Arthur Philips  English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare
(1564 - 1616) ponders his next work. (Stock Montage / Getty
Images / May 1, 2011)  The Tragedy of Arthur  A Novel  Arthur
Phillips   Random House: 368 pp., $26  First, the MacGuffin:
Arthur Phillips' fifth novel, "The Tragedy of Arthur," is built
around a full-length, five-act Shakespeare play, "The Most
Excellent and Tragical Historie of Arthur, King of Britain,"
composed (or, in the conceit of the novel, "discovered") by
Phillips himself. It's a bravura strategy, relying on his
ability to inhabit the rhythms, "the feeling of Shakespeare …
it's like a fingerprint." Although I'm not much of a
Shakespearean, I'd say Phillips pulls it off. But the real
triumph of this dizzyingly self-reflective novel is that it
doesn't matter that the Shakespeare (faux or actual) is almost
entirely beside the point. What's essential, rather, is the saga
that surrounds it, a family drama involving (yes) Arthur
Phillips, who both is and isn't the author of this book.