''Enderby's Dark Lady, or, No End to Enderby'' is a 1984 novel by Anthony Burgess, the final volume in the Enderby series. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson. The protagonist was killed off in the third book, ''

The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End ''The Clockwork Testament'' is a novella by the British author Anthony Burgess. It is the third of Burgess' four '' Enderby'' novels and was first published in 1974 by Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Publishers.''Novel Style: Ethics and Excess in Englis ...

'' (1974), but Burgess later considered this a mistake and brought the character back for one more book.

Summary

The aging poet has been hired to write the

libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...

for a musical about

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

and relocates to the fictional

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

town of

Terrebasse Terrebasse (; oc, Tèrrabaisha) is a commune in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regi ...

. He must work with collaborators who seem more interested in crude show-biz entertainment than Enderby's intricately rhymed Elizabethan-style verses, and the show's backer—the ostentatious local matron, Mrs. Schoenbaum. The co-star, in the Dark Lady role, is the luscious black pop-diva April Elgar—and Enderby, consumed with lust, is soon tailoring the show to her non-Elizabethan talents. April is a well-educated daughter of a Carolinian family and is not unresponsive to Enderby's infatuation. She invites Enderby to her home for Christmas, where he must pose as a clergyman, preaching an incoherent sermon to a Baptist congregation. Eventually, the opening night of 'Actor on his Ass' – as the show is now titled – arrives and Enderby is forced to take over the role of Shakespeare. Although Anatole Broyard of ''The New York Times'' considered the book funny and clever, he concluded that it was "not as good as the previous three books."

References

External links

Anthony Burgess discusses ''No End To Enderby'' with Melvyn Bragg
- a British Library sound recording 1984 British novels Novels by Anthony Burgess Hutchinson (publisher) books Novels set in Indiana {{1980s-novel-stub