Power Play

By H. R. Coursen

While working in a British library, Professor Harry Winston discovers a lost play by Shakespeare. In a version of detective story, he authenticates his finding and sits atop the academic pyramid. But like Icarus or Humpty Dumpty, he has a great fall. He runs afoul of the puritanical moral code of the nasty little college where he has taught for years. Will he decide to drag anyone with him in his downward journey? Has he mastered the tuck-and-roll technique well enough to survive? He wonders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 21, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456718060

H. R. Coursen

H R Coursen has written thirty novels. Howard Nemerov called Coursen’s After the War a “great story.”Of his The Lake, Nancy Grape says “A polished and urbane novel. Coursen is masterly at keeping the reader focused on the brightest balls he has tossed in the air.” Robert Taylor calls Coursen’s Moment of Truth “a stunning achievement.” John Cole says of Coursen’s Return to Archerland “Harry Potter and more! His adaptation, Five Plays of Euripides, has just appeared from JustWrite. His Contemporary Shakespeare was published recently by Peter ang. His thirty fourth book of poetry, Blues in the Night, has just appeared from Moonpie. His latest novel, The Werwolves, about a para-military group attempting to destroy the U.S. government appeared in the spring of 2010 from JustWrite. He is a graduate of Amherst, Wesleyan, and the University of Connecticut. He teaches Aviation History at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and Shakespeare at Southern New Hampshire University, and lectures on Shakespeare at Bowdoin College. He lives in Brunswick, Maine.

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© 2011 H. R. Coursen. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/16/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-1806-0 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-1807-7 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011900271

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Part One.

I. Middle Blanchard, England. Winter, 2008.

II. Middle Blanchard. Winter, 2008.

III. Middle Blanchard, England

IV. Aumerle (Continued)

V. Aumerle (Continued).

VI. Maine. Scholarly Details and Detritus.

Part Two.

I. Winter Cove, Maine and Montreal. The Present

II. Winter Cove, Maine

III. Winter Cove, Maine.

IV. Winter Cove, Maine.

V.

Other Books by H. R. Coursen

CRITICISM

Hamlet’s Mousetrap

Christian Ritual and Shakespearean Tragedy

The Leasing Out of England

Why Poetry?

A Jungian Approach to Shakespeare

Shakespeare on Television (with James Bulman)

Shakespearean Production as Interpretation

Watching Shakespeare on Television

Reading Shakespeare on Stage

Shakespeare: The Two Traditions

A Guide to ‘Macbeth’

Teaching Shakespeare with Film and Television

A Guide to ‘The Tempest’

Recent Shakespeare on Screen

Shakespeare Translated

Contemporary Shakespeare: Essays in Production

DRAMA

Richard II (New Kittredge)

The Second Part of Henry IV (Blackfriars)

Compton Hall

Ben and Julie

After the Play is Over

Euripides: 14 Plays

The Aeneid: A Dramatization

Iphigenia at Aulis and Four More by Euripides

Euripides: Five Lost Plays

The Iliad: A Dramatization

FICTION

After the War

The Outfielder

The Search for Archerland

Return to Archerland

The Golden Haze

Penelope

The Thirteen Greatest Love Songs

Ask For Me Tomorrow

The Lake

Archerland: The Changing of the Guard

Juna: Princess of Archerland

The Cleaving of Archerland

From Away

The Second Set of Prophecies

Moment of Truth

The Blind Prophet of Archerland

The End of Archerland

The Wilderness

And Less than Kind

Brute Neighbors

Country Matters

Storm Warnings

Hunter’s Moon

Even in Dreams

Dragons Live Forever

But in Ourselves

Ready on the Right

Death in Sevilla

Stay, Illusion!

The Werewolves

One More Chance

Full Circle

Contrary Winds

No Traveler Returns

POETRY

Storm in April

Lookout Point

Survivor

War Stories

Walking Away

Fears of the Night

Rewriting the Book

Hope Farm

Inside the Piano Bench

Winter Dreams

Rewinding the Reel

Songs and Sonnets

Five Minutes after ‘Mayday!’

