BBC Books The Shakespeare Notebooks A Collection of Short Stories

Editor	Justin Richards
Published	2014

Synopsis: Many people know about William Shakespeare's famous encounter with the Doctor at the Globe Theatre in 1599. But what few people know (though many have suspected) is that it was not the first time they met.

• A Review by Noe Geric

A Review by Noe Geric 21/3/20

As it is well known, the tenth Doctor and Martha met Shakespeare when he was facing a Carionnite invasion. The famous Will also appears in The Chase and is mentioned many times in the show. But what hasn't been said is that most of his works have been inspired by the Doctor. And that's across this collection of Play/Poem/Stories that the Doctor's influence on Shakespeare is shown.

The whole book itself is presented as a real document. The Notebook we're reading is supposed to be a real artefact (of course, the Doctor Who logo is slapped on the cover). That's a clever and funny idea, but it doesn't feel right most of the time...

The book begins with two alternate versions of a Shakespeare play, nothing really special. It's just here to '' convince '' the reader that this book was written by Will himself. As I'm not familiar with his work, I wasn't really interested in these two.

Then we've got The True Tragedy of MacBeth. This is the first full story of the book where we see the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe meeting MacBeth. The story is written as a play and the whole thing is quite nice. We visit every part of the play, and the characterization of the regulars is good, but the story itself isn't so incredible. Yes it's fun, but there's nothing really special.

Then there's another play: Cymbeline, where the eleventh Doctor meets the Skarasen, and I must admit I didn't get what the story wanted to say. This was just an excuse to put a Doctor Who monster in a story.

Diary Extract, a traditional short story, see the fifth Doctor in a really uninteresting and dull story. Only some lines save it, but there's no point in there except, again, make the book feel more ''in-universe''.

Then come The Dream, and that's when the fanwank feast began: the first Doctor meet the Sontarans and a Rutan on Vortis, there's a cameo of the Menoptera and the Zarbi, and all this is a short sequel to Horror of Fang Rock.

And it's actually one of my favorites. The Sontarans are trying to make a play of the Fang Rock episode, but they're too stupid to do it. The Doctor only appears briefly, the Rutan is just here to give the story a sort of conclusion, and all this is quite fun.

The Dream is probably the first story of that book that deserves a look. But the Vortis/Menoptera/Zarbi thing is useless, as they don't do anything in the play.

After a short poem about the War Doctor, the eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory are meeting Romeo and Juliet. And the whole thing looks like one of the worst fanfictions you find on the internet. When your favorite TV characters die and you decide to write a short fanfiction to explain how they survived and then make a whole happy ending. That's exactly what this story is about: Romeo and Juliet survive, and everybody is happy at the end.

And, again, to justify that this is a Doctor Who book, we've got the Autons, the Zygons, a Sontaran clone and a Teselecta.

We jump to Tempest - A Work in Progress, and that one is really good. The story is written like Shakespeare's notes on the play The Tempest, but the story is mixed with the ideas of Blink, where the tenth Doctor talks to Shakespeare through a note from the future he wrote in the past. Well... as I said, like in Blink. But the whole thing is really nice.

Then, we come to a short alternate version of a play: Exit, by Another Means is nothing incredible.

The Winter's Tale where the eleventh Doctor try to find weeping angels: this one is funny.

Antony and Cleopatra with the Mara: Just useless

Troilus and Cressida: Some clever lines, but the story itself isn't really incredible.

Pericles: really awful. A story with Romana, and nothing really happens.

Coriolanus: A sequel to The Androids of Tara, but even worse.

And then we come to something really good: Master Faustus. A play where the Master and Marlowe are the main characters. Something really nice, an homage to Marlowe himself. It's not incredible, but it's very touching.

Then there's a collection of sonnets, and that's fun. Reading sonnets about Doctor Who is a good experience, and these ones are real Shakespeare's sonnets but with Doctor Who elements included. A good idea!

As You Like It, a play with the sixth Doctor and Peri, is truly awful as nothing really happen.

Then Double Falsehood, one of the most clever things in the book. I don't want to say to much about this one, as it is great fun.

Hamlet is the next one, nothing really incredible here, just a mention of the Fendahl and the fourth Doctor appearing, but that's all...

Timon of Athens sees Timon trying to fight the Axons. The Doctor doesn't appear, but the story is enjoyable.

Hamlet's Soliloquy is a nice little addition, where the fourth Doctor is helping William with the writing of Hamlet.

The Academic Notes are another experimental format, but I won't spoil it, as it is really one of the best of the bunch. Even if the end is a bit weird, the other parts turn what would've been another dull examination of Shakespeare's work into a clever story.

Ye Unearthly Child is just a retelling of the show first episode but as a play.

And the Appendix is a short story; fun, but not the idea of the century.

That's where the book end, and it was a little deceptive. The idea of it being a compilation of Will Shakespeare's works with the Doctor in it is good. But I was a bit uncomfortable with Shakespearean language, as the book is immitating his style, so I was a bit lost with some words. Most of the stories are just here to make the book feel real, but there are some little additions that truly deserve a look.

Tempest, Double Falsehood and the Academic Notes are three brilliant experiments, with a different style of writing, and they clearly work. But the use of fanwank is clearly useless. When the girl in Cymbeline turns into the Skarasen, it was really weird and leads to nothing. Coriolanus is the sort of sequel nobody wanted, and Pericles is probably the most boring thing I've ever read.

I didn't know most of these plays. Even if most of them were really boring (as they're told here), I really wanted to know more and did some research on the internet to find out aboutthem.

This is a nice introduction to Shakespeare's work but a little deceptive if, like me, the reader wants new shorts stories about Doctor Who.

Overall, it was a nice idea, even if it wasn't exactly perfect: 7/10