Caryl BrahmsCritiques

Anton Palook is shot on stage while dancing the role of Petrushka in the ballet of the same name. Inspector Quill is assigned to investigate the murder.

Not as funny as I remember from reading it as a teenager but still very enjoyable.

The epigraph page of No Bed for Bacon bears a Warning to Scholars: ‘This book is fundamentally unsound’. It may be so, but it’s both fun and, surely, hugely influential. Written in the course of several frenzied months in 1940, this historical farce imagines the London of Queen Elizabeth I at just the time that so many parts of the city were being destroyed in the Blitz. The two authors, both of whom were serving as air raid wardens, often had only an hour or so together each day to exchange ideas, and were reduced to leaving cryptic notes for one another in their wardens’ log-book. Though they squabbled passionately, and at one point considered taking out a legal injunction to prevent them ever having to work together again, they managed to produce a work of high British silliness. At its heart is Francis Bacon, an ambitious courtier who wants nothing more than to be awarded one of Gloriana’s beds from her progresses, so that he can pass it down to his heirs as an investment. Across town, the rival impresarios Philip Henslowe and Richard Burbage strive for theatrical domination, while the author Will Shakespeare is struggling to find a suitable opening for his new play Love’s Labours Won. A young aristocrat, Viola Compton, dreams of becoming an actor. And, at court, Sir Walter Raleigh plans for the greatest day of his life: the ceremonial tasting of the first potato from the New World. If only he can find a new cloak elegant enough to wear…

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/06/15/no-bed-for-bacon-caryl-brahms-s-j-simon/

Of its time, therefore dated, with racial passages that would not be written today and, indeed, came as something of a shock to this reader. However, these can, for the most part, be ignored as they add nothing to the narrative. As a satire I think that many/most of its references would mean nothing to many readers, particularly younger ones.

Take some odd accounting entries by Philip Henslowe, some of the plot lines from "Twelfth Night", a few quotes from Francis Bacon, and a mass of lore from Elizabethan Drama Scholars, old sailors reminiscing about the Armada...and you will spend at least a quarter of an hour howling with laughter. Into the bargain, you will learn a good deal about how hard it was to write Shakespeare's plays, considering the nutcases he had to deal with. . I read it fifty-six years ago, and can still recall the punchlines.

Began an unofficial collaboration in the late twenties when they became Low's famous dog 'Mussolini' on the Evening Standard Home Page.

This is not just a mystery, it is a comedy of errors too. The characters are painted broad and quirky. The action is a little Keystone Kop, Laurel and Hardy and Marx Brothers. But there is a murder, a murderer, a ex Scotland Yard detective, a French policeman, a cynical, blackmailing critic, a baron, the members of the ballet troupe, and other colourful characters.

Vladimir Stroganoff, impresario of the Stroganoff Ballet, sees a casino located in La Bazouch for sale. He reasons that the income from the casino could help finance and promote his ballet to even a higher level. He dashes off, meets up with Baron Rabinovitch and buys the place sight unseen. Thinking it is the glamourous casino he sees as he enters the town, he is definitely unhappy to find that it is a run down place not in the best part of town. But he prefers to see the positive and sets up shop.

Citrolo is a known cynical ballet critic who also makes his living blackmailing. Stroganoff tries to get a good review out of Citrolo but finds he can't. At that point, Stroganoff slips sleeping drops into Citrolo's drink and then writes his own glowing review, signing Citrolo's name to it. When Stroganoff is finished, Citrolo is still asleep, so Stroganoff leaves Citrolo to sleep it off in the office. The next day Citrolo is found to be dead. There are multiple clues/red herrings found in the office, along with the fact that Stroganoff left the room locked when he left. Yup, locked room mystery.

Quill, the ex-Scotland Yard detective, is in town for a vacation but is pulled in to investigate for Stroganoff. Meanwhile, Stroganoff is arrested and thrown in jail along with his business rival Buttonhooke. Quill is left to investigate on his own, interviewing a cast of strange and unusual people.

