THE CORISCO CONSPIRACY, A Memoir of William Shakespeare

Although they never formally declared war against each other, England and Spain were in conflict for more than half of the forty-something years that Elizabeth the First sat uneasily on the English throne and Philip the Second menacingly wielded the Spanish sceptre.  For twenty of those years, from 1585 to 1605, the man whose name would later become a synonym for the word “English” was employed by Spain as a Roman Catholic counter intelligence operative.  The Corisco Conspiracy is his gripping firsthand account (in crystal-clear prose) of the chain of cloak-and-dagger misadventures that led him from the Spanish Armada to the Gunpowder Plot, of which, it turns out, he was the mastermind!

April 1585: Jesuit messenger William Shakespeare, a recusant firebrand, arrives in Rome from London expecting to meet his best friend, a budding playwright with whom he wishes to enter into a partnership in the entertainment industry. But his friend left Rome about one month earlier to go and study for a doctorate in philology at the University of Salamanca in Spain. Before he decides whether to proceed to Salamanca or return to London, another messenger, a certain Guy Fawkes, brings him new directives from his employer: the Bishop of Winchester, a crypto-Catholic prelate of the Church of England. As instructed by His Excellency, William travels to the West African island city of Corisco in the Kingdom of Malabo. There he meets the woman and some of the men with whom, after suffering religious persecution for over two decades, he contrives the most diabolical assassination plot in British history.

The plot is uncovered in the nick of time. The majority of William’s co-conspirators are captured and executed. How he escapes the hangman’s noose is a story in itself.

Musketman Shakespeare (so Google has him on file) is the Roman Catholic secret agent who masterminded the Gunpowder Plot. He has been the darling of social media since this blog was set up for him in 2017. Within the first three years of its creation, the blog was visited over 25,000 times.

The musketman is well-liked on Facebook and Instagram. On Twitter, he is followed by a swarm of admirers, a good number of whom work for the Vatican. And he has thousands of connections on LinkedIn – Pope Francis and other prominent religious leaders among them.

Raphael Sóne is the bardolator who writes this blog. He was born and raised in Cameroon, attended Bishop Rogan College (Buea) and received his postsecondary education in Canada, where he has lived for most of his adult life. The Corisco Conspiracy is his first historical novel. It was originally entitled The War Memoirs of William Shakespeare. 

When not visiting some other country, Raphael divides his time between Canada and Mexico. He can be reached at MusketmanShakespeare@gmail.com