Mary McMyne’s phenomenal new release, A Rose By Any Other Name, tells the story of Rose Rushe, the mysterious “Dark Lady” of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. In the prologue to Rose’s narrative, she describes herself as the “daughter of an ill-starred astrologer and a witch who refused to hide her Catholicism,” and casts the bard’s famous sonnets as “the bitter spew of a jealous lover.” By the end of the first page, I was prepared for a tumultuous journey through the dazzling world of Elizabethan England, and A Rose By Any Other Name did not disappoint!
McMyne’s book begins with Rose dreaming of a life beyond the confines of her country home. She has learned much from the crafts of her parents, but she also sings and plays music, and her deepest desire is to travel to London with her childhood friend Cecely and secure a position as a musician in Queen Elizabeth’s court. When her father passes away, Rose’s unconventional plans are thwarted by her need to protect her mother and her little brother. Chased out of town by accusations of witchcraft, Cecely, Rose, and her family flee to the London home of her father’s good friend, an alchemist seeking to turn base metals into gold. Although Rose is trapped into marrying to secure her family’s welfare, she never stops reaching for her independence, using both ingenuity and duplicity to locate her mother’s estranged relatives and to earn money by singing in brothels, composing music for the theatre, and dabbling in astrology for powerful and wealthy clients who pay handsomely for her discretion.
Rose’s complex relationship with her mother, Katarina, is on full display throughout the narrative. Katarina has spells and potions at her disposal, using them indiscriminately to further the security of her family, sometimes at the cost of her own daughter’s freedom. Rose has inherited much of her mother’s shrewdness, and although she has spent her youth dallying with boys’ affections and enjoys a physical relationship with Will Shakespeare, she is a woman who knows what she wants out of life, and she will stop at nothing to get it. Like Rose and her mother, Shakespeare himself is presented as a complex character, both brilliant and insecure, both intimate and distant. Will’s wit draws Rose into his world of ink and paper, but when he brings her into contact with Henry, the Earl of Southampton, whose mother has hired the poet to write sonnets convincing him to marry, Rose is able to peer beneath the surfaces of the men’s desires because she is so clear in knowing her own.
McMyne’s greatest strength as a writer comes from her ability to create engaging narrators who are not as fully in control of their stories as they seem. Like Haelewise, the narrator of McMyne’s “Rapunzel” retelling The Book of Gothel, Rose is a multidimensional character whose writing reveals more than the story she reports. Rose writes, in part, to vilify Will Shakespeare, claiming that after their ordeal, she took little interest in his work though he filled his plays and poems with references to her and their romance. Careful readers of Rose’s narrative, however, will spot nods to the bard’s work in her chosen language, revealing that while her relationship with Shakespeare may have been a small part of her life, it had a lasting impact on her and the way that she understands the world. McMyne skillfully gives the dark lady a powerful new voice while simultaneously binding her to the poet who first immortalized her in verse, and the effect is breathtaking.
“Sometimes the music just comes,” Rose says to Will upon reading his beautiful sonnet which compares the Earl of Southampton to a summer’s day, and in A Rose By Any Other Name, the music has come to Mary McMyne. Passionate, mysterious, and achingly beautiful, this book offers readers a new take one of the world’s greatest literary mysteries. It is a must read for all those interested in complex family dynamics, sapphic romances, and the pull between societal duty and individual desire. McMyne’s stunning combination of scholarly research and engaging fiction will transform the way audiences understand women, witches, and William Shakespeare. I loved it! You can find it here.
To read my upcoming exclusive interview with Mary McMyne, and for a chance to win a FREE copy of A Rose By Any Other Name, sign up for my reader list at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/.
Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine where she writes stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and interviews. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Mermaids Monthly, Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, The Magic of Us, A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard, and Corvid Queen. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/
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