Neil Fein's Blog

Ruled Britannia
by Harry Turtledove

Amazon claims that this book is 524 pages long, but it's really over 600 pages. Part of this is due to Turtledove's habit of explaining everything two or three times to be absolutely certain his readers understand. Appropriate for non-fiction, perhaps, but an odd habit in a novel.

Don't let that scare you off, though; the book reads wonderfully, and I had a lot of fun plowing through the descriptions of would-have-been Elizabethan England. The premise is simple: What if the Spanish Armada had beaten England at sea in the battle of 1588? Turtledove's answer is that Philip II, champion of Catholicism and the Inquisition, would have ruled over Britan ruthlessly. The Inquisition scours the country for traces of any Protestantism, such as celebrating holidays at the non-sanctioned time according to the new calendar, or those simply associating with known heretics.

It is 1597, and discontent is brewing in England. King Philip II is dying, Elizabeth is imprisoned by the Dons, and a revolutionary cabal fronted by a British nobleman has commissioned a play from Shakespeare that will fan the flames of public discontent. While this seems a weak premise at first -- c'mon, it's a play -- Turtledove points out in his historical note at the end of the book that this is not without precedent in history. Throughout the book, the reader is transformed into a believer. And that's not to mention the play the Dons hire Shakespeare to write at the same time.

And representing the Spanish army, and in fact much of Spanish culture as well, is the historical figure Lope de Vega, a playwright in his own and, as a Lirutenant in the occupying forces, is given the delightful (to him) duty of investigating the suspected troublemakers in Shakespeare's company of players. Of course, this means that the company has to rehearse Boudicca, a play that could earn them a slow and painful death if discovered, even more secretively than otherwise.

With the premise pretentious, the situations evoking 70's sitcoms, the ending contrived, and the characters stock Turtledove, I enjoyed this book more than any of his others save The Guns of the South; high praise indeed. Turtledove is writing at a new high as he deftly interweaves Elizabethan discourse with twenty-first century narrative voice; the reader is never overwhelmed. And it's fascinating to non-scholars like myself to find out just why Shakespeare wrote the way he did -- did they actually talk that way back then? The answer is, er, yes and no.

This novel is highly recommended if you like Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Elizabethan literature in general -- or even if you're just an admirer from afar.