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The Player's Boy: A Novel
Shakespeare in Love meets Oliver Twist in this Elizabethan story of adventure, loyalty, and the stage
The orphaned James Sands anticipated a magnificent career as apprentice in an Elizabethan theater troupe. But when his masters dies unexpectedly, Sands must fight for his art, his home, and ultimately his life as the violent reign of King James I overshadows the glory and creative life of the Elizabethan era. An historical novel with profound reverberations today in the U.S., the UK, and Europe.
The orphaned James Sands anticipated a magnificent career as apprentice in an Elizabethan theater troupe. But when his masters dies unexpectedly, Sands must fight for his art, his home, and ultimately his life as the violent reign of King James I overshadows the glory and creative life of the Elizabethan era. An historical novel with profound reverberations today in the U.S., the UK, and Europe.
236 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
About the author
Bryher
24 books29 followersBryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 29, 2023
Bryher was the real deal. This novel about a hapless dreamer apprentice in the early 1600s should be in print.
April 13, 2016
The Player’s Boy opens with words from a will.
Will of Augustine Phillips, May 4th 1605:
“I give to Samuell Gilborne my late apprentice the somme of xls and my mouse colloured velvet hose and a white taffity doublet a black taffity suite my purple cloake sworde and dagger And my base vyoll Item I give to James Sandes my apprentice the somme of xls and a citterne And a Bandore and a Lute to be paide and delivered unto him at th’ expirication of his terme of yeares in his Indenture of apprentishoode.”
Bryher span her story around those real bequests.
It begins with young actor, James Sandes, at the deathbed of his master. His master was Augustine Phillips, one of the great actors of Elizabethan England, and he had seen potential in a young man who approached him after a performance, asking for another song.
The apprentice would grieve for the master who had taught him all that he knew about acting. And he would find another place, another master, but it would never be the same. The world had changed, and it would go on changing. The glory days of the theatre had faded and all but disappeared. The apprentice’s love of the theatre faded too. He was fascinated by travellers’ tales. He was nostalgic for the country life he had left behind. But he just went on, drifting through life.
His story is short, and rather elusive, but it is quite beautifully done.
Her characters lived and breathed, and I could hear their voices in my head as they spoke of so very many things.
They spoke particularly of impending execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered by King James to appease the Spanish. His decline spoke for the changes in England.
It is an England brought back to life by an author who so clearly knew and loved the period she wrote about, and who had the skill to use that knowledge to illuminate her story.
It’s one of those stories where little seems to happen, but much is said about life and the world. Difficult to write about, but absorbing to read.
I’m left wondering, does anyone write this kind of historical novel any more?
There are many wonderful stories, full of drama, intrigue and incident, but I’m looking for something a little quieter. Thoughtful stories of lives lived in different ages …
And in the meantime I already have another of Bryher’s books on order …
Will of Augustine Phillips, May 4th 1605:
“I give to Samuell Gilborne my late apprentice the somme of xls and my mouse colloured velvet hose and a white taffity doublet a black taffity suite my purple cloake sworde and dagger And my base vyoll Item I give to James Sandes my apprentice the somme of xls and a citterne And a Bandore and a Lute to be paide and delivered unto him at th’ expirication of his terme of yeares in his Indenture of apprentishoode.”
Bryher span her story around those real bequests.
It begins with young actor, James Sandes, at the deathbed of his master. His master was Augustine Phillips, one of the great actors of Elizabethan England, and he had seen potential in a young man who approached him after a performance, asking for another song.
The apprentice would grieve for the master who had taught him all that he knew about acting. And he would find another place, another master, but it would never be the same. The world had changed, and it would go on changing. The glory days of the theatre had faded and all but disappeared. The apprentice’s love of the theatre faded too. He was fascinated by travellers’ tales. He was nostalgic for the country life he had left behind. But he just went on, drifting through life.
His story is short, and rather elusive, but it is quite beautifully done.
Her characters lived and breathed, and I could hear their voices in my head as they spoke of so very many things.
