Off with His Head

Off with His Head is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the nineteenth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn. It was first published in the USA (by Little, Brown of Boston) in 1956, under the title Death of a Fool, and in the UK (by Collins) in 1957.

Set in the freezing, snowbound Winter of a small English village, Mardian (based on the Kent village of Birling, where Marsh had recently stayed with her old friends, the Rhodes family), the plot concerns the annual performance in the courtyard of the local crumbling castle of an historic folkloric ritual, "The Dance of the Five Sons", containing elements of Morris dancing, sword dance and Mummers play. This fictional version of the English Guiser/Mummers play, performed on "Sword Wednesday" of the Winter Solstice, includes carefully detailed characters: "The Fool", "Crack" The Hobbyhorse and the half-man/half-woman "Betty". Marsh is clearly fascinated by the idea, put forward in the novel by her detective, Roderick Alleyn, that "The Dance of the Five Sons" (traditionally performed by the local blacksmith and his sons, and during which the murder is committed) is a folkloric blueprint or ur-text for Shakespeare's King Lear, a play Marsh greatly admired and herself directed in New Zealand in 1956.

While sitting comfortably within the "classic puzzle whodunit" form of which Ngaio Marsh was so outstanding an exponent, the novel is highly unusual in its subject matter: England's ancient folkloric rituals in a modern and fast-changing world.