Shakespeare in Shorthand: The Textual Mystery of King Lear Book

I'm still struggling to understand the premise behind this book, and I can only conclude that Rodney Bolt, an accomplished historian, is a fiction writer manque. The story is wonderful, really compelling, lovely, and if - like me - the topless towers of Ilium have haunted you since you read your first Marlowe, one you want desperately to believe in. It's a copiously footnoted account of how the wonderful, raffish Kit Marlowe 'wrote' all Shakespeare's plays, wasn't stabbed in a tavern duel, and lived out his life in hiding, in Europe.

And then ... you read the footnotes and realise the the main source for all this wonderful historical research is a fake. He's a character made up by Bolt to carry the veracity of this story and frankly, the whole conceit of the book hinges on this stinking fish of a false historical personage and as a result, the boook stinks too.

Why would anybody want to read a book that isn't historical fact, nor honest fiction, but a self-serving melange of the two? I did read it, right to the end, but I think I wasted my time: I couldn't trust a single word in it to be factual and yet I never felt that it worked as an imaginery narrative.

Don't bother reading it if veracity matters to you, and if you read it for entertainment I guarantee you'll put it down after a couple of chapters, because the style is textbook dull.