Hell and Earth

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This book is dedicated to William Shakespeare, Christofer Marley, and Benjamin Jonson –a glover’s boy, a cobbler’s son, and a bricklayer’s redheaded stepchild–for building the narrative foundations upon which we poor moderns now twist our own stories, as Ovid and others laid flagstones for them.

May this humble effort honor their memories, and what they have left us.

Touchstone:If thou beest not damn’d for this,

the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how

thou shouldst scape.

–William Shakespeare,

As You Like It,Act III, scene ii

Act IV, scene i

It is too Late: the life of all his blood

Is touch’d corruptibly; and his pure brain,

Which some suppose the soul’s frail dwelling‑house,

Doth, by the idle comments that it makes,

Foretell the ending of mortality.

–William Shakespeare, King John,Act V scene vii

London had never seemed so gray and chill, but Will was warm enough in the corner by the fire, at the Mermaid Tavern. He leaned back against a timber, a cup of warm wine in his hands, and sighed. A man taken by the Faeries can never truly be content again.And then he remembered Kit’s voice. You must not say such things

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