I think of Nicholas as essentially Nicola in boy's dress - and I think they are both excellent leads: immensely likeable, resourceful, but also quite vulnerable. I think Nicholas is a good "all-rounder" but not super-gifted - it's made clear that Adam excels him in most athletic/active pursuits and the memory is a bit of a weird quirk more than super-intelligence. It lets him excel at school, but I assume that's because Elizabethan grammar school education is so strongly based on rote learning.
I think Forest must have been tempted to make Nicholas a super-gifted actor, like Lawrie - maybe it's because of Lawrie she doesn't - and as it is Nicholas is a good actor but has to work really hard for it. (Will's remarks to Southampton about what's needed to make a great player - self-love - definitely would apply to Lawrie, but certainly wouldn't apply to Nicholas - and actually don't seem to apply to Burbage later.)
Actually in a weird way Nicholas seems a bit like Harry Potter - eleven years old at the start, finishes up seventeen, an orphan, plunged into a strange world - and kind of an everyman type compared to a lot of the characters around him.
Lilliburlero's point about age - I do think Forest writes younger children well actually - Charles Dodd - but I've wondered why Forest chose to start with him so young as it's not really a book 9 or 10 year olds are going to "get" - and an eleven year old hero might turn off a lot of teenage readers. I wonder if she wanted to write a novel over a much longer time-scale than her contemporary novels (perhaps inspired by Renault?) or whether the Death of Marlowe and the Essex Rebellion provided her frame, and therefore determined Nicholas's age?
Re: A nit-pick
I think Forest must have been tempted to make Nicholas a super-gifted actor, like Lawrie - maybe it's because of Lawrie she doesn't - and as it is Nicholas is a good actor but has to work really hard for it. (Will's remarks to Southampton about what's needed to make a great player - self-love - definitely would apply to Lawrie, but certainly wouldn't apply to Nicholas - and actually don't seem to apply to Burbage later.)
Actually in a weird way Nicholas seems a bit like Harry Potter - eleven years old at the start, finishes up seventeen, an orphan, plunged into a strange world - and kind of an everyman type compared to a lot of the characters around him.
Lilliburlero's point about age - I do think Forest writes younger children well actually - Charles Dodd - but I've wondered why Forest chose to start with him so young as it's not really a book 9 or 10 year olds are going to "get" - and an eleven year old hero might turn off a lot of teenage readers. I wonder if she wanted to write a novel over a much longer time-scale than her contemporary novels (perhaps inspired by Renault?) or whether the Death of Marlowe and the Essex Rebellion provided her frame, and therefore determined Nicholas's age?