The Final Act Of Mr Shakespeare
On sale
4th November 2010
Price: £8.99
In the spring of 1613 Mr William Shakespeare, a gentleman farmer in Warwickshire, returns to London. It is a ceremonial visit; he has no further theatrical ambitions. But the city is still reeling from the terrorist panic of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and fate soon forces him to take up his pen again. It was never possible to write about Henry VII while his granddaughter Elizabeth was Queen, but now he must. It is a perilous enterprise: King James I’s spies are everywhere.
There is no evidence that Shakespeare wrote Henry VII, but in a compelling piece of historical recreation, Robert Winder asks: what if he did? And after 400 years, he gives us a unique world première – a brand-new, full-length Shakespeare play, incorporated brilliantly into this extraordinary novel.
THE FINAL ACT OF MR SHAKESPEARE is an exhilarating portrait of England’s greatest author – not in love but raging against the dying of the light. It is an outrageous tour de force of theatrical imagination, full of the spirit of the Bard.
There is no evidence that Shakespeare wrote Henry VII, but in a compelling piece of historical recreation, Robert Winder asks: what if he did? And after 400 years, he gives us a unique world première – a brand-new, full-length Shakespeare play, incorporated brilliantly into this extraordinary novel.
THE FINAL ACT OF MR SHAKESPEARE is an exhilarating portrait of England’s greatest author – not in love but raging against the dying of the light. It is an outrageous tour de force of theatrical imagination, full of the spirit of the Bard.
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Reviews
** 'Hugely entertaining . . . Winder may have just redefined literary chutzpah
** 'Robert Winder is a good writer, and THE FINAL ACT OF MR SHAKESPEARE is an intelligent, entertaining and skilfully constructed book . . . a well-spun historical yarn
** 'It's an audacious author who dares to emulate Shakespeare. But Robert Winder pulls it off with aplomb . . . (A) sophisticated romp . . . the book's languid humour and shrewd allusions to the Collected Works make this a hugely enjoyable read
A carefully crafted novel . . . Winder steers an artful middle course between Charles Nicholl's tales of Marlowe in the underworld on one hand and AS Byatt's POSSESSIN on the other. Winder rarely puts a foot wrong in this tightly controlled narrative