Beginning with the plague and its ravaging hold upon the city of London, the story follows the adventures of Catherine Constanza, beautiful, young, and suddenly bereft of all she knows. Catherine perseveres through her misfortune, and soon begins a star-crossed love affair with Shakespeare; the excitement and deceit at the Globe Theatre, the devastation and degradation of Newgate Prison, the glitter and intrigue in the court of King James I, and the harsh reality of the Jamestown Colony follow.
Rich with Elizabethan flavoring, A Pageant of Shadows is a saga full of action while staying within the framework of its era in tone, in character, and in the beautiful flowing language of the time. Events, costumes, and locations vividly and accurately detail the life of England in the seventeenth century. And there has always been a hunger for people to transplant themselves into another world, another time, another love affair....
"Loved the concept!" This is an intriguing concept to a novel and I enjoyed the preview. As a fan of Shakespearean England, I found the setting particularly enjoyable. However, there are some similarities here to the film Shakespeare in Love. Were they intentional?
"Re: Loved the concept!" Dear Bill, Thanks for your comment on my novel, A Pageant of Shadows. Evidently we share an interest and an enthusiasm for the England of Shakespeare’s time. In answer to your question, the only similarities in my book to the movie, Shakespeare in Love, is the fact that the female character had to dress in male attire in order to play feminine roles. That would be a natural approach, due to fact that during this period women were excluded from participation as actors. It’s a bit of theatrical irony, but both the film writer and I saw that as an inevitable segment that would be necessary to the plot as it reflected the time. As far as my emulating the film intentionally is concerned, that would be impossible. I wrote the novel in 1980, and it was registered with the copyright office (PAu-1-158-941). Have you purchased the book? If you haven’t and you are considering it, I would prefer that you would buy it directly from me, as I would be happy to... More > give you a personally autographed copy. Warm regards, Louise Cabral< Less
