The Return of William Shakespeare

by Hugh Kingsmill Lunn, Hugh Kingsmill

1929. This is the fantastic tale of an insignificant scientist, Albert Henry Butt, who discovers a way to bring the dead back to life. He is able to bring back anyone who has ever lived, but only if he knows exactly when and where the person was born. The character, Melmouth, a Shakespeare fan, talks Butt into bringing the elusive Shakespeare back to life. So, Butt reanimates the Shakespeare living in 1607, when Melmouth believes Shakespeare was at his most influential. However, Shakespeare cannot cope with modern life and 1607 was a time when he was in a deep depression. He has an emotional breakdown. By the time Shakespeare recovers, the unavoidable physical decay of his body begins. Will the mystery of Shakespeare be uncovered?

332 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1929

Reviews

[Surreysmum · Rating 2 out of 5]

[These notes were made in 1991; note that "Hugh Kingsmill" is the pen-name of Hugh Kingsmill Lunn:]. Though I found this in an SF/Fantasy bookshop, it is not the time-travel, reincarnation or culture-clash aspects which obviously interested the author (alas). The meat of this book is a critical dissertation - biographical/critical, in a style which must have been very much out of vogue when Kingsmill wrote it, surely - placed (in the 3rd person) in the mouth of the reincarnated Shakespeare himself. By an altogether too convenient set of plot devices, this reincarnated Shakespeare not only has little or no recollection of his previous life, but is condemned to die a second time within a very few weeks, and is in a very depressed state. In one fell swoop, then, Kingsmill dispenses with the kind of commentary on his own time he could have incorporated (he does have a go at commercial middlemen in a comic subplot involving an impostor); he also rids himself of the embarrassment of having to suppose what kind of effect the appearance of Shakespeare would have on the modern world. As for the scientific processes used for this miracle, they are simply taken for granted - not even hinted at, and the poor scientist is banished from the plot pretty early on. The raison d'être of the novel, then, is Kingsmill's animadversions on Shakespeare's life, his works, and the effect they had on each other. There is something in this of Wilde's "Mr. W.H.", but Kingsmill is neither as brilliant a writer nor as cogent an imaginer as Wilde. That he may be a lot closer to the truth is neither here nor there. It may be, too, that I found Wilde's imaginings more daring and more attractive. Kingsmill is quite ready to urge the dubious claims of Mary Fitton, lady-in-waiting, as the Dark Lady and centre of Shakespeare's creative life, but he treats Sh's attachment to the W.H. of the sonnets (whom he proclaims to be Pembroke), to be a mere outgrowth of Sh's attraction to the delights of the aristocracy! "Nor, on the other hand, do I find any trace of physical desire, in spite of what has been urged to the contrary by persons anxious to have their tastes supported by Sh's example, and unable to understand the excesses of the imagination." !