A Gentleman Player

An actor of the Chamberlain's Men is sent north on a secret errand for Elizabeth's council, pursued by a knight who wants the same commission and a woman who knows more than either. Robert Neilson Stephens wrote historical romances with a stage sense — he had been a playwright — and the sword-play here reads as it would be blocked. Shakespeare appears briefly and is not made a fool of. Fifty-seven plates by painters including William Hogarth and J. M. W. Turner carry the book's theatrical world across two centuries of British art.