<p>From the pen of the writer whomPeter Ackroyd called "one of our best living novelists" comes a workthat is rich, strange, and wonderful. Welcomed in Shakespeare's own land as themost original, exciting, and provocative novel about the playwright since AnthonyBurgess's classic <em>Nothing Like the Sun</em>,Robert Nye's <em>The Late Mr. Shakespeare</em>is a literary event. Our guide to the life of the Bard is an actor by the nameof Robert Reynolds, known also as Pickleherring, who asserts that, as a boy, hewas not only an original member of Shakespeare's acting troupe, but also playedthe greatest female roles, from Cleopatra through Portia. In an attic above a brothelin restoration England—a half century after Shakespeare had departed the stage—Pickleherring,now an ancient man, sits down to write the full story of his former friend,mentor, and master. <br /><br />Ancient he may be, but fond,faithful Pickleherring has forgotten not one jot, and using sources both firsthand and far-fetched, he means to set the record straight. Gentle readers willlearn much that will open their eyes. One by one, chapter by chapter,Pickleherring teases out all the theories that have been embroidered aroundShakespeare over the centuries: Did he really write his own plays? Who was theDark Lady of the sonnets? Did Shakespeare die a Catholic? What did he do duringhis so-called lost years, before he went to London to write plays? What werethe last words Shakespeare uttered on his deathbed? Was Shakespeare ever inlove? Pickleherring turns speculation and fact into stories, each bringing usinexorably closer to Shakespeare the man—complex, contradictory, breathing,vibrant. Robert Nye has given us an outrageously bawdy, language-loving, andedifying romp through the life and times of the greatest writer who ever lived.<em>The Late Mr. Shakespeare</em> proves howalive he was.<br /><br />“Nyebrilliantly weaves together almost all the known facts about Shakespeare, agreat many of the spurious anecdotes which have been attached to his life, anda tissue of rare inventions of his own.”<em>— TimesLiterary Supplement</em> <br /><br />“Anyonewho loves Shakespeare will love this book. . . . Wildly inventive andsatisfyingly steeped in the dramatist's work.”— <em>Sunday Telegraph</em></p>