17 Nov 2012

Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle

a great book for Shakespeare lovers 
 Miranda is an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent - she loves acting and is actually quite good at it. She also loves anything Shakespearean and hopes one day to be a stage actor like her parents, until that is her opening night at her school play when she was playing Katherine from Taming of the Shrew. She thinks that she had humiliated herself disastrously and flees backstage to think about it.While berating herself about her acting ability, along comes a school mate and fellow actor Stephen Langford who asks her  whether she wants to meet Shakespeare in person.
Thinking it a big joke, Miranda follows him to the rooftop of the building and Stephen who is actually a time traveller from the 16th 
century whisks her off to Shakespearean England! When they arrived Stephen tells Miranda that he actually needs her help to get Shakespeare away from the persuasions of a Jesuit priest, intent on converting the young Will into a Jesuit priest.

Miranda agrees and gets into the biggest role of her life - that of Stephen's younger sister who is falling in love with the young Shakespeare and is trying to seduce him. According to Stephen, if Shakespeare were to become a Jesuit priest the world would lose the greatest writer and dramatist ever known in the English language and the world would be different all together. So Miranda must try to get Will to follow his dreams of being a writer and poet and away from religion. Dangers abound - Elizabethan England has outlawed Catholicism and Jesuit priests if caught are hanged or even burned as traitors. In fact Will Shakespeare is being betrayed by one of the women he thinks is a friend and the county sheriff is looking for him as well as a Jesuit priest he is friendly with. Will Miranda be able to save him? As for Miranda herself she finds her true love but is love enough to keep them together?

This is a really good read by Pamela Mingle, one I enjoyed reading late into the night.

3 comments:

The Bookworm said...

This sounds like a unique read Kat. I like the time travel aspect. And Shakespeare as almost a Jesuit priest? I'm sure if he converted, the world would surely have been different.
Great review!

Kat said...

Yeah, ever wondered what the world would be like if Shakespeare never wrote those plays? Imagine no Romeo and Juliet, no Macbeth or Lear and most of all the many different words that he coined which we use today.

samantha.1020 said...

This does sound like an interesting read! I hadn't heard of it before now (or this author) but I'm definitely intrigued. I'm thinking that this is a must for my TBR list :)