Publisher's Synopsis
Can you keep a secret? For four hundred years the world has believed that the actor, William Shakespeare, was the greatest writer that has ever lived. The world was wrong and finally the real story behind this epic deception has been revealed. In The Master of the Ceremonies we discover for the first time the traces left by the hand of the real 'Shakespeare'- not the actor but a tortured Catholic at the heart of Elizabeth I's court. Discover for yourself the complex author that the world and the works deserve. The greatest story never told. An absolute 'must-read' for anyone interested in Shakespeare or Tudor history. Lewes Lewkenor was a renegade soldier who had spent a decade fighting for the Catholic Philip II of Spain. But Lewkenor was welcomed back to court by Burghley and soon began working as Elizabeth I's translator and receiver of foreign ambassadors. King James I created the position of Master of the Ceremonies for Lewkenor, placing him front-row at the recorded debut performances of many of the plays in the company of the very people they were written to please. We will examine how his contemporaries sniped at a clandestine writer who hid behind an actor, unraveling the sly allusions they made to a man they called 'Luck-Less'. The Master of the Ceremonies covertly led the propaganda war at the heart of the Counter Reformation, speaking directly to his Catholic audience by inserting coded messages in the plays which he published using William Shakespeare as his amanuensis, his mask. Lewes Lewkenor urged that his name should be kept from his work, unknown for four hundred years. Finally we have found the author that the world and the works deserve. This is a remarkable tale of deceit and intrigue at the highest level.
