Much Ado About Murder — Simon Hawke

Fledgling playwright Will Shakespeare and Symington Smythe, ostler and would-be thespian, and are now firmly ensconced in their theater company . . . But due to the plague, all of London's theaters have been closed, its players now broke, forcing our intrepid duo to seek employment in other lines of work--Smythe smithing and Will poeting.
Then a murder rocks all of London.

Shakespeare and Smythe decide to solve the crime, but they must rely on their wits to survive both the conspiriacies and the cutthroat business of Elizabethan theater