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Alas, Poor Yorick
It is twenty years before the events of Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Yorick, the King's trusted jester and sometimes confidante, is caught in a web of treachery and murder as he struggles to be true to his King and to protect the infant Prince Hamlet. There is treason against the very dynasty of the King; and now someone is killing off, one by one, the jesters of Elsinor. Shakespeareans have argued for four hundred years about the backstory to Hamlet; now you can experience the events as told in Yorick's own words.
371 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 1, 2002
2 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
259 books477 followersA professional writer for more than forty years, Yarbro has sold over eighty books, more than seventy works of short fiction, and more than three dozen essays, introductions, and reviews. She also composes serious music. Her first professional writing - in 1961-1962 - was as a playwright for a now long-defunct children's theater company. By the mid-60s she had switched to writing stories and hasn't stopped yet.
After leaving college in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her books, and occasionally for the books of other writers.
She has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects, everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to religion and law. She is constantly adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and places that might provide fodder for stories.
In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life Achievement Award in 2009. In 2014 she won a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention.
A skeptical occultist for forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco.
She has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can.
Divorced, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area - with two cats: the irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera.
Her Saint-Germain series is now the longest vampire series ever. The books range widely over time and place, and were not published in historical order. They are numbered in published order.
Known pseudonyms include Vanessa Pryor, Quinn Fawcett, T.C.F. Hopkins, Trystam Kith, Camille Gabor.
After leaving college in 1963 and until she became a full-time writer in 1970, she worked as a demographic cartographer, and still often drafts maps for her books, and occasionally for the books of other writers.
She has a large reference library with books on a wide range of subjects, everything from food and fashion to weapons and trade routes to religion and law. She is constantly adding to it as part of her on-going fascination with history and culture; she reads incessantly, searching for interesting people and places that might provide fodder for stories.
In 1997 the Transylvanian Society of Dracula bestowed a literary knighthood on Yarbro, and in 2003 the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award. In 2006 the International Horror Guild enrolled her among their Living Legends, the first woman to be so honored; the Horror Writers Association gave her a Life Achievement Award in 2009. In 2014 she won a Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention.
A skeptical occultist for forty years, she has studied everything from alchemy to zoomancy, and in the late 1970s worked occasionally as a professional tarot card reader and palmist at the Magic Cellar in San Francisco.
She has two domestic accomplishments: she is a good cook and an experienced seamstress. The rest is catch-as-catch-can.
Divorced, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area - with two cats: the irrepressible Butterscotch and Crumpet, the Gang of Two. When not busy writing, she enjoys the symphony or opera.
Her Saint-Germain series is now the longest vampire series ever. The books range widely over time and place, and were not published in historical order. They are numbered in published order.
Known pseudonyms include Vanessa Pryor, Quinn Fawcett, T.C.F. Hopkins, Trystam Kith, Camille Gabor.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 6, 2011
Really a 3.5. Sometimes books are a really a point something.
Alas Poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio.
So did Horatio.
And finally, so does the reader.
Yarbro's novel takes the reader to the court of King Hamlet Sr. In other words, to the whole start of the bloody mess that make up Shakespeare most famous play (or one Shakespeare's most famous plays. Can we agree not to quibble over this? Thank you).
Yarbro's back story is very good (though there is one point at the end, where she didn't really have to go. It was really unnescessary to a degree. To say anymore would ruin it). The reader is introduced to the characters of Gertrude, Hamlet Sr., Claudius, and Polonius without the filter of Hamlet. In some ways, like Updike in his book of the same matter, Yarbro allows the reader to get a better handle on the more quiet members of Shakespeare's plot.
There are many in jokes to not only Shakespeare but the Tudor world as well. Overall it is a good book, just that one revelation at the end seems out of place. I understand the reason, but it doesn't quite fit. However, if you enjoy Hamlet, you should enjoy this book.
Alas Poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio.
So did Horatio.
And finally, so does the reader.
Yarbro's novel takes the reader to the court of King Hamlet Sr. In other words, to the whole start of the bloody mess that make up Shakespeare most famous play (or one Shakespeare's most famous plays. Can we agree not to quibble over this? Thank you).
Yarbro's back story is very good (though there is one point at the end, where she didn't really have to go. It was really unnescessary to a degree. To say anymore would ruin it). The reader is introduced to the characters of Gertrude, Hamlet Sr., Claudius, and Polonius without the filter of Hamlet. In some ways, like Updike in his book of the same matter, Yarbro allows the reader to get a better handle on the more quiet members of Shakespeare's plot.
There are many in jokes to not only Shakespeare but the Tudor world as well. Overall it is a good book, just that one revelation at the end seems out of place. I understand the reason, but it doesn't quite fit. However, if you enjoy Hamlet, you should enjoy this book.
June 21, 2014
Very enjoyable & clever imagining of what may have happened before Hamlet was a distraught prince in Denmark.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews