His Dark Lady (61 page)

As for his wife Anne Hathaway and her possible dalliance with one of his glover father’s apprentices, I have no evidence to support such an infamous scenario. Many men in those times were forced to work away from home – as indeed they are today – and might not have seen their wives from one year to the next. It does strike me as odd though that the young William Shakespeare, having married a much older bride in what seems like a whirlwind of romantic fervour, should then absent himself for years when he could have – at the very least – brought Anne and the children to live with him in London once the money was good enough. That he suspected Anne of adultery is merely one possibility among many to explain why he
did
not. And the woman under suspicion is a common theme in his plays, though she tends to be proved innocent in the end. My explanation for Shakespeare’s lengthy absence from the marriage bed – and his courtship of the elusive ‘Dark Lady’ – is not based on anything more substantial than gut feeling, in other words.

I wrote at length about Lucy Morgan’s origins as a character in my Author’s Note for
The Queen’s Secret
, so will only repeat the bare bones of that here. Lucy Morgan exists in several official documents of the time, chiefly as one of the queen’s ladies at court, but also perhaps in a more dubious role, as ‘Black Luce’ of Clerkenwell. This would suggest a possible fall from grace, and for one of Elizabeth’s ladies, no fall would be swifter than one brought about by an illicit affair – or worse, pregnancy. Lucy Morgan appears to become Lucy Parker at some point in the 1580s, and then begins to disappear from court records. Of course, we do not even know who this Lucy Morgan was, let alone what her life was like at court. She is a figure from history shrouded in mystery, little more than a name in a few old documents, and is therefore ripe for speculation by novelists.
Caveat lector!

The sonnet quoted in Chapter Five is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 151: ‘Love is too young to know what conscience is’.

Victoria Lamb October 2012

¹
For more on this bizarre and sinister character Topcliffe, see Robert Hutchinson’s excellent
Elizabeth’s Spy Master
, pp. 74–82.

Select Bibliography

The editions cited below are those consulted, even where earlier or revised editions exist.

Acknowledgements

Although every novel is written alone, it is produced and helped along in its genesis by a team of people. Among those I would like to thank is my editor at Transworld, Emma Buckley, for her gentle nudgings and insightful suggestions, which made this a better book. On the same note, Lynsey Dalladay, my publicist at Transworld, has been supportive and helpful, and always enthusiastic. My literary agent, Luigi Bonomi, and his wife, Alison, have been there for me throughout: indeed, this trilogy would not exist without them.

I would also like to thank the staff at the Bodleian Library, Oxford – in particular those in the Radcliffe Camera reading room – for their unstinting help and advice. Likewise the expert staff at the Globe Theatre in London, who answered my questions so patiently and brought new insights to my understanding of early Elizabethan theatre.

Nearer to home, I thank my husband, Steve, for adjusting his mindset to accommodate life with a full-time novelist – not always the easiest thing – and my children: Dylan, Morris and Indigo, for their continuing enthusiasm, and especially Becki, on whose shoulders fell many tasks which ought to have belonged to me. I don’t know how we shall cope now you have flown the
nest!

About the Author

While studying Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights at Oxford University,
Victoria Lamb
had a desire to write a series of novels about Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’. Now a busy mother of five, she has finally achieved that ambition. Along the way, she has published five books of poetry under the name Jane Holland and edited the arts journal
Horizon Review
. She is also the author of a series of Tudor novels for teens. Victoria lives in a three-hundred-year-old farmhouse on the fringe of Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, with her husband and young family. She is currently working on her third novel featuring Lucy Morgan.

You can follow Victoria Lamb on Twitter @VictoriaLamb1.

Also by Victoria Lamb:

The Queen’s Secret

For young adults:

Witchstruck

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HIS DARK LADY
A BANTAM PRESS: 9780593068007
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446463017

First published in Great Britain
in 2013 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © Victoria Lamb 2013

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