William Shakespeare’s fascination with the dark side of human nature has always had a big influence on me, ever since my student years when I first began to get to know his works. He created some of the most enduring monsters in literature and today, whenever I am planning a villain for a new novel, I am invariably drawn - as I know are countless of my fellow crime writers - to his plays.
His vast canon of vivid, rounded, intensely human personifications of evil are driven by greed, lust, prejudice, sometimes plain sadism. Just as villains are today.
King Lear provides us with the eye-gouging monster Cornwall, the opportunist Edmund, and the tragic king’s hard-arsed daughters, Goneril and Regan (and although we feel pity for Lear himself, he’s not exactly Mr Nice Guy, either). Nor is Richard II (murdering his uncle) or Richard III (committing infanticide on his nephews).
Hamlet gave us Claudius, the stepfather from hell; while Othello’s Iago, with his ferocious intellect and charisma, is a kind of Elizabethan Hannibal Lecter. The name of the wickedly manipulative Lady Macbeth has become synonymous with female evil.
Shakespeare’s bloodiest play of all, Titus Andronicus, has the Elizabethan Bonnie and Clydes, Tamora and Aron - only they’re somehow even nastier.
In many ways, though, Shakespeare’s scariest monster of all is Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, because he so very human. I was co-producer of the 2004 film, with Al Pacino playing the villain. I know of no other courtroom drama that is so gripping. Antonio, having defaulted on his debt to the despised moneylender, is fighting for his life. Shylock, driven by long, deep-rooted hatred of him, insists on his right to cut his pound of flesh from the man’s body.
So powerful is the writing that every time I read or see it, I’m left with white knuckles, convinced that this time Shylock is going to do it! The play is, as we say so often of great thrillers, unputdownable, a complete page-turner.
The early dramatists knew a thing or two about page-turners - or at least, writing hooks. The five-act structure came out of necessity - with rowdy audiences tending to drink heavily, needing regular “comfort” breaks, and the cast members, often having to shout to be heard, needing a rest. The writers had to ensure the audience came back after each break, just as three centuries later, when the likes of Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were writing serialised fiction and had to end on a cliffhanger each time, to bring back readers to the next week’s issue.
Literary snobs have always viewed crime fiction as some kind of ghetto genre, not worthy of serious consideration. Back in Shakespeare’s time if you were a writer, and wanted to reach as many people as possible, plays were the only option. During his lifetime, two-thirds of the population were illiterate - and for those who could read there were few books that were accessible.
Although novels, such as Cervantes’s Don Quixote, were published during Shakespeare’s lifetime, it was not really until the Victorian era that reading became commonplace. And it was not until 1935, when Allen Lane began publishing the first Penguin paperbacks, that quality books finally became affordable to the masses.
The 18th and 19th centuries saw a steady fall in the number of playwrights and instead, a rise in numbers of novelists. I believe if Shakespeare were writing today, with his genius for characters and his skill at plotting, he would be writing novels - maybe some television miniseries and the occasional movie script. All of these have a far bigger potential “reach” today than plays.
With more than 50 per cent of all his plays having a courtroom scene or murder, I believe many of his books would land on the crime shelves of WH Smith and other booksellers across the UK and the globe - alongside, if they were writing now, the latest crime fiction from Dickens, Dostoevsky and Sophocles.
I can already hear the groans of the literary establishment, scratching their beards and curling their toes in their Birkenstocks. Literary snobs have always viewed crime fiction as some kind of ghetto genre, not worthy of serious consideration.
In 2009, John Banville told a shocked Harrogate crime festival audience that he could only write 100 words a day as himself; but could manage a couple of thousand under his crime pseudonym Benjamin Black.
In 2014, Isabel Allende said she wrote her thriller Ripper as “a joke” and that she is “not a fan” of mysteries.
Some years ago, when asked why crime thrillers never featured on the shortlists, one of the judges of Britain’s leading “literary” prize said: “Hell will freeze over before a crime novel wins the Booker prize.”
Yet - whether authors like it or not - a lot of crime novels could sit proudly next to “literary” books on any prize list. Many have before - Ian McEwan’s brilliant The Comfort Of Strangers was shortlisted for the Booker in 1981, as was Brian Moore’s Lies of Silence in 1990 and Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 in 2008.
So who defines what crime fiction is - the author, the publisher or the content?
Recently the Crime Writers’ Association sent out a questionnaire asking its members what they thought Shakespeare would be writing today. Author Sarah Hilary, who won the Theakstons Old Peculier crime novel of the year award in 2015, said Shakespeare would specialise in psychological thrillers - seasoned with some delicious political satire. Novelist Julia Crouch called Hamlet “the first great psychological thriller”.
Author of the Frances Doughty mysteries, Linda Stratmann concurred: “Shakespeare really understood human nature, especially its darker side - he wrote about love and hate, jealousy and greed, injured pride and revenge, all the themes that lead to crime. When we watch a Shakespeare play we recognise ourselves.”
So if Shakespeare was 21st century novelist, would he see his latest on literary prize shortlists or in a buy-one-get-one-free slot in WH Smith? Would he even have a choice?
In his own time, he was still sneered at, by varsity educated writers such Robert Greene - much the same as the snobs who sneer at genre fiction today. Today’s crime and thriller writers are the biggest selling group of authors in the world, of any genre. I believe it is because these writers - like Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Ruth Rendell, PD James, Michael Connelly and so many others - tackle the most important issues of our times while making them accessible to everyone. Much like Shakespeare: he produced brilliant, classy potboilers, with high body counts. I rest my case...
— Guardian News & Media Ltd.
