David Blixt

In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, HER MAJESTY'S WILL is free today!

In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, HER MAJESTY'S WILL is free on Amazon Kindle today! You're welcome. Pass it on!

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Now in Print - Her Majesty's Will!

For the first time in print - HER MAJESTY'S WILL!

Buy it today at Amazon.com. Click here!

Before he was famous, he was a fugitive.

Before he wrote of humanity, he lived it.

Before he was the Bard of Avon, he was a spy. 

A very poor spy. 

England, 1586. Swept up in the skirts of a mysterious stranger, Will Shakespeare becomes entangled in a deadly and hilarious misadventure as he accidentally uncovers an attempt to murder Queen Elizabeth herself. Aided by the mercurial wit of Kit Marlowe, Will enters London for the first time, chased by rebels, spies, his own government, his past, and a bear. 

Through it all he demonstrates his loyalty and genius, proving himself to be - HER MAJESTY'S WILL.

 

'I LOVE this book! I'm laughing and on the edge of my seat and turning e-pages so fast, I'm gonna fry my iPad.' - C.W. Gortner, author of THE QUEEN'S VOW and THE TUDOR CONSPIRACY

Negative Space, or What Will Won't Do

It’s dangerous, playing the expectations game. You rewrite Romeo & Juliet, you’d best bring something new to the table. You write about the fall of Jerusalem, there had better be something surprising and uplifting in that awful story. And if you write a novel about William Shakespeare, you’d best hope that you don’t get crushed by the weight of expectations. Especially your own.

That was the danger I was facing as I sat down to write Her Majesty’s Will. Even though I knew it would be light-hearted and joyful, a romp of a spy/buddy/comedy, I was still casting William Shakespeare as my lead character. William Shakespeare! The man who invented one of every ten words we use. The man who created more common phrases than we can count. The man whose only rival in terms of influence is the Bible. William Shakespeare!

That’s the problem, you see. I love Shakespeare – or rather, I love his plays. I’ve been performing them professionally for over half my life now. I met my wife doing Shakespeare. Last summer our six year-old son joined me onstage to do Shakespeare. Of the 36 accepted titles that bear his name, I’ve played roles in 19, so I’m just about halfway through the canon. Through the plays, I think I’ve got a vague sense of the man: his values, his mistrusts, his instincts, his loves, his hates, his sense of humor, his sense of drama.

But almost all of it is negative space. We don’t have anything even remotely resembling an autobiography, only lines here and there that we can speculate about – Hamlet’s instructions to the actors, Jacques’ cynical musings on life, Richard II’s thoughts on England itself. Any of those might be the playwright’s true voice. Or they might not. Then there are sonnets, which we might take as his own voice, if we did not know that many of them were written on commission for other people.

Taken together, that’s not a lot to go on. So when it came time to craft a tale with young Will Shakespeare at the center, I had to infer a lot. Fortunately, there are themes that emerge in his plays time and again, snippets and beats and moments that, taken together, present a picture.

So what do I see in Shakespeare’s plays?

– I see mistrust of power and those who crave it. From Henry IV to Richard III, from Lear to Macbeth, from Caesar to Antony to Octavian, Shakespeare shows how ambition is often a snake swallowing its own tail, how desire for power leads men to evil. How power itself is unfulfilling, yet absolute power corrupts absolutely:

 

BRUTUS: But 'tis a common proof

That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,

Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;

But when he once attains the utmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend.

That formula is as true for the Church and for Government as it is for Mankind. Power is dangerous, as is ambition. Yet he resolutely holds out hope that man can transcend this evil. Perhaps my favorite line from Macbeth belongs to Malcolm: Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

Conclusion: Shakespeare mistrusts authority – does that mean he’s seen the evil of authority up close?

– I see a longing for justice. It’s in the comeuppance he gives all his evil-doers. From Richard’s dream to Edmund’s recantation to Iago’s silence to Macbeth’s sleep-deprived madness, the evils men do return to them. It’s almost a sense of karma, though if that were the case, then there would not be the harm to the innocents that also appears – Macduff’s children deserved no karmic suffering, and poor Cinna the Poet did nothing wrong. No, Shakespeare makes it clear that there is evil in the world, but also that God or Fate or the nature of evil itself brings evil back to evil. Blood will have blood, as they say. 

This is as true for the Comedies as for the Tragedies. Malvolio gets a cosmic comeuppance as he’s made the fool of by those he sought to overmaster. Yet his tormentors go too far, and he swears he will have his revenge. At that moment, I agree with him that they deserve it. His crime did not warrant such treatment, and shows the danger of trying to effect justice outside the law. Shakespeare is no fan of vigilantism, yet he understands it. And he detests arbitrary justice, as seen in Justice Shallow in Merry Wives. 

