 The protagonist was killed off in the third book, "The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End" (1975), but Burgess later considered this a mistake and brought the character back for one more book.The aging poet has been hired to write the libretto for a musical about William Shakespeare and relocates to the fictional Indiana town of Terrebasse.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.