James Metcalf on the fictionality of the latest archaeological page-turners
Stephen Puddicombe looks at the unusual appeal of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Ciaran Rafferty investigates the science of book classification
Therese Raquin could have stayed in and talked to her mother in law enjoying biannually extra-marital affairs with her husbands best friend but this proved not to be enough for her. A plot was soon devised wherein her husbands demised ended at the bottom of a murky lake. This would have been OK if she and her new lover hadn’t been haunted by the memory of what had come before. As an artist Laurent’s studio soon becomes replete with ghastly depictions of his departed dear friend Camille, itself an interesting study in subconsious thinking.
Of course, for the two lovers without any desire the burden of their plot becomes too much for them and they talk about it in front of Camille’s paralyzed mother who very almost gives them up at one of her salons. This spooks Therese and Laurent and shortly after they end up doing an Adolf and Eva. This ending will always be associated with Romeo and Juliet but Shakespeare’s most tragic hero has some woman troubles of his own. After being led to his father’s ghost, Hamlet the Prince of a Denmark now run by his fraticidal uncle Claudius, realizes the extent of his father’s death and sets about reasserting justice in his homeland.
In a plot to prove the ghost’s story Hamlet puts on a play of his own, re-enacting the last days of his father but recreating the character of Gertrude, Queen of Denmark and his mother, proves a bit beyond him "The lady doth protest too much, methinks". And so his play ends in disaster, and he plots a new line, which ends in the stabbing of his betrothed. Having upset most of the court Hamlet then enters into a duel with the dead man’s son for which the King has further plans if Hamlet doesn’t meet his maker by the end of it. Amid stabbings and poisonings and drowned girlfriends the whole A-list is wiped out by the end of the play with Claudius poisoning his co-conspirator Gertrude and Hamlet choosing his own ending.
If you’re unsure of how deep its dramatic content is you need only consider that the Hamlet story popped up in tragedy-fest One Tree Hill of course only as one of many subplots however coherent, something a little more sensible is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In this very famous story poor old Elizabeth Bennett amid her life of having to go on holiday and take afternoon tea she falls the favour of two quite eligible bachelors although one seems more perfect than the other, until she finds out that Mr Darcy is the one with the real bank roll and then she sees him in a new light, with letters of apology, goodbye, hello, love, explanation and several encounters she eventually decides that he is the man for her and thus the time in her life comes by the end of the novel amid meddling sisters and mothers and fathers and friends, Elizabeth Bennett finally gets what she always wished for.
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