Review of King of Shadows by Susan Cooper: Young Adults and Shakespeare

The purpose of this article is to highlight the enthralling application that comes from reading the King of Shadows by Susan Cooper in its entirety along with the correlations to young adults and their interests. With this being said, my intended audience are students who have or will encounter Shakespeare’s writing in an academic context.

To start, I want to dive into a synopsis of King of Shadows. The book looks through the lens of Nat, who is an orphan from Kentucky. His mother died of cancer and because of this loss, Nat’s father committed suicide. To cope with the pain, Nat got into acting. Along the journey in 1999, Nat gets hired onto a company that will tour London and perform William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe Theater. Along the way Nat gets ill and finds himself in a dream that ended up being all too real. He found himself 400 years in the past when William Shakespeare was alive and performing playwright. Nat ended up connecting with Shakespeare himself and performing in a play for and with him. Even for the great Queen Elizabeth. Towards the end of the novel, Nat finds himself back in 1999 in the hospital bed in which he had bubonic plague and where his dream occurred. He goes back to the play he has to perform with the company and finds that the production is all wrong compared to Shakespeare’s day. He ends up telling everyone what happened and they end up believing him. The puzzle was pieced together that his body was actually switched with a Nat Fields that was from 1599.

When I first learned that this text was about Shakespeare, I immediately thought about my encounter with his writing in my high school English classes. All I could remember was boring, how is this relevant?, yawn, spark notes, and only titles of Shakespeare’s work because I did not invest much attention to the content of the work themselves. Shakespeare was unengaging to not only me, but every other classmate I had. Ironically, I am now on the path of becoming a Secondary English teacher, which has naturally lent itself to curiosity and questions relating to the impact and popularity of Shakespeare and his work. This is exactly what King of Shadows reminded me of: the consistent disengagement of high school students towards Shakespearean texts. Not only this, but it reminded of the current debate that goes on in college English courses. Should Shakespeare be taught in the educational school system? Is there a more relevant substitute? I will not make the leap to say that King of Shadows is a healthy replacement to all of Shakespeare’s work in the high school classroom since it is only one fictional novel about Shakespeare and his writing. However, just because the book shouldn’t be a substitute, it does have the credibility to be an introduction to high school students who have not read any of Shakespeare’s work, either academically or for leisure. Here are a few points that have impacted me from the context of a young adult.

The first takeaway after reading King of Shadows in its entirety is the story line. Susan Cooper did an excellent work of weaving a story line that is not only easy to read, but makes the name of Shakespeare approachable to a young adult. Young adults are genuinely scared of the name of Shakespeare because he can be difficult to read and from the surface comes off as irrelevant. Susan Cooper made him a little more inviting through the interests of Nat.

The second experience I found myself in was the natural curiosity I had about Shakespeare and his work. When Nat went back in time, I went back in time. When Nat was surprised about how the times were in 1599, I was surprised. When Nat was curious, I was curious. So curious, in fact, that I did a little research myself. I was genuinely interested in not only the Elizabethan era, but the current time in 2018. I was so enthralled with Shakespeare and the popularity he had acquired, I went online to see if he had any living descendants living in 2018. I discovered he didn’t, but his sister Joan did. Notice how King of Shadows took me on a learning journey, not confined to just William Shakespeare himself, but his sister Joan. This is the power of King of Shadows. It draws out the inner curiousness of someone who generally put a distaste in literature.

Lastly, King of Shadows calls readers to do some introspection into who models and inspires their desires and work. This can be across genre and board. Young adults have varied interests to sports, fashion, art, music, etc. Many young adults are pursuing careers and interests, all the while looking to certain leaders in that field. This book encourages and extends a healthy push to connecting with the one who inspires you work.

All in all, young adults can identify with the book King of Shadows by Susan Cooper in many aspects. Most importantly it provides an introductory and comfortable invitation to Shakespeare and his work.