Part One of this original work of fiction relates how two young Elizabethan scholars, Kate Harrison, M.A., Cambridge and Mark Holdaway, M.A., Oxford, learn about the Marlowe-Shakespeare creation and begin an eventful and increasingly dangerous search for the lost play in contemporary London. Part Two visualizes Shakespeare's developmental years in 16th-century Stratford and his considerable travels during young adulthood. The narrative concludes with Will's initial adventures in London where he wrote, acted, established his presence and then partnered on a new play with Christopher Marlowe in the year before Marlowe's murder. Until now, little is known about William Shakespeare's early adulthood. The absence of information on his boyhood is equally sparse. This novel reveals those lost years. It describes the preternaturally gifted person he was and details the myriad influences that stimulated him into becoming an unmatched literary genius. Similarly, Christopher Marlowe's nurturing years in Canterbury are largely a mystery. Like Shakespeare, he came from modest beginnings and attended grammar school. Unlike Shakespeare, he enjoyed the additional privileges of education in an elite secondary school before going up to Cambridge University where he earned two degrees. The advanced scholarship opportunities make Marlowe's formative years and his later poetic and dramatic achievements less of a conundrum. When they first met, Marlowe was the more innovative writer of the two. Seeing Marlowe's production of Tamburlaine in blank verse irrevocably changed the playwriting style of many period writers, including Shakespeare. Marlowe also positively influenced the texts of several inceptive Shakespeare plays. The friendship deepened to the point that they co-wrote a play and brought it to near fruition. This novel discloses the subject and scope of their masterpiece. Like many Elizabethan works, the Marlowe-Shakespeare play was tragically lost and never performed. Then, over four-hundred years later, in Part Three of the book, the search for the lost play by Kate Harrison and Mark Holdaway intensified, became competitive, then turbulent and finally deadly. 'And thereby hangs a tale.'
About the Author: After long stints with IBM and Westinghouse, Richard J. Noyes was Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Engineering Study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Noyes is now a business consultant for public and private sector organizations. Also by Richard Noyes: WWII Soldier Flier Prisoner Partisan: Missing in Action and Presumed Dead. Two young Americans, an infantryman and a pilot, face hellish action fighting Nazis across North Africa and Europe. They find deep love with two battlefield nurses before joining with Polish partisans to battle the Gestapo and SS, while rescuing Auschwitz escapees, 290 pages, Amazon. By Richard Noyes and co-author Pamela J. Robertson: Larceny of Love, a contemporary novel of action, love, danger and emotion. Trace the interwoven careers of three men in jeopardy and the accomplished women in their lives, plus compelling inside looks at cutthroat technology, big-time sports and Machiavellian Hollywood deals, 280 pages, Amazon. By Noyes and Robertson: Guts in the Clutch: 77 Legendary Triumphs, Heartbreaks and Wild Finishes in 12 Sports, Illustrated, 329 pages, Amazon, with a Foreword by Drew Olson of ESPN and Past President of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Read stories of talent, passion and the human spirit, exemplified by the coach who played in the goal for the first time and won a Stanley Cup. By Richard Noyes: Charles Dickens' American Reading Tour of 1867-1868, Amazon, a brief but satisfying account relating how friendships with famous American authors were renewed, as Dickens performed a series of widely acclaimed readings in American cities. Dickens' readers and others will find this concise account to be informative, often amusing and occasionally touching.