Lament for the Players

Love Poem (Sort of)

Graves of the Poets

Recalling August

New and Collected Poems: 1966-1996

Poems from ‘The Metamorphoses’

History Lessons

Songs & Seasons

Winter Music

Mythos: Poems 1966-1999

Snapshots

Mirrors

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Another Thursday

Pagan Songs

Maine Seasons

Recall: Poems: 1967-2007

A World Elsewhere

The Golden Fleece

Evangeline: In Modern Verse

Blues in the Night

Who’s in a Name?

WRITING

As Up They Grew: The Autobiographical Essay

Shaping the Self: Autobiography as Art

Growing Up in Maine (editor)

When Life Is Young (editor)

Growing Up in Maine II (editor)

What critics have said about Coursen’s fiction.

Coursen is one of our best writers line by line. When he gets a structure, he’s a killer.

Barry Malzberg

We’re in the hands of a person who loves words. More than that, he loves the power of words to communicate, especially through stories. The main characters, Benjamin and Rose set out on a trip that sheds light on all aspects of the hero’s life, from the nightmares he brought home from Vietnam to his relationship with his father and a secret his father has guarded since World War II. It is a warm and inviting love story, a trip worth taking.

Nancy Grape on And Less than Kind

The scene between Hoeft and the Countess is a comic masterpiece.

Eugene Walter on Moment of Truth

This is the kind of book – intelligent, beautifully constructed and fascinating from beginning to end – that discerning readers are always hoping to discover but seldom do. This extraordinary book is not like any other I have ever read.

Robert Taylor on Moment of Truth.

An extraordinary job of catching what it was like during World War Two for the ballplayer.

Robert Creamer on The Outfielder.

"The Outfielder is warm and moving, but it doesn’t slip into sentimentality. The characters are wonderfully drawn and George Roger’s inner struggle is quite convincing."

Stephen Topping on The Outfielder.

"Everyone in The Outfielder comes achingly alive. Millicent is heartbreaking and for that reason the ending is so powerful."

Barry Malzberg on The Outfielder.

This book has beautifully evocative language. A larger consciousness works here, and it delights in an illumination of the world beyond the pages.

Jim Glenn Thatcher on Ask for Me Tomorrow.

A polished and urbane novel. Coursen is masterly at keeping the reader focused on the brightest balls he has tossed in the air.

Nancy Grape on The Lake.

A great story!

Howard Nemerov on After the War.

"Such good writing!

Gordon Clark on After the War.

Armed with only the cryptic runes of Killbeard, the former king, and a magic amulet, a young man sets out to free his land from its cruel overlords. Coursen’s lead character journeys through magical forests and icy wastes in a rite of passage not only for himself but for the people he is destined to rule. Libraries seeking to add to their holdings of Christian fantasy should consider this gracefully told allegory, which is suitable for both young adult and adult readers.

Library Journal on The Search for Archerland.

Coursen’s book is Potter and more! A free-flowing tale of good and evil, heroes, heroines, villains, monsters and magic, this book has all the magic, all of the sinister devices of darkness and the bright lights of virtue that give such fables their profound capacity to carry us off to another world. And Coursen’s book has a language you won’t hear in Harry Potter’s company. It pulses with poetry. You make an agreement with these kinds of books. You give yourself to the writer and let him take you where he will. Coursen is a splendid guide.

John N. Cole on Return to Archerland.

"Storm Warnings is a page-turner from start to finish. It reads like an updating of George Orwell’s unsettling novel, 1984. Coursen does a superb job presenting unsavory characters, such as Cyrod the prison camp interrogator. Storm Warnings is a well-written and fascinating book."

Lloyd Ferriss on Storm Warnings.

"You’ll need no compass, no notches on trees to guide you to the theme of this novel. Coursen has created a bare-knuckled assault on the policies and practices of George W. Bush. And that theme whirls through The Wilderness in furious prose. And while the dominant notes sounded throughout this novel are political, there are lyrical passages that make points worth savoring."

Nancy Grape on The Wilderness.

Part One.

