The Catalogue of Men Book

Ever since the unfortunately named J. Thomas Looney put forward the argument that Shakespeare was in fact the Earl of Oxford in his crackpot study Shakespeare Identified, various writers and scholars have made increasingly bizarre claims about the Bard's identity and the inspiration behind the plays. Some responses have brilliantly captured the imagination, like Shakespeare in Love and its partial inspiration, No Bed for Bacon. Others have been downright oddball, such as Ted Hughes' Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. David Pownall's The Catalogue of Men fits into the second category so wonderfully that it should receive an award for by far and away the most outrageously insane piece of fictional fantasy based on Shakespeare to be written this century. The Catalogue of Men starts on territory not too far from Looney (the critic rather than the state of mind). Set just prior to the death of Elizabeth I, Shakespeare is revealed to be a smooth operator in the world of the London theatre, but as a vain confidence man rather than playwright. William leaves the poetry to his friend and rival in various amours, Miguel, a renegade Spanish Jew, tutor to the beautiful if intellectually limited Sir George Villiers, future Duke of Buckingham and subsequent lover of King James I. So far, so good. As soon as the hunchbacked Cecil, Lord Burghley, enters the plot, The Catalogue of Men goes into surreal overdrive. Cecil reveals himself to be ruled by a company of dead Queens (including his dearly departed mistress Elizabeth), intent on placing a collection of vacillating gay sovereigns onto the thrones of Europe. The unfortunate monarchs will in turn be dominated by their beautiful young favourites, which is where young George comes in, variously aided and abetted by his two tutors, Miguel and Shakespeare. Reading The Catalogue of Men is rather like reading Tom Stoppard and the Bard himself at the same time whilst taking strong hallucinogenic drugs. Pownall takes gleeful liberty with everything that comes to hand, from Elizabethan history and its cast of quacks and cranks, to Shakespeare's own plays, whose interpretations are often the result of inspired lunacy. The Catalogue of Men is virtually unclassifiable, and certainly not for the historically faint-hearted. Pownall's novel makes Shakespeare in Love look like a sober academic study of the Bard. It would have Thomas Looney rolling in the aisles and Shakespeare spinning in his grave. --Jerry BrottonRead More