ABOUT THIS BOOK

The year is 1597. Elizabeth is queen. Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men are packing London’s Globe Theatre. And the severed heads of Catholic insurgents are impaled on the Tower’s gates. One 14-year-old boy should arouse no one’s interest.

But within a week of his arrival, Richard Malory is robbed, beaten, and threatened at knifepoint. Someone wants him to leave London, and Richard is determined to find out why. There’s only one place he’ll be safe: as an actor on the stage. As he begins to unravel the traitorous plot that has ensnared him, Richard must make a difficult decision. Will he play the part set out for him—or can he become the playmaker of his own life?


REVIEWS

A thrilling romp through Elizabethan London, peopled with actors, imposters, spies, traitors, and one young apprentice in Shakespeare’s theater company who must learn more than his lines if he wants to keep his head.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. B. Cheaney first fell under the Bard’s spell when she and her sister wrote an adaptation of Julius Caesar and performed it in their backyard. Many years later, J. B. Cheaney’s interests in literature and theater have
come together again in The Playmaker, her first novel.