SHOCK! HORROR! Shakespeare really did write the works ascribed to him. But how could a relatively poor, ignorant provincial lad have written such masterpieces? How did he acquire the knowledge implicit in his plays - the details of historical events, tales of foreign countries? How did he spend his time in the so-called lost years ? This book attempts to provide in fictional form answers to these questions and introduces the reader to some of the extraordinary characters the budding playwright would have encountered, particularly Thomas James, who in later years developed a reputation as the cleverest man in England after his appointment as the first librarian to the Bodleian Library in Oxford Leslie Rocker has been a writer of one kind or another all his life - journalist, magazine editor, poet, playwright. He has only recently begun writing novels, but this book has been in gestation since his first play, The Death of Christopher Marlowe was produced in London in the 1960s.