Several years later, having heard that Shakespeare is looking for material to inspire a new play, Harbottle arranges a meeting during which he loans the book to Shakespeare, who remarks that he may need to make notes in the margin as he reads. The canny scoundrel of a bookseller assures Shakespeare that it will be quite all right to do so. He is well aware that the notes in Shakespeare's own hand will increase the volume's value. Later, Pandosto is returned to Harbottle with a note from Shakespeare, apologizing for "defacing" the volume with his notes.
Several chapters of the book give us a lively history of Pandosto, as it traveled from person to person down the years. Eventually it disappeared altogether, although those who knew of it spoke of it as the inspiration, if not the source, of Shakespeare's last play, A Winter's Tale.
By the nineteenth century, when scholars mounted serious challenges concerning who 'really' wrote Shakespeare's plays, Pandosto had long been missing. When Peter, called by a neighbor who is thinking of selling some old books, finds in the man’s library what seems to be the genuine first edition of Pandosto, complete with what seem to be Shakespeare's notes in the margin, he realizes that he must do prodigious research to establish its authenticity. Since Peter came across the volume in a locked box not opened by the seller, but offered up by the man's strange sister, he quietly slips the book into another stack which he wants to take home to assess, intending to search out the facts before informing the owner of the tremendous find.
If the book that comes into Peter’s hands can be proven genuine, its marginalia in Shakespeare’s own handwriting would provide the one concrete proof that settles, once and for all, one of the great literary mysteries, i.e. proving that Shakespeare, despite his limited education, was indeed the author of the great plays attributed to him, and not any of the candidates suggested by various scholars. If you want to see the long list of candidates, try typing 'candidates for Shakespeare authorship" into Google.
As Peter works to establish Pandosto’s provenance, tracing its path from owner to owner down many years, the mystery only deepens, involving questions of forgery, and tales of jealousy, betrayal, and theft, and ultimately, murder – all the intriguing elements of a first-rate mystery. Before the mystery is solved, Peter himself is involved in a life-and-death confrontation and desperate escape.
In the end of the story, the mystery of the likeness of the Victorian portrait to Peter’s late wife is solved, in what at first may seem a rather forced coincidence, but in a careful re-read of the book, the groundwork for that solution has been carefully laid. All in all, it offers a satisfying conclusion to The Bookman’s Tale.
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Charlie Lovett is particularly well qualified to write of English life, since he and his wife, Janice, spend a good bit of time there, living, like his leading character, in the town of Kingham, Oxfordshire. In The Bookman’s Tale, we are in the hands of a knowledgeable guide and a good writer.
©2013 Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com
REBELS AT THE BAR; The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers
by Jill Norgren, © 2013
Published by New York University Press
Hardcover: 212 pp (plus extensive notes and bibliography)
Those who have known Senior Women Web's contributor Jill Norgren as a splendid reviewer of books may be surprised to learn that she is also Professor Emerita of Political Science and Legal Studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has many articles and books to her credit, including The Woman Who Would Be President: The Cherokee Cases: and American Cultural Pluralism and Law. Rebels at the Bar, her latest book, takes a close look at several nineteenth century women as they blazed the trail of equal opportunity in a profession that had excluded them.
The women about whom Norgren writes became lawyers by the same method that earlier male aspirants had employed, i.e. by a process called “reading Law,” studying books like Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, and possibly working in an attorney’s office, until they felt capable of taking the Bar Examination. While the College of William and Mary opened a school for the study of Law in 1780, law schools as we know them were very rare in the early 19th century, and certainly none of them admitted women. Sometimes, as in the case of Myra Bradwell who was married to a judge, a woman could read law with her husband or father or uncle who was an attorney. Finding an enlightened male lawyer who would help a woman cannot have been easy, although a chance to serve as his office clerk occasionally gave the woman a foot in the door. Surely the men who supported the aims of these brave women were mighty brave, too.
The structure of this book is enticing. The Preface and Epilogue, are calm, compelling histories of the individual progress of the early female attorneys who showed the "nerve and courage, success and frustration" of a "generation [which] did everything that law and custom did not prevent [in order to] eliminate barriers to equality." At times, 'did everything" meant waiting patiently while petitions were debated; at times it meant studying hard enough to out-perform the men on the Bar exam; and at all times, it meant dogged determination in pursuit of an aim. At times, too, it meant accepting temporary defeat and turning their talents to something else, as did Myra Bradwell, when first refused admission to the Bar of Illinois. She used her talents to publish a paper called The Chicago Legal News, aimed at the business and law community in Illinois. It soon became the most popular legal newspaper in America. She never, however, gave up her desire to be a lawyer, and pursued her claims right up to the Supreme Court, where she lost in her attempt to be admitted to the Bar.
In between the fascinating Prologue and satisfying Epilogue, Norgren gives us six chapters with detailed profiles of eight women and their struggles to become lawyers. Each story has been rigorously researched, and is a wonderfully detailed narrative.
As a result of those profiles, I find myself wondering what did or didn’t happen in the 20th century, that it took so long for women to pick up on the challenges won by their foremothers. As I recall, when I was a teenager in the '50's there were some female doctors of medicine, but almost no women lawyers. It may be that the huge influx of veterans from WWII had simply flooded the law schools as they finished college, making use of the GI Bill that had put them through. It also may be that they were given preferential treatment because of their military service. But the '50's were a conservative time, and women, despite having won the vote in 1920 and having made huge professional gains in the '30's, pretty much found that teaching was about the only profession that welcomed them with open arms.
Certainly in second half of the 20th century, that changed, and law schools welcomed women in increasing numbers, thanks to the strengthening Women's Movement of the '60's and '70's, and in no small measure because of superstars like Justice O'Connor, who was elevated to the Supreme Court in 1981. It is, however, odd that the progress didn't happen sooner, inasmuch as brave women had already broken that particular glass ceiling in the last half of the 19 century, when law schools, which were a relatively new idea, did not at first admit women. Those early women lawyers could not even vote, inasmuch as women suffrage was not passed until 1920.
I have read Ms. Norgren's book with profound gratitude. Being reminded of the brave, intelligent, controversial women who broke through many barriers a good hundred years before the 1950's has been a fascinating experience.
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