The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare - Softcover

In 1564 a boy was born to a middle-class family in the little town of Stratford. Thirty-four years later he would write Hamlet. In between was his both troubled and carefree childhood, his disastrous forced marriage and his early wild years in London poverty with the brilliant young writers and actors who were forming the Elizabethan Theater. But even as he was rising into his first successes as a writer, he fell into a passionate bisexual love affair with his patron and an Italian girl musician that threatened to bring down both his work and his life.

Stephanie Cowell is the author of Nicholas Cooke, The Physician of London, The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart and Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet. She is the recipient of an American Book Award. Her next novel is Robbie: an Edwardian Love Story, set in the English midlands 1900 between a young male artist and a man who is running from memories of his failed marriage and his brutal childhood. Her work has been translated into nine languages, optioned for a movie, chosen for The History Book Club, and made into an opera.