The Player's Boy

"When Elizabethan splendor was passing into Jacobean twilight" was the promotional line when THE PLAYER'S BOY was first published in 1953 and it still captures the essence and the dichotomy of Bryher's work. The novelist and translator Patrick Gregory (who knew Bryher) has written a graceful and invaluable introduction that provides entrance to this welcome reprinting. This smart, tight little novel tells the story of a time of turbulent transition as seen through the eyes of a young theatrical apprentice in the heady, muddy, dangerous world of 17th century England. A tale of one young man's tangled journey to maturity (if not wisdom), this is historical fiction of the highest order, scrupulous and haunting. Bryher's talent is to take the reader inside the world she writes about, showing, personalizing the impact outside forces (what later becomes known as "history") have on ordinary and unsuspecting lives. It is James Sands' voice - at once antique and modern - that tells not only a tale of backstage life, with all its byzantine intrigues, but also one of life choices, of compromises and consequences, of external events and intrusions and political plottings that take him away from the theatre but never let him leave it. THE PLAYER'S BOY is an unorthodox bildungsroman with a resolution as unexpected as it is inevitable.