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Critic's Corner
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The marriage of fact and fiction is a daunting task. William Martin, author of six novels including "Back Bay," "Cape Cod," and "Annapolis," performs this feat better than most historical novelists writing today. From its beginning, Harvard University has grown up in the eye of a ceaseless storm: a profound conflict between ignorance and enlightenment, faith and reason, elitism and equality. "Harvard Yard" is the history of this great edifice of education and the families that brought it from its inception to present day. William Shakespeare attended the celebration of Robert and Katherine Harvard's son John. Master Shakespeare brought with him an unexpected gift. ". . . Shakespeare reached under his cape and withdrew a volume of quarto size, bound in red leather, held with a blue ribbon. ‘The very play, Love's Labours Won. In a prompt book, transcribed by my own hand from my foul papers," Shakespeare explained to the awed parents. Robert Harvard protested that this companion play of Love's Labours Lost should be published and staged, but Shakespeare said that once a play sees print, any man may stage it, which took money from his own pocket. The Harvards accepted the precious gift as a talisman of good fortune. Little could they know what was soon to befall their family or what part this gift would play in generations to come. London suffered as did all of Europe when the black death struck and took away millions of souls. John Harvard's father and all but one of his siblings succumbed to the dread disease. John promised his dying father that he would protect his books including the one from Will Shakespeare. The young man took his father's motto, "A man will be known by his books," as his own. "Twelve years later, a small ship called the Hector pounded west into the Atlantic. John Harvard, master of arts, Emmanuel College, the last of his family line, heir to the Queen's Head Inn and other London properties, clerk, cattle breeder, putative minister, and husband to Ann Sadler, was going to America . . . Carefully packed in a trunk, lined with oil cloth, was Master Will's gift at John's birth celebration." The Harvards were part of the great Puritan migration. Men and women of conscience, who did not hold with the rituals of the church and despaired of the corruption in the state, had obtained a charter to build a new England some three thousand miles from the old, well beyond the reach of robed bishops and royal authority. Peter Fallon stared into the eyes of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare stared back. Peter Fallon blinked. William Shakespeare didn't. But, then, Shakespeare hadn't blinked in almost four centuries. "They met in what Peter Fallon considered a perfect environment: constant temperature of 68 degrees, constant humidity of 50 percent, u.v.-filtered glass on the windows--the Harry Elkins Widener Room, sanctum sanctorum of Harvard's Widener Library." Fallon is a dealer in rare books and documents and longed to own and sell a First Folio of Shakespeare's work. "The one in Harvard's Widener Room held the first complete collection of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1623. This goldmine was displayed next to a Gutenberg Bible, in a case that defined the term ‘embarrassment of riches.'" Missing, but unknown to Fallon, was one quarto, the play, Love's Labours Won. Martin takes readers back and forth from the 1600s forward to present time and back again, weaving bit by bit the tumultuous history of Harvard University. He shows the man John Harvard, his kindness to the young boy Isaac Wedge, and the great gift of his entire library to a fledgling college. John Harvard's one stipulation to his gift of books was that they must ever be held together in the school's library. Isaac Wedge was to play an important role in that endeavor. Should it be discovered that the generous donor harbored a play, even one by a playwright as famous as Shakespeare, the Puritan fathers would be aghast. It became Isaac Wedge's honor and duty to protect the play from prying eyes. This he did, as did many generations of Wedges to come. Readers will experience the Boston Tea Party, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and Harvard's students' participation. Each ensuing war is touched upon. Each generation plays its role as the story unfolds. Each decade brings changes in society, in the church, in the ever expanding scope of the University and you, the readers, are there—right in the middle of all the action. Such is Martin's gift to portray characters, events, and dialogue with ever-changing vernacular as the years come and go. Throughout the story, the thread of mystery regarding the location of the Shakespeare play runs headlong leading from one excitement to the next, one discovery to another. Deception, fraud, and greed enter as deceit tries to trump truth. Imagine, if such a play should be found what it would mean? " . . .A handwritten draft of a Shakespeare play, there's no end to all we could learn . . . how he worked, how he thought, who he was. Why we could solve the authorship question once and for all. And the scholar who did the editing would never be forgotten, neither would the man who found it." Peter Fallon meets his old school mate Ridley Wedge Royce and the two enter into a hunt for something from the antiquity of the famous old Wedge family. Something Fallon wants badly to believe exists, but could it have survived war and fire after all these years? Before Fallon can find out his friend Ridley meets with an untimely death and someone tries to kill Peter Fallon. This multilayered story has everything: societal history, romance, mystery, and most importantly, the tale of Harvard University and all it stood for in its beginning down to the dawning of this very day. I've not, to my recollection, ever called a book—fabulous! But "Harvard Yard," is just that, a fabulous story told by a master craftsman. Save Up to 30% on this book at Amazon.com Jones is a published writer and book reviewer for Tulsa World newspaper. To comment on this review you may email pattij777@aol.com |
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Harvard Yard