Even though this has the trappings of a standard mystery (is there such thing) I think reading it and being open for the character personalities, madcap situations and actions is more in line with what the authors intended. Brahms and Simon were well known in the 1920s and 1930s. It may have been the "golden age" of mysteries, but there was also quite a bit of comedy and humour too.

A transparent take-off of A. A. Milne's When we were very young (1924), but aimed more deliberately at little girls. Some amusing little glimpses of life in a middle-class nursery in around 1930, with wistful verses about disobedience and punishment, walking out with parents or nannies, and the frustrations of being a girl, though nothing particularly memorable.

MB 7-i-2017

It is time for the Queen's Revels and Elizabeth is on a tear. It seems as if she will not be pleased with anything and anyone.

Shakespeare has been commissioned to write a play but can't make up his mind. The two theatres are major competitors and are out to destroy each other while being polite and courteous to each other's faces. Essex is rebelling and Raleigh is worried how his new discovery will be liked or not liked. He has just brought a new delicacy - the potato - to England and it is to be tasted for the first time during the events. Drake just goes on and on about his old battles.

Oh, and Bacon and the bed? Seems there is quite a cachet to owning a bed that the queen has slept in. Quite a status symbol and Bacon is out to get the next one this time.

It is the lunatic asylum out on the streets and in court with all that is going on. Humourous and entertaining with an Elizabethan flourish.

I would not exactly call this droll satire of Elizabethan England a laugh riot, though it did produce some chuckles. If you like sort of brainy, dry comedy and are into Shakespeare, this will probably be enjoyable. It features a quirky cast of both major and minor characters, a raging rivalry between two theater troupes, a girl in drag as a boy in drag as a girl, and some funny scenes of Gloriana in her senescence. It ran out of steam, in my opinion, about 75 pages before the end. But we finally got to find out where Anne Hathaway's second best bed came from!

In this hilarious send-up of the Elizabethan era -- or rather, the Elizabethan era as perceived by popular culture -- Sir Francis Bacon is desperate to obtain a bed that Queen Elizabeth has slept in during one of her royal progresses. He wants it to be an heirloom for his family, as he knows the bed's value will only increase through the years. Sir Walter Raleigh's attention is divided between his new cloak, which he hopes will be the envy of everyone at Elizabeth's court (especially that dandy, the Earl of Essex), and his upcoming introduction of the potato to England. Meanwhile, Sir Francis Drake is grumbling about the fact that he hasn't been able to do any really good pirating in years; theater owner Philip Henslowe will do anything in his power to shut down his rival, Burbage; and Shakespeare is trying to work on a new play, Love's Labour's Wunne, but he keeps getting distracted by the problem of how to spell his own name. Add a little romance, an overly ambitious watchman, and some reminiscing about the glory days of the Armada, and the stage is set for high comedy with a few history lessons thrown in.

I didn't know it until I read the introduction, but this book is actually part of the basis for the Academy Award-winning movie "Shakespeare in Love." But while the movie focuses almost entirely on the romance between Shakespeare and the noble Lady Viola, in the book it's just one of many plots involving the most famous figures of the Elizabethan age. If you know anything about the era or are interested in learning more, I highly recommend this book! It's pure farce, so there isn't much "plot" to speak of, but the jokes are more than funny enough to make up for that! One of my favorites was an exchange between Shakespeare and Bacon about some plot element of Shakespeare's play that Bacon didn't like. Shakespeare responds with great indignation, "Master Bacon, do I write my plays or do you?" Then there's this internal monologue from a Puritan who seeks to shut down the theater: "People had no right to enjoy themselves. He was going to stop them. His cause was a just one and he knew it. He was enjoying himself." So if you like Shakespeare and don't mind a little (or a lot of) silliness, you should definitely check out this book!

