​You may have seen some news headlines about a fracas over in the UK over the institutional bias of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC. Top BBC executives have resigned over allegations of bias in the news department. These documented examples of agenda-driven journalism indicate an abandonment of basic journalistic standards.
     Well, I’m here to say that something exceedingly strange and disappointing is going on in BBC Arts as well. Since I live in Canada, I don’t have access to all BBC channels, but I happened to watch an episode of the three-part docu-drama Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius (2023) when it aired on our local Knowledge Network Channel. So I’m late to this party, but I want to clutch my pearls anyway. 
    ​​   Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius is technically a documentary, or I suppose we could call it info-tainment--cultural education made entertaining and accessible for people who might not have much of a grounding in English history or literature. At least I think that must be the intended audience, judging by the elementary History 101 stuff the talking heads give us. The talking head segments are interspersed with re-enactments of Shakespeare’s life and times. The actor who plays Shakespeare elbows his way through the mucky, ribald, dangerous, streets of London with a helpful voice-over: “He was living at a time where everybody was just swimming in muck, sex, and you know, violence”.
    But keeping things simple is no excuse for the errors and the opinions dressed up as facts that are presented here. The same BBC that green-lit this production also gave us, for example, the radio program In Our Times, in which distinguished academics discussed all aspects of British and International culture. No institution in the world has more resources to draw on for a compelling and accurate portrait of Shakespeare than the BBC. I'm not saying this to sneer at the credentials of the diverse panel of "historians, actors and experts" who are the Shakespeare experts used in this docu-drama. I am self-taught myself and only recently acquired a Master's Degree (by research) in English Literature. But it's the BBC's responsibility to use basic research skills and fact check any of the assertions their talking heads make.

   Boy, what a slog. Frankly, I skimmed through most of this book. I had assumed that The Duke of Clarence was an historical novel but as it turns out, it’s a gothic novel set in England and France in the 15th century. Gothic novels aren’t my thing. I just can’t get excited about abducted and immured heroines, evil priests, secret passages, dastardly noblemen, and garrulous servants. So I confess—I didn’t catch every little detail explaining how and why our nobly-born hero Edgar De Montford ended up being mislaid and becoming a foundling.
    But the never-ending backstories with their thwarted love affairs and general perfidy--I mean, if you were a noblewoman unjustly immured in a tower for sixteen years and out of nowhere, two different people find you—coincidentally on the same night—and they asked you, Oh my god, what happened? Who put you here? would you give them a brief precis as you were running through the door to freedom, and maybe get into the details later after you've had a hot bath and a good meal? Or would you spend hours telling them the whole story from the beginning, recalling entire conversations and your every gesture with it? I’d be high-tailing it out of there. 
     As mediocre as this book is, I will say in justice to this authoress, and in contrast with Eliza Kirkham Mathews' youthful effort The Phantom, the backstories at least all tie together and relate to the central mystery of the story.

    Rebecca is one of 22 novels that may—or may not—have been written by the author of the 1809 novel The Woman of Colour, a book which has attracted a lot of academic interest in recent years. I’ve been entertaining myself by reading these novels to see if I can find similarities to The Woman of Colour.
   Rebecca, published in 1799, is one of the earliest in this chain of novels which stretches from 1795, with the historical novel The Duke of Clarence, to 1817 and The Revealer of Secrets. One similarity worth noting is that the father of Olivia Fairfield in The Woman of Colour, and the father of Rebecca Elton in this novel, both tell their daughters who they should marry in their last will and testament.
    I have a lot to say about Rebecca, even though it is a minor, third-rate novel. It earned only a brief literary snort from the London Review, which quoted a bit of dialogue: “Ah, Rebecca! How shall I part with you?” to which the reviewer answered: “Without a sigh!”
   Yes, the dialogue is often clichéd (and exceedingly florid to our modern tastes) and the narration is stilted. In that respect, we can contrast this authoress with Jane Austen. We can compare the themes and tropes of other novels of this era, and at some point, I’ll come back to it to discuss more similarities to The Woman of Colour, but not quite yet...

​    Substance and Shadow opens with a genteel lady watching a storm blow in to the shore at Brighton, then a fashionable watering place patronized by the Prince of Wales. Mrs. Elwyn is amused by the rhapsodies of another young lady gamboling along on the beach, exclaiming over the tremendous crashing of the waves. We have here the same dichotomy Jane Austen used in Sense and Sensibility. Clara Elwyn “knew that romance and enthusiasm were the leading features of the day, and that those feelings were nurtured and indulged, at the hazard of running counter to all the forms and usages of society, and the good old way in which she had been taught to walk.”
    But Mrs. Elwyn is concerned because she knows that a fisherman and his wife had gone out to sea that morning, and have not returned. The following morning brings the sad news that they are drowned, and Mrs. Elwyn benevolently visits the humble cottage where their twin infant daughters are being cared for by a neighbor woman. The babies will now become the responsibility of the parish and their prospects are bleak. Suddenly, the excitable young lady, also drawn to the news of the catastrophe, swoops in and carries off one of the babies. Mrs. Elwyn decides to give a home to the other. It will give her someone to care for, since she is childless and her husband is polite but remote and often absent...