TIMEWAR SPQR & The Heretic's Forfeit

In this, the final episode, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, before the eyes of the whole wide world, fight a winner takes all duel to the death on the stage of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

The discovery of a previously unknown play by the original Christopher Marlowe is announced at a press conference held in the Marlowe Corps HQ in London. Toby Bright, over at the other side of the world, comes to realize that it’s time to face the music...

Episode Nine: Shakespeare is declared insane and committed to a mental hospital. However, a brilliant plan to abduct Shakespeare from the hospital is carried out, and soon he is brought face to face with the present day descendant of his sixteenth century rival.

Olivia and Shakespeare pay an ill-advised visit to the Marlowe Corporation's HQ and barely escape with their lives. They seek refuge at the Tower of London, but things soon go from bad to much, much worse.

Episode Seven: Events spiral out of control, causing Olivia and Shakespeare to go on the run. In an effort to track down Olivia, Marlowe drops in on Professor Cosgrove. Meanwhile, back in Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, Olivia comes to a decision, unaware that it will put both their lives in danger.

VE Day, the 8th of May 1945, saw the defeat of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Or did it? TIMEWAR SPQR is an epic tale of adventure, heroism and romance in which the might of ancient Rome is pitted against the dark forces of Hitler's Third Reich. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it could be destroyed in one. Using just a Snowball microphone and some old BBC sound effect records, this panoramic "movie for your ears", featuring a cast of thousands, was created during lockdown by Paul Francis Matthews.

Episode Six: Shakespeare, accompanied by Olivia and Toby, visits the Marlowe archive at the British Museum. Here, the full extent of the original Christopher Marlowe’s villainy is laid bare. Olivia and Toby have difficulty believing Shakespeare’s story, but William devises a way to prove he is telling the truth. There are, however, unintended consequences.

Episode Five: Doctor Olivia Belmont rescues Shakespeare from the stage of the Globe Theatre and takes him back to her flat. That evening, after seeing Christopher Marlowe’s descendant and namesake appear as a guest on the Graham Norton show, William Shakespeare regains his memory.

William Shakespeare wakes up in the 21st century, suffering complete memory loss, and through a series of bizarre coincidences finds himself on the stage of the modern day Globe Theatre, in Southwark.

Marlowe makes an astonishing discovery at Shakespeare's lodgings, which prompts him to visit the old fortune teller at her house. While there, Marlowe hatches a diabolical plan.

After the premiere of William Shakespeare’s first play, The Comedy of Errors, Christopher Marlowe invites Shakespeare out for a drink at his club, Arcadia. Here they encounter an old fortune teller who predicts wildly contrasting futures for the two young playwrights.

In 1593 the most famous playwright of his age, Christopher Marlowe, was stabbed to death in a pub in Deptford, which coincided almost exactly with the emergence of William Shakespeare, who then went on to take Marlowe’s place. In The Heretic’s Forfeit these things don’t happen. Marlowe, forewarned by a prophecy, cheats death, then poisons Shakespeare, who is subsequently buried alive. Marlowe then steals thirty completed manuscripts that Shakespeare has kept in a locked wooden chest under his bed and proceeds to pass them off as his own. Four hundred and twenty-five years later, during building work in central London, the coffin containing Shakespeare’s body is unearthed and taken to the Institute of Archaeology at UCL. While being examined by Doctor Olivia Belmont, Shakespeare regains consciousness. The late Polish academic Jan Kott’s famous quote that “Shakespeare is our contemporary” is now literally true. But Shakespeare finds himself in a world where his name means nothing, and his life’s work is now attributed to his rival Marlowe, whose present day descendant, Sir Christopher Marlowe the Tenth, is the CEO of the Marlowe Corporation, one of the largest publicly listed companies in the world. So what happens next? You’ll just have to listen... In Episode One Marlowe and Shakespeare meet for the first time, but unbeknownst to either man their fates shall now and forever be inexorably linked...