M.L. Rio's Five Best Novels Inspired by Shakespeare

I’ve been writing almost as long as I’ve been acting. For me the worlds of literature and theatre are inextricably linked—I often find myself talking about fiction in theatrical terms, and vice versa. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that my first novel, If We Were Villains, revolves around the theatre and reads like a playscript in places. That the book is specifically inspired by Shakespeare, whose work might be considered the epitome of dramatic literature, probably isn’t surprising either. Books inspired by the Bard are nothing new. They have appeared in every year and every genre, from Ray Bradbury’s horror-fantasy Something Wicked This Way Comes in the 1960s to John Green’s teen romance The Fault in Our Stars right here in the 2010s. Here are a few of my favorites, as varied and diverse as the plays themselves:



Mandel won me over at the outset with her gorgeously imagined production of King Lear. But what kept me reading was the uncanny believability of her post-apocalyptic world. In the sparse landscape of what used to be North America before an epidemic wiped out most of the human population, a small band of traveling players brings Shakespeare to life for the small communities that have survived in the wilderness. The everyday trials of the actors (costume malfunctions and backstage romances) are more than familiar, and keep the story grounded in a world which is almost—but not quite—unrecognisable.



Brown’s family drama follows the three daughters of an English professor when they return home after their mother is diagnosed with cancer. Brown paints a poignant portrait of an estranged, struggling family which would not seem out of place in one of Shakespeare’s plays. The characters are deeply flawed, but never beyond redemption. However, what’s most compelling is Brown’s incisive examination of literature itself and the effect it has on of those who live under its influence.



Much of Murdoch’s work is saturated with Shakespeare, but The Black Prince is her dramatic pièce de résistance—based, of course, upon Shakespeare’s own magnum opus, Hamlet. Her story follows frustrated writer Bradley Pearson through a series of dark and darkly comic conflicts with his ex-wife, his sister, his creative protégé Arnold, and Arnold’s wife and daughter. The Danish Prince is never far away, but Murdoch manages to give him fresh treatment, and the reader never knows what to take seriously. Is there something in all that Freudian innuendo after all, or is Murdoch subtly mocking her fellow philosophers and literary critics? The questions are as many and as maddening as those that surround Hamlet, and we may never know the answers.



Though this is a play and not a novel, it begs to be read. Stoppard gives Hamlet’s hapless Rosencrantz and Guildenstern an absurdist twist, as if the whole play had been written by the Danish prince in the throes of his “antic disposition.” Bizarre but delightful, it’s well worth reading if you need a break from the same old Hamlet.

 

The high fantasy Bible may seem like a strange addition to this list, but it’s essential reading for any lover of the Bard. Not unlike George R. R. Martin’s more recent Song of Ice and Fire series, The Lord of the Rings trilogy owes a great debt to Shakespeare. The timeless themes of kin and kingship that give such depth to Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, and all the histories are everywhere in Middle Earth—from Osgiliath to Isengard. But Tolkien’s relationship to Shakespeare isn’t all homage; in several instances he’s a Shakespearean revisionist. Legend has it that Tolkien was disappointed by the mundane loopholes in Macbeth’s prophecies—that the usurping king should not be killed by any man born of a woman, and not before the Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane—and decided to rewrite them in his own fantastic style. So we have the Scottish play to thank for the epic final march of the Ents, and for the demise of the Witch-king of Angmar at the hand of woman.