License to Quill (42 page)
Authors: Jacopo della Quercia
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Twenty years ago, an elementary school teacher affectionally remembered as Mrs. Raphael told her students they would be staging one of William Shakespeare’s plays that year. She asked us to decide whether it would be
Macbeth
or
Hamlet
, and I enthusiastically voted “
Hamlet
!” because “there’s a skull in it!” (Being an eleven-year-old boy, I acted under the authority that talking to a skull was pretty much the coolest thing actors do.) The girls in our class, however, were not so easily swayed. One of them liked the sound of
Macbeth
for reasons beyond my persuasion, the chief being that her name was Beth. She shared her amusement with the girls next to her, two of whom agreed to join her onstage as witches. The Weird Sisters had their way, and the rest of us became assassins, usurpers, soldiers and, in my case, a drunken porter.
This book exists because of everyone in that room.
Any acknowledgments would be remiss without my gratitude to these students, whom I shared the most impressionable years of my life with in the company of our beloved teacher, Nancy A. Raphael of the Central Bucks School District. Thank you.
I must also thank my parents and everyone in my family for their love and support, particularly my father, Joseph A. Calabria; my godfather, Marino D’Orazio; and my uncle Antonio Rutigliano for the unique roles they played in this project. I also thank Jonathan Maberry; my agent, Sara Crowe; my editor, Michael Homler; Lauren Jablonski; and everyone at St. Martin’s Press for once again letting me share my writing with the world.
Special thanks go to Ray Errol Fox for his tireless wisdom and friendship; his daughter Lauren Fox for everything she always told me about acting; Melanie and Claire McCulley for being such inspirational towers of strength; Glyne Griffith for being such a towering friend; Erzsébet Fazekas for being there from the very beginning; Ashley E. Holley for her frequent creative and artistic insight; Bianca Rutigliano for her invaluable contributions; Daniel Eltringham and Jeff Garofalo for their chemical know-how; Eden Loeffel for her artistic input; Kate Resler for her costuming; Adrian Prockter for his extensive research on Old London; Ian Archer, Felicity Heal, Paulina Kewes, and Henry Summerson, the Holinshed Project; Dr. Philip Weller of Shakespeare Navigators; Emrah Safa Gürkan and Chris Gratien at the Ottoman History Podcast; David and Ben Crystal for all their work on original pronunciation; Rick and Diana Boufford at the Raven Diaries; Amanda Mabillar at Shakespeare Online; Dr. Victoria Buckley at Shakespeare’s England; Eric M. Johnson at Open Source Shakespeare; Phil Gyford at
PepysDiary.com
; the team at the Map of Early Modern London; the Yeomen Warders of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London; the U.S. National Library of Medicine; the World Digital Library; the British Library; the Bodleian Library; the Folger Shakespeare Library; Project Gutenberg; Dr. Michael Best from the University of Victoria, coordinating editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions; Shakespeare’s Globe; the Wikimedia Foundation; the Old Map & Clock Company; the Gunpowder Plot Society;
OpenCulture.com
; the BBC; PBS; the New York State Writers Institute; my professors at Susquehanna University and Syracuse University in Florence for everything they taught me; Callum MacFadyen Mellon for being Scotland personified; Anthony Losorelli for always being my first second opinion; Tim Lieb for his friendship and acumen; F. James Walton for letting me kill him onstage as Banquo; David Mitchell for always having time for me; the countless teachers, historians, actors, actresses, and playing companies who keep Shakespeare alive all over the world’s stage; the mischief-makers who keep Guy Fawkes alive every Bonfire Night; everyone at Crisan Bakery; everyone who preordered this book and its predecessor months in advance; everyone who read, reviewed, and shared in
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
; all my readers at
Cracked.com
; and all my kind, dedicated, and hilarious Twitter followers! (Please feel free to write your names here: @
___________________
#PopQuizHotShot)
And lastly, I would like to give a very special thanks to my mother, Anna Calabria, for reminding me again and again to visit her students Professor John Bell, Pamela Jane, and their daughter Annelise at Villa La Pietra during my time abroad.
Â
JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA
is the author of
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
, and an educator and history writer who has authored more than a hundred articles for the comedy Web site
Cracked.com
. His work has been featured in the
New York Times
bestseller
You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News,
and on
BBC America, CNNMoney, The Huffington Post, The Takeaway
public radio program,
Ripley's Believe It Or Not!, Playboy's The Smoking Jacket,
CBS's
Man Cave Daily
, Georgetown University professor John Brown's
Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review
, among others. .
Â
ALSO BY
JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA
The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy
Â
Contents
Prologue: [Thunder and Lightning]
1. The Man Who Killed Christopher Marlowe
14. Reunion at the Duck and Drake
28. The Man Who Bested Walsingham
42. Midnight, November 5, 1605
50. The Passion of Christopher Marlowe
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
LICENSE TO QUILL
. Copyright © 2015 by Jacopo della Quercia. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover illustration by Michael Koelsch
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Della Quercia, Jacopo
License to quill / Jacopo della Quercia.—First edition.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250-05965-9 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6503-7 (e-book)
1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Fiction. 2. Marlowe, Christopher, 1564–1593—Fiction. 3. Gunpowder Plot, 1605—Fiction. 4. Great Britain—History—James I, 1603–1625—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.E4446L53 2015
813’.6—dc23
2015035688
e-ISBN 9781466865037
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
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.
First Edition: December 2015