They spoke particularly of impending execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered by King James to appease the Spanish. His decline spoke for the changes in England.
It is an England brought back to life by an author who so clearly knew and loved the period she wrote about, and who had the skill to use that knowledge to illuminate her story.
It’s one of those stories where little seems to happen, but much is said about life and the world. Difficult to write about, but absorbing to read.
I’m left wondering, does anyone write this kind of historical novel any more?
There are many wonderful stories, full of drama, intrigue and incident, but I’m looking for something a little quieter. Thoughtful stories of lives lived in different ages …
And in the meantime I already have another of Bryher’s books on order …
January 26, 2014
The Player's Boy by Bryher is vivid, haunting, unexpected -- a brilliant book, imho.
"When Elizabethan splendor was passing into Jacobean twilight" was the promotional line when THE PLAYER'S BOY was first published in 1953 and it still captures the essence and the dichotomy of Bryher's work.
The novelist and translator Patrick Gregory (who knew Bryher) has written a graceful and invaluable introduction that provides entrance to this welcome reprinting. This smart, tight little novel tells the story of a time of turbulent transition as seen through the eyes of a young theatrical apprentice in the heady, muddy, dangerous world of 17th century England. A tale of one young man's tangled journey to maturity (if not wisdom), this is historical fiction of the highest order, scrupulous and haunting.
Bryher's talent is to take the reader inside the world she writes about, showing - personalizing - the impact that outside forces (what later becomes known as "history") have on ordinary and unsuspecting lives. It is James Sands' voice - at once antique and modern - that tells not only a tale of backstage life, with all its byzantine intrigues, but also one of life choices, of compromises and consequences, of external events and intrusions and political plottings that take him away from the theatre but never let him leave it. THE PLAYER'S BOY is an unorthodox bildungsroman with a resolution as unexpected as it is inevitable.
"When Elizabethan splendor was passing into Jacobean twilight" was the promotional line when THE PLAYER'S BOY was first published in 1953 and it still captures the essence and the dichotomy of Bryher's work.
The novelist and translator Patrick Gregory (who knew Bryher) has written a graceful and invaluable introduction that provides entrance to this welcome reprinting. This smart, tight little novel tells the story of a time of turbulent transition as seen through the eyes of a young theatrical apprentice in the heady, muddy, dangerous world of 17th century England. A tale of one young man's tangled journey to maturity (if not wisdom), this is historical fiction of the highest order, scrupulous and haunting.
Bryher's talent is to take the reader inside the world she writes about, showing - personalizing - the impact that outside forces (what later becomes known as "history") have on ordinary and unsuspecting lives. It is James Sands' voice - at once antique and modern - that tells not only a tale of backstage life, with all its byzantine intrigues, but also one of life choices, of compromises and consequences, of external events and intrusions and political plottings that take him away from the theatre but never let him leave it. THE PLAYER'S BOY is an unorthodox bildungsroman with a resolution as unexpected as it is inevitable.
November 19, 2014
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James Sands anticipates a glorious career as apprentice to an Elizabethan theater troupe. He plays Bellario in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, and in this role, experiences the fusion of his passion and his art. When Sands's masters die, the young actor loses his home and his job, and must fight to maintain his ideals and his life in an atmosphere of plague, Puritanism, and political unrest under the new Jacobean regime. After one small act of kindness threatens to engulf Sands in violence, his hope of a life in theater spirals into an unexpected horror that contemporary readers will find disturbingly familiar in our own political climate.
James Sands anticipates a glorious career as apprentice to an Elizabethan theater troupe. He plays Bellario in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, and in this role, experiences the fusion of his passion and his art. When Sands's masters die, the young actor loses his home and his job, and must fight to maintain his ideals and his life in an atmosphere of plague, Puritanism, and political unrest under the new Jacobean regime. After one small act of kindness threatens to engulf Sands in violence, his hope of a life in theater spirals into an unexpected horror that contemporary readers will find disturbingly familiar in our own political climate.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews