+- Story-Portal (https://time-tales.af/storys)
+-- Forum: EBOOK (https://time-tales.af/storys/forumdisplay.php?fid=27)
+--- Forum: EBOOK (https://time-tales.af/storys/forumdisplay.php?fid=28)
+--- Thread: Burgess, Anthony - A Dead Man in Deptford (1993) (/showthread.php?tid=869)
Burgess, Anthony - A Dead Man in Deptford (1993) - Simon - 11-22-2025
Serendipity was in action when I decided to move onto this after Death of the Fox. Although Christopher Marlowe is the protagonist here, and events take place some thirty years earlier than Garrett’s story, A Dead Man in Deptford also features Raleigh as a prominent character (though morally more ambivalent). Both books are written in a dense, elaborate, semi-archaic style and both create a vivid impression of late Elizabethan England, although these impressions couldn’t be more different from each other.
While Death of the Fox has the air of a great pageant, A Dead Man in Deptford plunges you into a world where the language is studded with cant and cod-Latin, a rich, irreverent, bawdy, brilliant stew of a novel. If you don’t know what to expect then don’t be discouraged. A bewildering confection of words and references rapidly resolves itself into a very good story and, because this is a short book, the plot absolutely barrels along. It’s always great to read a novel which the author enjoyed writing, and Burgess clearly had a good time (he occasionally seems to be enjoying himself to almost indecent extremes).
The story opens with the young Kit Marlowe studying theology at Cambridge, by duty rather than choice. Bored by his studies and indifferent to the prospect of a life as a humble clergyman, Kit amuses himself by writing verses, undermining the devout convictions of his fellow students and indulging in the odd spot of fervent buggery out at Grantchester. By chance he meets Tom Watson, an agent of Francis Walsingham, who sees potential in this impious young man and urges him to come to London, to meet Sir Francis and to see what he can do for his country.
And so, Kit is soon signed up to ‘the Service’ and travels to France, in an effort to unearth information about the intentions of exiled English Catholics and to find intelligence about plots against the Queen. Along the way he becomes infatuated with Sir Francis’s handsome young cousin, Thomas Walsingham; and Kit’s first mission to the Continent has all the flavour of a debauched student jolly. At first it all seems like a game – and it is, really: a very dangerous game in which lives are at stake. The trouble begins when Kit comes to realise that the Service is not something which he can put on and take off as he pleases, to suit his studies and his dreams of writing for the stage. Like superstition and religion, it is merely another form of prison; and there is no way out, save one.