No Bed for Bacon

This novel jumbles up a host of characters from the Elizabethan Age in golorious confusion. Shakespeare trying to write his masterpiece 'Love's Labour's Won' and trying to decide how to spell his name, Sir Walter Raleigh desperate to get a new cloak and introduce the Potato at court, Francis Bacon scheming to get his hands on one of Queen Elizabeth's used beds, the Queen herself trying not to make up her mind about anything. Fictional characters mingle with the real ones, particularly Viola, the lady-in-waiting in love with the theatre and wanting to be a player, disguising herself as a boy so she can join Shakespeare's company and then falling in love with him. Sounds familiar? Yes, but Brahms and Simon did it first, and funnier.

This enchanting little novel, first published in 1941, traces the intertwining adventures of Shakespeare's theater company and Elkizabeth's court, mingling historical figures and charmingly imagined fictions. Shakespeare, intent on his new play, Love's Labors Wonne, can't be bothered to pay attention to the new production of Henry VIII. Sir Francis Bacon dances around the outskirts of the theater, while parsimonious Lord Burghley and ambitious Sir Walter Raleign pursue their own schemes. Dagglebelt the jester tries (unsuccessfully) to juggle pumpkins while Will Kempe discovers with delight the comic possibilities of a pail of whitewash dumped over Richard Burbage's unsuspecting head. To the modern reader there are all sorts of hints of the film, Shakespeare in Love, but this book was written more than fifty years earlier, and has an air of lunatic delight all its own.