Player's Boy/Players and the Rebels

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

An uncommonly nice surprise on my birthday was the GGB Player's Boy and, even more lovely, a perfect first edition hardback of The Players and the Rebels, from my partner. I've never owned a copy of either, and hadn't read them since an illicit speedread in the Bodleian some time ago, when I was supposed to be engaged in altogether more austere matters. Needless to say, I read them this time in a single, gorging session.

Anyway, it's been pointed out by everyone that Forest's period characters are rather twentieth-century and middle-class, but it occurred to me on this reading that Edmund Shakespeare (Ned) is in fact an Elizabethan, male Tim Keith - he and Nicholas have precisely the same rather edgy relationship via Will, as Tim and Nicola have via Lawrie. (Which makes W Shakespeare, obviously, Lawrie!) Then it occurred to me that there are all kinds of other character half-parallels between the 20thc. Marlow books and the historical ones. Humfrey Danvers, physically timid and indecisive, but a brilliant musician, is a version of Lawrie (a total flake, scared of lighting the gas, but a brilliant actor) with a dash of Peter. Will, self-contained, clever, unobtrusively authoritative, is a combination of Rowan, a more accessible Jan Scott and a dash of Giles - although Richard Burbage is probably more of the swashbuckling side of Giles. Wyn Burbage is a more appreciated Ann, kind and concerned, rather trite.

I could go on, until I claimed that John Hemings was in fact an Elizabeth Miss Keith, but I won't. But I'd be interested to hear whether people genuinely think that Nicholas is simply a transplanted Nicola, clever, sensitive, brave, charismatic, violently honourable...?