Conclusion: Shakespeare longs for justice – because he has been wronged?

– I see his need to side with the misunderstood. So many of Shakespeare’s best characters are outsiders. Othello, Iago, Shylock, Aaron, Edmund, the Bastard Arthur, Richard (thanks to his deformity) – these men are, every one, outsiders. Yes, the majority are villains, because that’s what the audience expected, and because villains are the ones who make a story move. But to a one, Shakespeare gives us some of the most amazing, heartfelt defenses for who they are:

 

SHYLOCK: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison

us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not

revenge?

 

EDMUND: Why bastard? wherefore base?

When my dimensions are as well compact,

My mind as generous, and my shape as true,

As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us

With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?

 

RICHARD: I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.

 

That is to say nothing of the women, outsiders in their own right. The life he gives to Rosalind, Viola, Kate, and Merchant’s Portia is truly astonishing. They are, in fact, the true leads of their plays, challenging gender roles either by being shrewish and assertive, or else by donning man’s attire and becoming men themselves, always proving better and wiser men than the actual men around them.

Conclusion: Shakespeare embraces the outsider – because he is one?

– I see him challenging his audience’s perceptions. There are obvious examples, such as writing a Comedy and then killing everyone off (Romeo & Juliet) or rewriting a popular play like The Taming Of A Shrew to make the female the one who “wins” at the end (and in his version, she’s not whipped and beaten). But the one that’s been most on my mind lately is the startling nature of his play Julius Caesar. Until 1599, Brutus was firmly denounced as one of the great betrayers, being eternally chewed by Lucifer in Hell, second only to Judas in terms of his crime. Shakespeare does the unimaginable and recasts Brutus as the hero, the man who does a terrible thing for an excellent reason, raising all sorts of moral questions, while at the same time redefining Brutus for all time. It may not seem like much to us, but it was a revolutionary act. 

Conclusion: Shakespeare sees the world differently from other men.

– I see the law of unintended consequences. Nothing in Shakespeare goes according to plan. From the death of Caesar failing to restore the Roman Republic to the secret marriage of Romeo and Juliet failing to solve the feud (well, it does, but not in the way the Friar intended). Tricking Benedick to fall in love with Beatrice leads to Benedick challenging one of the tricksters to a duel. Shylock demanding his pound of flesh ends with him impoverished and a forced convert to Christianity. Nothing – nothing – goes according to the plan of men.

Conclusion: Shakespeare knew that life was unpredictable, and one must think quickly to survive.

Above all, I see Shakespeare’s love for the common man – the peons, the rabble, the rank and file. Oh, as a group he disdains them – he rails at mobs at the top of Caesar, and during Mark Antony’s speech proves how short their memories are, how quickly they can be swayed. But individually he loves them. He certainly caters to them, pandering to their tastes with low humor and bawdy jokes. But he also finds more good in their raw honesty than in all the upright nobility. It is the rough, the rude, the boisterous that he admires. Oh, they have faults, but he loves their faults along with their virtues. Drunkenness, lewdness, cowardice, cheating, lying – these are all accepted purely as clever means to survive in the world. He gives his greatest wit to clowns and fools, and makes drunkards the most joyful of his creations.

Conclusion: Shakespeare accepts and loves low men – because he came from their ranks.

So as I thought about my Shakespeare – not the real one, but the one being created by my pen – this is the man I saw. A fellow of common birth and uncommon thoughts. A man who understood the vagaries of life and yet longed for justice and order. A man who has played the villain for the best of reasons. A man quick on his feet. A man mistrustful of authority. A man who craves the approval of his peers, even when his nature renders him peerless. A man who has always felt on the outside, misunderstood, different, alone.

Even before I cracked Stephen Greenblatt’s wonderful Will In The World, which gave me incredible historical details for Shakespeare’s origins and contemporaries, the man himself was shaping from the negative space created by his plays into a positive and (thankfully) very human character.

I’ve always maintained that Her Majesty’s Will isn’t serious, and it’s not. Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe running around as spies for Walsingham, working for the Queen? Ridiculous! I certainly wasn’t aiming to write a biography or some serious piece of literature. This is farce. I am the first to acknowledge that.

But just as Shakespeare gave his best bits of wisdom to his fools and clowns, I hope that, through my own clowning, I’ve been able to imbue my Shakespeare with something close to Truth. If this is not who the real Shakespeare was, this is perhaps who he should have been. A man not dragged down by the weight of my expectations, but rather raised up by his own. 

Love is Love

Here's a guest piece I wrote for Bilerico.com that ran last Sunday. 

