Books: Beatrice and Benedick
Exclusive interview with author Marina Fiorato and a review of her new novel based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing
Rating: 3 stars
Review By Gabrielle Pantera
“I’ve had the idea in my head since I studied Much Ado About Nothing at school,” says Beatrice and Benedick author Marina Fiorato. “We would take turns as a class to read the various parts, and it was my turn to play Beatrice when she says to Benedick, I know you of old. Then, later in the text, Beatrice says that Benedick once won her heart ‘with false dice.’ Aha, I thought, they didn’t just meet. They had a love affair. And that was the basis of the book, the story of that first, unsuccessful relationship, how they parted, and what brought them back together again.”
Beatrice and Benedick is a fun story about Shakespeare’s ultimate couple at odds. Plato once wrote in The Republic, “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” That seems true of Beatrice and Benedick. Fiorato writing is so witty and engaging at the beginning it seems an extension of Shakespeare’s play. Readers may prefer she had kept the focus on Much Ado rather than bring elements from other of the Bard’s plays into her story, which seem a distraction. Surprisingly not a distraction, Fiorato raises an unexpected question… Was Shakespeare actually Italian?
Fiorato’s novel starts with the story of how Beatrice and Benedick originally met and why they parted. Beatrice meets Benedick, a young soldier working for a lord from Spain, while staying in Sicily with her uncle. Due to a misunderstanding they part at odds. Benedick sails to England with the ill-fated Spanish Armada. Beatrice returns to her home in the North and an unwanted betrothal. Benedick fights for his life on ship. Beatrice fights an arranged marriage. When the two meet again there’s animosity and tension, but there is still a spark between the two.
Fiorato, who studied Shakespeare at Oxford University, says she relied a great deal on libraries for her research. “I live about ten minutes from the British Library, and the same distance from the British Museum where there is a First Folio,” says Fiorato. “We are very lucky in the UK to have some truly fantastic libraries. I’ve also in my researches used the Bodleian Library. And of course, there is a specialist Shakespeare Collection at Stratford-upon-Avon.”
Fiorato traveled to Sicily during her research. “I’d never been there prior to the writing of this book. As someone with Northern Italian heritage [Fiorato’s father is from Venice] I wasn’t sure what to expect from somewhere so far south. But, the Sicilians were absolutely lovely and couldn’t have been more helpful. I spent time in Taormina, Syracuse, Messina and Palermo, and had a wonderful time. One highlight was being taken up to the summit of Mount Etna by a local guide, accompanied by his tame foxes.”
Beatrice and Benedick is Fiorato’s sixth book. Her entire opus is related to the Italian Renaissance, from The Botticelli Secret, set in Florence in the 1480s, to Daughter of Siena, set in Siena in the 1720s. Her book The Glassblower of Murano is about the famous artisans of Venice.
The Botticelli Secret won the Big Read award as one of the most borrowed books in London libraries. The Madonna of the Almonds was nominated for the Prince Award for Romantic Literature. Daughter of Siena was nominated for Romantic Novel of the Year at the Romantic Novelists Association awards in 2011. Beatrice and Benedick received the same nomination in 2015.
Fiorato spoke about the book at the Stratford-upon-Avon Book Festival, where the Royal Shakespeare Company preformed Much Ado about Nothing. “It was pretty special to talk about the characters in Shakespeare’s birthplace and then see a company as prestigious as the Royal Shakespeare Company performing straight afterward,” says Fiorato. “Because the play was being staged by the traveling company, there was a wooden thrust stage and a small cast in Tudor costume in the grounds of a stunning English castle garden, just as the play would have first been performed.”
Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato. Hardcover: 448 pages, Publisher: St. Martin’s Press; First Edition edition (December 8, 2015). Language: English, ISBN: 9781250077134 $27.99
