The Mercutio Problem, by Carol Anne Douglas (Hermione Books)
I picked up The Mercutio Problem unaware that it was
a sequel to Merlin’s Shakespeare. One
of the challenges of writing a stand-alone book within a series, or linked to
other series, is the balance between giving the new reader all the necessary
background, developing the characters well enough, and yet not boring readers
who are already familiar with the cast and setting. Sometimes I can’t tell if a
book is a sequel or a stand-alone with a rich and brilliantly handled back story.
In this case, it became obvious almost immediately, although to her credit, the
author gave me all the information I needed to understand and enjoy the present
story.
So the back story from the first book is that
Merlin (from the legends of King Arthur) enlists the help of Beth Owens, high
school theater student, to convince William Shakespeare to write a play about
King Arthur. In the course of this adventure, she meets many characters from
Shakespeare’s plays, including flirtatious, charismatic Mercutio (from Romeo
and Juliet) and the ultimate villain, Richard III.
At the beginning of
the present book, Mercutio is dead, slain not by Tybalt but by Richard. Here
comes Merlin again, only this time the problem is that Richard wants to change
the ending of Shakespeare’s plays (especially his own) and is going about enlisting
various other characters and the ghost of Christopher Marlowe in order to
pressure Shakespeare. Not only that, but Merlin offers an added inducement to
Beth, that she will take the form of Mercutio within Shakespeare’s plays and if
she dies in that form, he will live again. Got all that?
Then comes the fun
part, visiting the plays and interacting with the characters, many of whom
wander into other plays, too. The dialog is often brilliant, reflecting not
only Shakespearean language but the particularities of the specific character
(for example, Julius Caesar always talks about himself in the third person and
rambles on about honor and fate). Bottom has gone missing, so Midsummerland is
perpetually rainy (and Bottomless). Lady MacBeth, who knows a thing or two
about tyranny and regret, plays a pivotal role in organizing the resistance
against Richard, and King Lear, consumed with guilt, goes rampaging through the
other plays to slay anyone who wants to keep the plays as they were originally
written.
