[1] In fact, to demystify the play's many historical and academic references, the New York production team provided the audiences with a 30-page booklet on the political and artistic history of the late-Victorian period.

[2] Harold Bloom, a scholar of Walter Pater, contended that the character of Housman and those in his circle are fabulated for dramatic effect, and the play's difficulties are not historical but its own.

About to board the ferry to the afterlife – captained by a petulant Charon – Housman begins to remember moments from his life, starting with his matriculation at Oxford University, where he studied Classics.

The play unfolds in short scenes that trace, primarily, Housman's relationship with Moses Jackson, for whom he harboured a lifelong unrequited love.

The scenes also explore late-Victorian artistic ideals, and Housman's intellectual growth into a preeminent Latin textual scholar.