An admiral, who lost a battle in 1702 because some of his captains refused to follow his orders, has his book at last. The action, between a French squadron of three warships and four transports, and a British fleet of seven warships, led to the escape of the French. After the battle, the captains of five of the British ships were court-martialed and two were eventually shot for cowardice. They had led a group of five ships that hung back out of cannon shot, while Benbow's personal ship and one other, bore the brunt of the fight.
Brahms and Sherrin have collected the songs that grew out of the fight and the trial, and woven the narrative around them.½

"Overcome by sudden affection due to not having to meet for the next six months, the authors dedicate this book to each other." With a dedication like that, I knew I was in for a treat. The narration is wonderfully dry-witted and sharp, and the characters delightfully absurd. When a member of a ballet troupe is killed while performing the role of Petrushka in the ballet of the same name, Inspector Quill investigates and finds himself up against some very eccentric characters. The mystery itself is almost incidental; the real fun is following along with Stroganoff and Arenskaya and all the rest as they confound and help the authorities in equal measure.

Given that Caryl Brahms was a ballet critic for the Evening Standard, the ballet scenes are particularly well presented and may make you want to seek out a performance of Petrushka for yourself. I thoroughly enjoyed this very quick, light read and would read more by these authors if I came across any.

The more you know about the Ballet, the funnier it will be. I hope. I don't know about the ballet, and not much about the hotel business. Read the two funny books by this team, "Don't Mr. Disraeli!", and "No Bed For Bacon" instead.

Before there was Monty Python, before Terry Pratchett, before there was anyone but Dickens and the Marx Brothers, A. J. Simon and Caryl Brahms, perhaps apprehensive that there'd be nothing to read during the Blitz, cooked up this wonderful comic romp. Faster than anything save Groucho's dialogue, we are pushed into Victoriana that never was, but as some happy folk hoped it might have been. Read it and laugh 'til you weep!

No Bed for Bacon, written in 1941, is believed by some to be the inspiration for the film 'Shakespeare in Love,' but aside from the appearance of a young woman named Viola who disguises as a boy player and falls for Will Shakespeare and the continuing struggle of the company to survive, there's not a lot of similarity. Nevertheless, the novel is a lot of fun. The title character, Elizabeth's taciturn Attorney General, longs to be given a bed in which the queen has slept--apparently a great honor. (Brahms & Simon suggest that he was the model Malvolio.) In between, London is preparing for a celebration marking the sixth anniversary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Henslowe and Burbage are scheming to destroy one another's theatres, Sir Walter Raleigh is about to introduce the potato, and the Earl of Essex has big plans of his own. While Shakespeare strives to fulfill a commission to write a play for the celebration, what he is really absorbed with is a new play entitled 'Love's Labour's Wonne.'

It's all in good fun, and I did indeed get some laughs out of it, but I have to admit that, as a Shakespearean, I found myself gritting my teeth at some of the anachronisms. The story takes place in 1594, but Sir Philip Sidney, who appears in several scenes, was killed at Zutphen in 1586--two years before the Armada. The timing of Love's Labour's Lost is right on, but Twelfth Night wasn't written for another six or seven years. And Bacon was not appointed Attorney General until 1613--ten years after Elizabeth's death. I apologize if all that sounds rather pedantic. But as a teacher, what bothers me is not the anachronisms--this is, after all, fiction--but rather that so many readers, especially students, take historical fiction more as historical fact than fiction. But I guess I should take solace in the fact that few of them will be reading a book written in 1941!

Overall, a fun piece of fluff for those who love the Elizabethan period and who are able to separate fact from fiction.½

What a surprise! Picked this up off the bookswap shelf in the Common Room. Only ever heard of it before in connection with Stoppard's 'Shakespeare in Love', but it's not really the source for the film at all. Ned Sherrin's intro says Stoppard read through it to check he wasn't incorporating the same jokes. He wasn't; and it's a really wittily written, beautifully constructed and very skillful little tome. Greatly enjoying reading it, and am just a little curious as to whether it predates Anthony Burgess's books on the Shakespearean theme, Nothing Like the Sun and Enderby's Dark Lady. Something about the way scenes change ...