I’m getting some lovely praise for my new novel, HER MAJESTY’S WILL. I wrote it as a tongue-in-cheek spy story starring Will Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe, and it seems to be received (mostly) as I would have hoped – with mirth, laughter, and joy. Yes, a couple reviews declaimed loudly against the “crude” nature of the relationship between Will and Kit, but I kinda expected that. I brush it off, knowing history is on my side. Marlowe’s “infamy” is well established, and there’s plenty of reason to think that, if not gay, Will Shakespeare’s sexuality spanned a wide vista of possibilities.

But one question has surprised me. It goes like this: “David, you’re straight. What was it like writing a gay love scene?”

Are you kidding me?

First and foremost, love is love. Writing about the excitement of a kiss, of a caress, is the same across the board. Thinking about a first meeting of lips, or even a touch of a hand, is an electric, heart-hammering human experience. The best part is acknowledging what fools we are for love, how desperately grateful and fearful we are when it’s dangled before us.

Secondly, let us all agree that there are more far factors in human attraction than mere gender. One of them is talent. Talent is sexy. Talent is a force of attraction. And in a time when words were prized, when publishing was new, when reading was exciting, when instead of saying “Let’s go see a play” people said, “Let’s go hear a play,” there were few talents bigger than Marlowe and Shakespeare. A pair of brilliant young men, thrown into each other’s company and on the run for their lives – from the Catholics, the government, the dregs of London, and a bear – the attraction was as natural as anything I’ve ever written.

In fact, the love scene between two teenagers in my novel FORTUNE’S FOOL was infinitely harder to craft. In that story, the couple are so young and stupid, so timorous and full of the weight of their actions, it was a hurdle to write. Whereas Will and Kit came together quite naturally, kissing spontaneously after a wild and breathless chase.

No, Will Shakespeare might not have been gay. But he certainly wasn’t straight. With all the cross-dressing, the veiled pining, the inside jokes, he showed that human experience trumps gender. He played with attraction, loss, pining, devotion, and the dark side of desire across the board. Most of all, he understood that love transcends sex. It’s universal. 

Hell, how could he not see it plain as day, when his Juliet was played by a young man in drag? Yes, Shakespeare wrote the greatest love lines between a man and a woman, and he wrote them to be spoken by two men. I wonder if anyone asked him if it was hard writing a love scene between a straight couple? If so, I like to think he laughed in their faces. Just like I do.

Richard III has Left the Stage

The 18th season of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival is down! It's been a particularly wonderful run, with a great company and amazing reviews and audience response. The only downside is that I haven't been writing or promoting books. The upside is, I now have two more novels in my head, as well as a plot for the sequel to HER MAJESTY'S WILL, and I've agreed to co-author a play with a dear friend of mine. But more news will be forthcoming. I'd like to take this moment to share a few images from this season. Enjoy my clean-shaven face - it won't be seen again until the next director decides I must be shorn. 

Me as Edward IV, the "sunne of Yorke" at the top of RICHARD III. 

Same moment. Not only was I shorn, my director decided to put me in a fat suit. (The young lad behind me is my son, Dashiell, making his stage debut as my show-son, young Richard of York). 

A shot of the amazing David Turrentine as the title character. I like this shot because it shows off Jeromy Hopgood's astonishing set. 

Here's David up close, reveling in his villainy. People couldn't stop talking about his performance - rightly. It was a joy, an evil joy.

While I was eventually hired to act, I was originally planning only to do the fights. The director (my wife) wanted all the murders to happen on-stage. Hence poor Clarence being drowned in plain view. Alan Ball was wonderfully game to be soaked and pummeled for a very long time.

On top of that, I choreographed a 10 minute Battle of Bosworth. 13 actors, with weapons ranging from swords and shields to daggers, maces, spears, and a saddle.

Kate Hopgood, the festival composer, created a magnificent underscore, the likes of which I've never heard before. 200 cues, each taken off of our movements, building to a thunderous choir singing "Now is the winter of our discontent" in Italian. Amazing. 

I'll talk about the other shows in later posts. For now, please enjoy these images, and get ready to make your reservations for next year! As one reviewer put it: "The Michigan Shakespeare Festival seems to be going from strength to strength, at last becoming the sort of summer destination event it was surely meant to be." And the lion's share of the credit goes to the Artistic Director, Janice L Blixt. I am as proud as can be. 

More images from the show can be found at the MSF Facebook page here.

The Secret to Fighting

I get a lot of compliments for my battle scenes. Which is lovely, as they’re some of the most fun and challenging for me to write.

