Nothing like the sun
First published 1964 · English · 234 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
A fictional life of William Shakespeare, told as a bawdy and learned novel. Burgess imagines the young man from Stratford finding his way into the London theatre, his friendships and rivalries, and his tangled love life, including the mysterious Dark Lady of the Sonnets. The language is deliberately Elizabethan in flavour, full of puns and earthy humour. It is a speculative portrait rather than a record of known facts, and it shows Burgess's lifelong devotion to the playwright.
Quotes
It was all a matter of a Goddess – dark, hidden, deadly, horribly desirable.
There he lieth, tossing in the guilt of his lewdness, the primal lecher, neglectful of his duties to a fair wife but all too ready to plunge his sizzling steel into the slaking black mud of a base Indian.
The West is eveningland, the East morningland.