The Player's Boy1953
A Novel
by Bryher
James Sands anticipates a glorious career as apprentice to an Elizabethan theater troupe. He plays Bellario in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, and in this cherished role, experiences the fusion of his passion and his art. But when Sands' masters die, the young player loses his home and his job, and must fight to maintain his loyalty in an atmosphere of plague, Puritanism, and political unrest. After one small act of kindness threatens to engulf Sands in violence, the hope of his former life spirals into a horror that contemporary readers will find disturbingly familiar.
"An English novelist and patron of artists such as H.D., Bryher (Winifred Ellerman, 1894-1983) first published this beautifully realized story of a young Elizabethan actor's apprentice in 1953. After the death of...