I have been dying for fic inspired by these chapters (Marlowe/Southampton, Essex/Southampton, and Shakespeare/Southampton) for many a long year. How I do wish that I could discuss them with Miss Forest, although I am certainly very glad to have the chance to talk to trennels ... but I do yearn to have some kind of access to Secret Private Authorial Notes & Jottings, or maybe some Deleted Scenes.

The characterisation and context-building (especially literary, as you noted) is light-years ahead of any seemingly comparable historical novels set in the Shakespearean milieu, e.g. Cue for Treason and more recent parallels, of which I have read many. AF is very good at achieving the sort of 'thickening' that is necessary to high-quality historical fiction (the unsurpassed achiever of this in my experience is Hilary Mantel; Penelope Fitgerald is also excellent), without cluttering up the narrative with excessively copious bumpf. Walking this line of alienation, yet retaining narrative velocity, yet still holding the reader's empathy (to some degree) for the protag. is ridiculously hard! Most novelists writing children's historical fiction are simply writing a completely different kind of book, and not tackling this at all.