License to Quill: A Novel of Shakespeare & Marlowe

by Jacopo della Quercia

Overview

License to Quill is a page-turning James Bond-esque spy thriller starring William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe during history's real life Gunpowder Plot. The story follows the fascinating golden age of English espionage, the tumultuous cold war gripping post-Reformation Europe, the cloak-and-dagger politics of Shakespeare's England, and lastly, the mysterious origins of the Bard's most haunting play: Macbeth. You won't want to miss this fast-paced historical retelling!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250059659
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/15/2015
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA is the author of The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, a scholar with the New York Council for the Humanities, and a history writer who has authored more than 100 articles for the comedy website Cracked.com. His work has been featured in the New York Times bestseller You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News, BBC America, CNN Money, The Huffington Post, Reader's Digest, Slate, Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, Playboy's The Smoking Jacket, WAMC's "The Roundtable," and Princeton University's Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America, among others.

Editorial Reviews

10/12/2015
Della Quercia, who successfully blended steampunk and humor in The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy (2014), falls short of that standard in this mildly amusing Tudor historical, in which Thomas Walsingham, an intelligence operative in the service of Elizabeth I, stages Christopher Marlowe’s murder in 1593 to give his agent the chance for a peaceful retirement. The man who administers the supposedly fatal stab wound turns out to be William Shakespeare. In 1604, Guy Fawkes, “a man of many faces,” asks Shakespeare to write a “tragedy about the abuse of power” set in Scotland, a politically delicate request. The playwright reports the request to Walsingham, who asks him to go along with Fawkes’s scheme. The conceit has possibilities, but della Quercia overeggs the pudding by making his hero a 17th-century James Bond. Walsingham, who’s referred to as W, has an attractive assistant named Miss Penny. Shakespeare becomes a member of the Ordnance Office, thus a “Double-O” operative. Many readers will wish for more subtlety. Agent: Sara Crowe, Harvey Klinger. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for License to Quill:

"della Quercia...turns the Gunpowder Plot into a stage for Will Shakespeare to assume the role of a 17th-century James Bond. The premise is simple: Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are drawn into Guy Fawkes' revolutionary schemes...Add bull-baiting, human sacrifice, gruesome executions, and an epic London street battle, and what results is an erudite tour de force." - Kirkus Reviews

“Jacopo is an insight machine. His mind contains museums of fascinating history, and his writing never fails to change the way you look at the world around you.” —Jack O'Brien, Founder, Editor in Chief and General Manager of Cracked.com, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy

“High concept and high adventure collide in a dizzying and thoroughly riveting adventure. Insanely entertaining.” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of CODE ZERO, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy

“A cleverly composed and daring steampunk adventure.” —G.D. Falksen, author and historian, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy

“Amazing…. skillfully weaves together one of the best reads of the year as he combines "real" history with his vivid and somewhat off-beat imagination. I know of no one else who has merged Martians, speeding blimps, comets, mysterious pocket watches, accurate historical references and international intrigue into one awesome and unique read! Believe it or Not!” —Tim O'Brien, VP Communications, Ripley's Believe It or Not! on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy

“With the sweep and scope of a Jules Verne adventure, The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy not only charts its own fantastic course through a dizzying alternate history of the United States presidency—it takes on literary history itself, turning anachronism into action, politics into pop, and a handful of America’s Commanders-in-Chief into the stuff of potent yet poignantly humanized myth. If you think Honest Abe and his brethren have been resurrected to death (so to speak), think again; Jacopo della Quercia has brought the speculative presidential yarn to another level.” —Jason Heller, Hugo Award-Winning author of Taft 2012, on The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy

From the Publisher

2015-10-08
Once more into the breech with quirky historical fiction: della Quercia (The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, 2014) turns the Gunpowder Plot into a stage for Will Shakespeare to assume the role of a 17th-century James Bond. The premise is simple: Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are drawn into Guy Fawkes' revolutionary schemes. With Spanish-English-Ottoman conspiracies and Roman Catholic attempts to subvert Protestant expansionism, brilliant young Marlowe becomes the Venetian eyes and ears of Sir Thomas Walsingham, the realm's spymaster. In London, Guy Fawkes persuades—threatens?—Will into writing a special play. Opening night will ignite a rebellious spark when Double, double, toile and trouble is declaimed, a line somehow related to "cunning folk" (Celtic witches) Fawkes' conspirators have recruited into their rebellious plot. Loyal Will informs Walsingham, who dispatches him to Sir Francis Bacon, irascible genius chief of the Ordnance Office. The narrative is dotted with footnotes identifying historical gems—for example, the way Venice was a refuge for Europe's persecuted Jews. But it's the characters, real and imagined, who race into memory—Will, wily and loyal; Marlowe, courageous and hedonistic; Bianca, the Dark Lady, peasant-born Jewish converso-turned-nun, then spy and assassin, then Shakespeare's lover. Della Quercia beautifully describes a plague-riven London ripe with "horses, hagglers, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, clowns, jugglers, jargon, gossip, and swearing" and the sorcerer's dark lair in Warkwickshire's Forest of Arden. Full of puns—"Bless my sole "—and wordplay—"woad warriors"—this historical thriller is also an homage to Ian Fleming's James Bond-ian world: Will becomes a "Double OO operative" and reports to Sir Thomas Walsingham, who's known as "W" and has a secretary named Penny, who fancies the agent. Add bull-baiting, human sacrifice, gruesome executions, and an epic London street battle, and what results is an erudite tour de force.

Kirkus Reviews