A comic historical novel about Elizabethan England (well, sort of about Elizabethan England) written from a very 20th century point of view. The plot concerns a writers' block suffered by one W. Shakespeare, his entanglement with a lovely young lady named Viola, and a series of cameo appearances by a gallery of Elizabethan notables, from (of course) Francis Bacon to (of course) Gloriana. An amusing book, though I don't think it is as funny as the authors' "Don't Mr. Disraeli". English majors, however, will revel in both.½

A truly marvelous comic novel that is, as its preface notes, "not a novel set in the Victorian age: it is a novel set in its literature". Around a wisp of a plot about two feuding families and two star crossed lovers, the authors construct a panorama of the Victorian world as it was, as it was enshrined in its novels, and as it was remembered early in the 20th century. I liked this even more when I was young -- it is a young person's book, full of glitterings tours de force, names scattered about like spangles, and so on -- but still enjoyed it very much upon rereading.½

Entstanden unter dem Eindruck der Bombardierung Londons wird der Leser zurück versetzt in die intrigante Zeit der späten Regierungsjahre von Elisabeth I, auch genannt Gloriana. Auch wenn das Werk selbst von den Autoren als grundlegend unsolide angesehen wird, ist es doch gründlich recherchiert und schafft es, historische und fiktive Figuren gekonnt miteinander in Beziehungen treten zu lassen.

Vorrangig geht es dabei um den Theaterkrieg zwischen Henslowe und Burbage, nicht minder interessant sind aber die zahlreichen Nebenhandlungen: Shakespeares Kampf mit der Orthographie; eine regelmäßig mies gelaunte Königin, die ihren Unmut an ihrer ersten Hofdame auslässt; der Haushofmeister, der sich regelmäßig den unausgegorenen Späßen eines möchtegern-Narren ausgesetzt sieht; Sir Walter Raleighs streben nach einem alle anderen austechenden Umhang; die Theaterbegeisterung der verwaisten jungen Lady Viola Compton; das auf- und ab der Karriere eines unbekannten jungen Mannes, der am Anfang und zum Ende des Romans wieder als Nachtwächter seine Runden dreht und schließlich das Streben von Sir Francis Bacon nach einem Bett, in dem die Königin einmal geschlafen hat.

Eine Nebenrolle spielt 'mein geliebter Pirat Drake' - die Szene, in der ausführlich in Erinnerungen über den Kampf gegen die Armada geschwelgt wird, scheint aber, auch in Anbetracht des Nachwortes, zum Schluss eingefügt worden zu sein, da vor Drucklegung noch 1000 Worte fehlten - hier zieht es sich ein wenig.

Alles in allem erstaunlich, dass es fast 60 Jahre gedauert hat, bis dieser Roman in deutscher Übersetzung vorlag - hier könnte die Verfilmung (Shakespeare in Love [1998] hat eine gleichlaufende Handlung, mit leicht verschobenen Schwerpunkten) ausschlaggebend gewesen sein.

Und wer hätte gedacht, dass Shakespeares Schauspiel-Komiker die Tortenschlacht erfunden hätten oder Elisabeth I bei der Erstverkostung der Kartoffel das Salz fehlte ;) ? Für alle, die schon ein wenig Shakespear kennen ein großer Genuss, und für alle anderen sicher auch ein Spaß.

A light-hearted look at the Victorians as they never were but as they ought to have been. Excellent light reading.

When I was 15 years old I thought this book the funniest thing I had ever read. Re-reading it in later life I find it mildly amusing in an old-fashioned kind of way. It would probably not appeal to the younger generation. It is the story of a club for layabouts - the only rule being that no member must earn an honest living. 3 stars (just).

The source for the film "Shakespeare in Love"