It concerns the life of Christopher Marlowe and the mystery surrounding his untimely death during a brawl in Deptford, set against a backdrop of a politically and religiously divided England where the state and its spies watch those who may be accused of sedition, treason and blasphemy.
In Scadbury Park, the home of Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe engages in a mock incantation to his personal deity Dog.
They introduce an actor called Tom Stone who will be performing for them in tandem with Rosalinda, a mixed-race Italian actress who is in love with Marlowe.
They discuss art, politics and religion while watching Stone and Rosalinda act in a risqué satire written by Marlowe.
Afterwards Stone queries Kyd about the ‘school of night’, an allegedly atheistic and subversive secret society to which Raleigh, Walsingham and Marlowe belonged.
Raleigh has already been arrested on the unrelated charge of marrying illegally, but they are all coming under suspicion.
In London Skeres and Poley burst into Kyd’s rooms and arrest him, looking for documents believed to be held by Marlowe on the 'school of night'.
In the Rose theatre Shakespeare reads one of the Dark Lady sonnets he has written about Rosalinda.
At Deptford, Marlowe, Frizer, Poley and Skeres discover that the man whose body they have been given died from a stab wound.
"[1] The Hollywood Reporter complained that the play was far too heavy on exposition, but that "Whelan does capture the spasms of desperation which seize the seeming cabal of doomed and threatened dramatists as they careen through history's obscure plots and even more obscure subplots.
If Whelan's version of Marlowe were intended to be a James Bond of the late 16th century, however, it misses the mark by a wide margin.
"[2] Ian Shuttleworth for City Limits also complained about the expositions: "Half the evening seems given over to brute exposition, with characters informing each other of developments offstage, the byzantine intrigues of court or questions of religion and succession.