I come from the theatre, and among the hats I wear in my professional life is Fight Director. I’m trained in different styles of swordplay, and I’ve traveled all over the world to learn from the best in the field. So when it comes time to write an skirmish, a duel, or a battle, I find myself standing in my office, sword in hand, working the movements one after another. I pick up a spear. Then an axe. I actually own a halberd, a gift from a cast of a Richard III I once directed, and that came into play up on my roof. I always find myself choreographing the fights as I would for a stage show, but on a much larger canvas.

The art of stage combat is looking incredibly violent while being incredibly safe. I try to bring some of that to my novels, varying the type of fighting, the kind of weapons, the intent of the combatants. Sometimes the fighting is light-hearted, sometimes desperate and sudden. But there’s a secret to making a good fight on stage, and I’ve found it works perfectly well in my writing as well.

But first, the technical elements. The page allows me to do two things. First, I can broaden the scope of the fighting, doing a great deal on horseback, which I have only had one abortive attempt at in theatre (seriously, don’t ask). Second, I can slow the action down. Part of the trouble in stage violence is that if it goes by too quickly the audience isn’t sure what happened. If it happens too slow, they don’t believe it. A very tricky balance to maintain. Pacing is as important in a novel as it is onstage, but the written word does afford me a little more latitude.

In fact, one big influence in how I “stage” my written fight scenes is, of all people, Tom Clancy. The pacing in his early novels is fantastic. I love the way he intercuts scenes, building tension and rhythm for Jack Ryan’s adventures, cutting away at the most dramatic moments. Having stolen this technique, I’m told it makes my novels cinematic, which I choose to take as a compliment.

Something else I’ve noticed I do is wound my characters far more than I ever intend at the outset. In the Star-Cross’d series, Pietro was never meant to be crippled by a blow to the leg so early. It just happened, and I have to admit it’s made all his subsequent fighting much more interesting. I’ve always been a fan of the James Bond and Sharpe books where the hero has to spend a month in the hospital after saving the day. Violence has to have stakes. We can’t just create a red shirt to kill him off. People we care about have to die, or at least be hurt, to make us feel the importance. There have to be consequences.

The hardest part for me is balancing what I need to know to write a fight with what the reader needs to read it – which is often much less. I write out the whole of the physical fight scene, then begin paring away excess detail, revealing the core.

Which brings us to the secret of a good fight scene.

One thing I’ve learned in theatre is that a good fight is not about cool moves. It’s not about blood, or violence. It’s about story. The fight itself has to tell a story. A fight is like any conflict – it’s a tale of desire and denial.

Desire: I want your life.

Denial: You can’t have it.

It’s almost romantic, and combatants have just as much intimacy as lovers. One funny story is that a rather famous theatre with rather famous actors had to hire a Fight Director friend of mine, not for a fight scene, but for a love scene. The actors just couldn’t stage the lovemaking right – kept stepping on toes and banging teeth. So they hired a Fight Director to stage the lovemaking.

Likewise, I’ve found that writing a love scene is very much like writing a duel – everyone has a motive, everyone has a goal. The writer cannot be too graphic without losing the audience, but too vague and it becomes a wash.

Sex and violence - two sides of the same coin. Both are all about desire. 

 

Avalanche 8 - ORIGIN OF THE FEUD

Longtime readers of this blog will certainly recognize the centerpiece of this collection - my take on the origin of the Capulet-Montague feud which led to the writing of THE MASTER OF VERONA. But I've gone much further in this collection of essays, exploring the show itself - from a theatrical standpoint as well as a literary one. In fact, most of the pieces are about the play in performance - how to merge scenes, the question of the balcony in the Balcony Scene, and much much more. Only $1.99 on Kindle!

Buy it HERE.

Avalanche 7 - TOMORROW & TOMORROW

My wife and I have penned several short essays on Shakespeare's MACBETH. Fans of this blog will recognize a couple - our take on the famous Tomorrow & Tomorrow speech has long been a staple here. But we've expanded on that piece, along with several others, to share our thoughts on the cursed Scottish play! Only $0.99 on Kindle!

Buy it HERE. 

Avalanche 5 - HER MAJESTY'S WILL

Before he was famous, he was a fugitive. 
Before he wrote of humanity, he lived it.
Before he was the Bard of Avon, he was a spy.

A very poor spy.

England, 1586. Swept up in the skirts of a mysterious stranger, Will Shakespeare becomes entangled in a deadly and hilarious misadventure as he accidentally uncovers the Babington Plot, an attempt to murder Queen Elizabeth herself. Aided by the mercurial wit of Kit Marlowe, Will enters London for the first time, chased by rebels, spies, his own government, his past, and a bear. 

Through it all he demonstrates his loyalty and genius, proving himself to be - HER MAJESTY'S WILL.

Buy it HERE.