fleet from our time failed. Queen Isabella and King Albert are the new monarchs, while Elizabeth languishes in the Tower of London. Catholicism is the state religion, and an English Inquisition deals with any heretics. Many things have changed for the average Londoner. But they still enjoy their entertainment, and the stage flourishes. And, certainly, William Shakespeare is the reigning genius of the boards.
Surrounded by his troupe, including the clownish yet evil-tempered Will Kemp and the noble Dick Burbage, as well as the irreplaceable "tireman," or costumer, Jack Hungerford, and dozens of others, Shakespeare has gone from triumph to triumph, with such plays as If You Like It and Prince of Denmark. Currently he is at work on Love's Labours Won. But then he is suddenly given two new, contradictory assignments. British loyalists, led by Lord Burghley, enlist Shakespeare to write Boudicca, a play about an ancient English queen resisting Roman invaders. The performance of this allegorical call to arms will be the signal for general riot, during which the English will hopefully retake their land. At the same time, a Spanish commander commissions Will to create a play to honor the dying Spanish monarch, King Philip. How will the playwright manage to honor both requests, and which way will his loyalties ultimately veer?
At the same time, we encounter Lope de Vega, a Spanish soldier and officer who also happens to be an aspiring playwright—when he's not busy bedding Englishwomen. De Vega is assigned to monitor the activity at Shakespeare's theater for signs of treason. Plagued by his rascally servant, Diego, de Vega finds the poet in him at war with the patriot. As a tumultuous year passes, events began to avalanche toward a grim conclusion. One side in this covert war must come to grief, but which shall it be? And what if the whole conspiracy hinges on the actions of a witch who shares Shakespeare's lodging house, a "cunning woman" named Cicely Sellis?
Bringing to life a believable bard
The notion of a Catholic Britain, presumably converted by Spanish conquest, has intrigued SF writers for quite some time. Keith Roberts had a go at this conceit in his Pavane (1968), and so did Kingsley Amis in his The Alteration (1976). Both these writers chose to examine the diverted and transformed United Kingdom centuries after the turning point, thus allowing time for weird new technologies and philosophies and customs to have emerged. By setting his book only a decade after the conquest, Turtledove deliberately turns away from this speculative game.
The changes in his Britain are minor. Yes, Spanish and English are beginning to merge into a new hybrid argot. And yes, the Inquisition is conducting public burnings in the city. But as yet, the Spanish rule is just a thin veneer laid over the essential Britishness, and global politics have hardly altered. So what Turtledove ends up with is a rather thumping good historical novel—authentic and vivid, exciting and humorous—with a frisson of oddness from the small might-have-been aspects. Toss in a soupcon of fantasy attendant on Cicely Sellis, but you still don't experience the same kind of radical deracination that the earlier works I cited produce. As SF, this book lacks the kind of heady historical manipulation found in such works as Turtledove's own The Guns of the South (1992).
This is not to say that there are not marvels and wonders aplenty here, just that their nature is more historico-mimetic than science fictional. First of all, Turtledove's language and wit must be praised. To have all his characters bantering and recriminating, loving and hating in Elizabethan English without sounding stiff or false is a major accomplishment. Turtledove also invents or cobbles together two imaginary Shakespearean plays—Boudicca and King Philip—and makes you believe in them. On other fronts, Turtledove's characterization is superb. Both Shakespeare and Lope de Vega stand forth as fully rounded artists, men of large souls moved by contradictory impulses within themselves. The touching farewell between them is masterfully done. And Turtledove, as a professional historian, manages to fill his pages with curious customs (never give a gift of a knife without a coin attached) and telling details (his invention of different "threepenny special" meals for Shakespeare to consume becomes an ongoing riff). All the secondary characters play their parts well, too, and the mix of comedy and tragedy in the novel is admirable.
History, being a strange sort of science, has only these paper uchronias as its laboratory. Tweak this parameter, and see what results. Turtledove is a master twiddler with such dials, but this time he has chosen not to set them to eleven.
