"The whole world of Elizabethan England is recreated in Anthony Burgess's new novel, a joyous celebration of the life of Christopher Marlowe, murdered in highly suspicious circumstances in a tavern brawl in Deptford three hundred years ago." "Burgess presents a kaleidoscope portrait of the most vivid age in British history, at the center of which is the story of one man - a towering genius in the theater, but riven by conflicts both sexual and political. How Kit Marlowe is seduced into the devious world of Elizabethan espionage through his relationship with a ruthless spy-master is one theme, involving power-politics, religion and the devastating consequences of failure; his rapscallion drinking and roistering another; his passion for the theater, for poetry, for the language he was in the very process of forming a third."--BOOK JACKET.