Through a modern playwright and a Tudor figure, the bestselling American author creates a dual narrative about the erasure of women’s creativity
complained that her work was suffering from sexism. Her 30 novels address weighty subjects from gay rights to gun control, and if they were written by an author such as Jonathan Franzen or Jeffrey Eugenides, she believed they would not be perceived as beach reads.
In modern Manhattan, Melina is a young playwright whose confidence has been crushed for a decade by an unkind review of her debut. A descendent of Bassano, she dramatises her conviction that Emilia must have written Shakespeare in a new play.
Ben Elton’s comic series Upstart Crow presented the Bard as a hack stumbling into great lines when prompted by domestic irritations. In the Tudor chapters, Emilia, too, utters lines that become famous in Hamlet and elsewhere via her apprehension of the injustice of women’s lives. As concubine to the Lord Chamberlain, who must read every new play submitted for a licence, Emilia can hone her craft, but only her friend Kit Marlowe can know of her gifts.
Had this novel’s 500-plus pages been ruthlessly edited, it might have been a diverting romp. As it is, the modern-day parts of By Any Other Name add nothing but polemic. Like Emilia, modern Melina hides her work, in her case behind the identity of her gay Black best friend, leading to predictable professional and romantic complications. In Tudor England, Emilia’s life has a more compelling arc.
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