In this confident and accomplished fictional rendering of Shakespeare's life, Morgan makes a virtue of how little we know for certain about the playwright. Not only does the paucity of fact open up spaces in which the novelist can operate with greater freedom, but Morgan has turned our lack of knowledge into a quality of unknowableness in his protagonist. In places this is done with a certain knowingness that makes it seem pleasingly arch  a nod to the multiple modern versions of the Bard. Indeed, Morgan seems to have caught Shakespeare, both in the sense of pulling off a convincing likeness and of being thoroughly infected by him. Naturally, the dialogue is all "Have at thee", as are the characters' thoughts, but, slightly uncomfortably, so is the narration. Yet after a while the "cock-stands" and "mazy stumbles" seduce, and one becomes immersed in this world. It's a mammoth task to synthesise so much knowledge, and so many theories, about Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and the whole panorama of Elizabethan theatre, but 'tis well done, i'faith. And infectious.