I. Middle Blanchard, England. Winter, 2008.

I looked up quickly to see whether anyone was looking at me.

No. The others nearby were head down under their umbrellas of light, flaking dandruff and dead skin down on books, some tapping on small computers, others taking notes. Some of us still took notes, having been conditioned to the process long before laptops were a gleam in the eye of Microsoft and when our great works were pounded out on ancient Royals that dinged at the end of a carriage ride.

I stared again at the heavy black print of the manuscript in front of me. It was a segment in a huge folio that smelled enticingly of dust and rotted leather. Miscellanie 1596.

I could put a Scholar’s Hold on it. That meant that I would have exclusive access to the book for the next two weeks. But I did not trust anyone here. I was an American using this British library, or Repository as it was officially named, after a lot of time-consuming red tape and intercession on my behalf from a powerful but reluctant British colleague.

I did not believe that a Scholar’s Hold would be a secret for more than an hour. It signaled that I had found something significant.

And I had.

I was not popular right now with the British academic establishment, particularly the vast Shakespeare wing of that august group. It functions like a medieval guild. And they tend to hate Americans. We make so much money. Their only revenge occurs in the savage reviews they write of our books.

Recently, a portrait had been discovered after years in the possession of the Cobbe family of Dublin. Experts leaped in to claim that it was Shakespeare! They projected their Shakespeare on to the portrait, which seemed to me to depict the coldest blooded of aristocrats. But we see what we want to see.

His face is open and alive, with a rosy, rather sweet expression, perhaps suggestive of modesty. There is nothing superior or haughty in the subject, which one might well expect in a face set off by such rich clothing. It is the face of a good listener, as well as of someone who exercised a natural restraint, gushed the Shakespeare Centre of Stratford on Avon. It was exhibiting the portrait to the many willing to line up and pay a couple of quid for a view of this model citizen.

My own response appeared in the irreverent Shax Monthly, and was not appreciated by the powers that be.

They say I am some Stratford glover’s son,

an insult that would call for blood were I

alive to challenge it. Yes, I would die

rather than see my heraldry torn down

like this. A rosy glow? Call it the wine –

a good claret brought by a serving man

in livery – my colors. Oh yes, I can

call many to wait on me, for they are mine,

and starving beggars otherwise. Restraint?

A listener? I heard a sneer. My sword

leaped forth and flashed across without a word

through candlelight, and he fell down in a faint.

My modesty pulled back a further thrust.

I may be dust, and not of coral made,

but killing cowards my moral code forbade.

Such flesh is no place for my blade to rust.

Yes, although I did not say so, the portrait reminded me of myself, not Shakespeare. But people with vested interests tend not to reward those who mock them. Those sixteen lines explained why I had had difficulty in gaining a readership here at the Repository and why – as I perceived it – I was viewed with suspicion as I entered and exited the reading room and all the time in between. Damned Americans appreciate nothing of our culture and have even tried to hijack Shakespeare studies. In the latter instance we have done a pretty good job, with people like Kittredge, Hardison, Schoenbaum, Barber, Bevington, et al on our side of the pond. Oh yeah, Stephen Greenblatt too.

I was about to return the folio that had been delivered to me. I’d asked for Tottel’s Miscellany, aka Songes and Sonnettes, knowing that the Repository had the 1586 edition of that popular collection of poetry. I wanted to check out an allusion in The Rape of Lucrece that supposedly comes from the Miscellany. What I got from Emily, the elderly assistant librarian who bent beneath her blue hair with grim industry as she carried books to various scholars in the reading room, was a volume called Misellanie, with the date 1596 on the title page. Not what I wanted at all. Another of those annoying errors that the ignorant make and that we scholars must endure.

I did, though, take a peek inside.

And, very soon, I was glancing around the reading room to see whether anyone was looking at me. I thought that I must be emitting signals of great excitement and shooting flares into the billions of motes above the golden globes of light that invaded the gloom like oases of erudition. But no eyes looked back at mine. The only sounds were the click of personal computers, the snick of a dry page as it turned, the coughing of a dry throat. The reading room